Louisa of Prussia and Her Times Part 52

"Yes, it shall," said Thugut, almost sternly.

"But this does not fulfil Victoria's prayer," said the count, anxiously.

"I am able to attend to these matters, but Victoria also wants to give you a proof of her friendship."

"Well, I ask her to prepare a little joke for me and you," replied Thugut. "Count Lehrbach will move early to-morrow morning with his whole furniture into the chancery of state. I beg Victoria to bring it about that he must move out to-morrow evening with his whole furniture, like a martin found in the dove-cote." [Footnote: Thugut's wishes were fulfilled. Count Lehrbach lost on the very next day his scarcely-obtained portfolio, and he was compelled to remove the furniture which, in rude haste he had sent to the chancery of state in the morning, in the course of the same evening.--Vide Hormayer's "Lebensbilder," vol. i., p. 330.]

"Ah, that will be a splendid joke," said Count Colloredo, laughing, "and my dear Victoria will be happy to afford you this little satisfaction.

I am able to predict that Count Lehrbach will be compelled to move out to-morrow evening. But now, my dearest friend. I must hasten to Archduke Charles, who, as you are aware, is pouting on one of his estates. I shall at once repair thither, and be absent from Vienna for two days.

Meantime, you will take care of Victoria as a faithful friend."

"I shall take care of her if the countess will permit me to do so," said Thugut, smiling, and accompanying Count Colloredo to the door.

His eyes followed him for a long while with an expression of haughty disdain.

"The fools remain," he said, "and I must go. But no, I shall not go! Let the world believe me to be a dismissed minister, I remain minister after all. I shall rule through my creatures, Colloredo and Victoria. I remain minister until I shall be tired of all these miserable intrigues, and retire in order to live for myself." [Footnote: Thugut really withdrew definitely from the political stage, but secretly he retained his full power and authority, and Victoria de Poutet-Colloredo, the influential friend of the Empress Theresia, constantly remained his faithful adherent and confidante. All Vienna, however, was highly elated by the dismissal of Thugut, who had so long ruled the empire in the most arbitrary manner. An instance of his system is the fact that; on his withdrawal from the cabinet, there were found one hundred and seventy unopened dispatches and more than two thousand unopened letters. Thugut only perused what he believed to be worth the trouble of being read, and to the remainder he paid no attention whatever.--"Lebensbilder," vol.

i., p. 327.]

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

f.a.n.n.y VON ARNSTEIN.

The young Baroness f.a.n.n.y von Arnstein had just finished her morning toilet and stepped from her dressing-room into her boudoir, in order to take her chocolate there, solitary and alone as ever. With a gentle sigh she glided into the arm-chair, and instead of drinking the chocolate placed before her in a silver breakfast set on the table, she leaned her head against the back of her chair and dreamily looked up to the ceiling. Her bosom heaved profound sighs from time to time, and the ideas which were moving her heart and her soul ever and anon caused a deeper blush to mantle her cheeks; but it quickly disappeared again, and was followed by an even more striking pallor.

She was suddenly startled from her musings by a soft, timid rap at the door leading to the reception-room.

"Good Heaven!" she whispered, "I hope he will not dare to come to me so early, and without being announced."

The rapping at the door was renewed. "I cannot, will not receive him,"

she muttered; "it will be better not to be alone with him any more. I will bolt the door and make no reply whatever."

She glided with soft steps across the room to the door, and was just about to bolt it, when the rapping resounded for the third time, and a modest female voice asked:

"Are you there, baroness, and may I walk in?"

"Ah, it is only my maid," whispered the baroness, drawing a deep breath, as though an oppressive burden were removed from her breast, and she opened the door herself.

"Well, Fanchon," she asked, in her gentle, winning voice, "what do you want?"

"Pardon me, baroness," said the maid, casting an inquisitive look around the room, "the baron sent for me just now; he asked me if you had risen already and entered your boudoir, and when I replied in the affirmative, the baron gave me a message for you, with the express order, however, not to deliver it until you had taken your chocolate and finished your breakfast. I see now that I must not yet deliver it; the breakfast is still on the table just as it was brought in."

"Take it away; I do not want to eat any thing," said the baroness, hastily. "And now Fanchon, tell me your errand."

Fanchon approached the table, and while she seized the silver salver, she cast a glance of tender anxiety on her pale, beautiful mistress.

"You are eating nothing at all, baroness," she said, timidly; "for a week already I have had to remove the breakfast every morning in the same manner; you never tasted a morsel of it, and the valet de chambre says that you hardly eat any thing at the dinner-table either; you will be taken ill, baroness, if you go on in this manner, and--"

"Never mind, dear Fanchon," her mistress interrupted her with a gentle smile, "I have hardly any appet.i.te, it is true, but I do not feel unwell, nor do I want to be taken ill. Let us say no more about it, and tell me the message the baron intrusted to you."

"The baron wished me to ask you if you would permit him to pay you immediately a visit, and if you would receive him here in your boudoir."

The baroness started, and an air of surprise overspread her features.

"Tell the baron that he will be welcome, and that I am waiting for him," she said then, calmly. But so soon as Fanchon had withdrawn, she whispered: "What is the meaning of all this? What is the reason of this unusual visit? Oh, my knees are trembling, and my heart is beating so violently, as though it wanted to burst. Why? What have I done, then? Am I a criminal, who is afraid to appear before her judge?"

