THE KING'S LETTER The ambassador from Jugendheit, Baron von Steinbock, was not popular in Dreiberg, at least not among the people, who still held to the grand duke's idea that the kingdom had been behind the abduction of the Princess Hildegarde.

The citizens scowled at his carriage, they scowled at the mention of his name, they scowled whenever they passed the embassy, which stood in the heart of the fashionable residences in the Koenig Strasse.

Never a hot-headed Dreiberger passed the house without a desire to loot it, to scale the piked fence and batter in the doors and windows.

Steinbock himself was a polished, amiable gentleman, in no wise meriting this ill-feeling.

The embassy was in all manner the most important in Dreiberg, though Prussia and Austria overshadowed it in wealth and prestige.
At this moment the people gazed at the house less in rancor than in astonishment.