“This,” thought Nicolas, “is worth a thousand fold its weight in gold. I know that the right of Nicolas to enjoy those revenues, and even that title, is being disputed and will come up in council.” With some difficulty Jaroslav also discovered securely wrapped in other documents, as if for the purpose of close concealment, the partially mutilated decree of Otakar conferring on Queen Kunigunde, as her own property, the sum of fifty thousand marks drawn from the revenues of Grätz. Nicolas also acquired both the information and the possession of documents whereby Tobias and Duke Nicolas had attempted to throw suspicion on the marriage of King Otakar and Queen Kunigunde. He knew that such doubts had been laid before Rudoph; but no document on the subject had previously been suspected to exist. Now became evident the explanation of the veiled woman’s possession of those documents and of that chest. In the days of the unhappy Queen Margaret the veiled woman, then the most attractive person at court, enjoyed the largest share of the king’s confidence, and became in fact custodian of many state archives. Hence the golden key and chain.
The mutilation of the king’s grant to his queen created extreme perplexity. Only the letters “Ota” remained, the last being imperfect and divided between the shreds still remaining on the edge of the parchment and the corresponding shreds on the torn piece.
During the siege of Hluboka, Agaphia had been obliged to tear up many portions of her store of gar-