She sank back into her arm-chair and covered her blushing face with her hands. "No," she said, after a long pause, raising her head again, "no, I am no criminal, and my conscience is guiltless. I am able to raise my eyes freely to my husband and to my G.o.d. So far, I have honestly struggled against my own heart, and I shall struggle on in the same manner. I--ah! he is coming," she interrupted herself when she heard steps in the adjoining room, and her eyes were fixed with an expression of anxious suspense on the door.

The latter opened, and her husband, Baron Arnstein, entered. His face was pale, and indicative of deep emotion; nevertheless, he saluted his wife with a kind smile, and bent down in order to kiss her hand, which she had silently given to him.

"I suppose you expected me?" he asked. "You knew, even before I sent Fanchon to you, that I should come and see you at the present hour?"

f.a.n.n.y looked at him inquiringly, and in surprise. "I confess," she said, in an embarra.s.sed tone, "that I did not antic.i.p.ate your visit by any means until Fanchon announced it to me, and I only mention it to apologize for the dishabille in which you find me."

"Ah, you did not expect me, then?" exclaimed the baron, mournfully.

"You have forgotten every thing? You did not remember that this is the anniversary of our wedding, and that five years have elapsed since that time?"

"Indeed," whispered f.a.n.n.y, in confusion, "I did not know that this was the day."

"You felt its burden day after day, and it seemed to you, therefore, as though that ill-starred day were being renewed for you all the year round," exclaimed the baron, sadly. "Pardon my impetuosity and my complaints," he continued, when he saw that she turned pale and averted her face. "I will be gentle, and you shall have no reason to complain of me. But as you have forgotten the agreement which we made five years ago, permit me to remind you of it."

He took a chair, and, sitting down opposite her, fixed a long, melancholy look upon her. "When I led you to the altar five years ago to-day," he said, feelingly, "you were, perhaps, less beautiful than now, less brilliant, less majestic; but you were in better and less despondent spirits, although you were about to marry a man who was entirely indifferent to you."

"Oh, I did not say that you were indifferent to me," said f.a.n.n.y, in a low voice; "only I did not know you, and, therefore, did not love you."

"You see that want of acquaintance was not the only reason," he said, with a bitter smile, "for now, I believe, you know me, and yet you do not love me. But let us speak of what brought me here to-day--of the past. You know that, before our marriage, you afforded me the happiness of a long and confidential interview, that you permitted me to look down into the depths of your pure and n.o.ble soul, that you unveiled to me your innocent heart, that did not yet exhibit either scars or wounds, nor even an image, a souvenir, and allowed me to be your brother and your friend, as you would not accept me as a lover and husband. Before the world, however, I became your husband, and took you to Vienna, to my house, of which you were to be the mistress and queen. The whole house was gayly decorated, and all the rooms were opened, for your arrival was to be celebrated by a ball. Only one door was locked; it was the door of this cabinet. I conducted you hither and said to you, 'This is your sanctuary, and no one shall enter it without your permission. In this boudoir you are not the Baroness Arnstein, not my wife; but here you are f.a.n.n.y Itzig, the free and unshackled young girl, who is mistress of her will and affections. I shall never dare myself, without being expressly authorized by you, to enter this room; and when I shall be allowed to do so, I shall only come as a cavalier, who has the honor to pay a polite visit to a beautiful lady, to whom he is not connected in any manner whatever. Before the world I am your husband, but not in this room.

Hence I shall never permit myself to ask what you are doing in this room, whom you are receiving here; for here you are only responsible to G.o.d and yourself.' Do you now remember that I said this to you at that time?"

"I do."

"I told you further that I begged you to continue with me one day here in this room the confidential conversation which we held before our marriage. I begged you to fix a period of five years for this purpose and, during this time, to examine your heart and to see whether life at my side was at least a tolerable burden, or whether you wished to shake it off. I asked you to promise me that I might enter this room on the fifth anniversary of our wedding-day, for the purpose of settling then with you our future mode of living. You were kind enough to grant my prayer, and to promise what I asked. Do you remember it?"

"I do," said f.a.n.n.y, blushing; "I must confess, however, that I did not regard those words in so grave a light as to consider them as a formal obligation on your part. You would have been every day a welcome guest in this room, and it was unnecessary for you to wait for a particular day in accordance with an agreement made five years ago."

"Your answer is an evasive one," said the baron, sadly. "I implore you, let us now again speak as frankly and honestly as we did five years ago to-day! Will you grant my prayer?"

"I will," replied f.a.n.n.y, eagerly; "and I am going to prove immediately that I am in earnest. You alluded a few minutes ago to our past, and asked me wonderingly if I had forgotten that interview on our wedding-day. I remember it so well, however, that I must direct your attention to the fact that you have forgotten the princ.i.p.al portion of what we said to each other at that time, or rather that, in your generous delicacy, and with that magnanimous kindness which you alone may boast of, you have intentionally omitted that portion of it. You remembered that I told you I did not love you, but you forgot that you then asked me if I loved another man. I replied to you that I loved no one, and never shall I forget the mournful voice in which you then said, 'It is by far easier to marry with a cold heart than to do so with a broken heart; for the cold heart may grow warm, but the broken heart--never!' Oh, do not excuse yourself," she continued, with greater warmth; "do not take me for so conceited and narrow-minded a being that I should have regarded those words of yours as an insult offered to me!

It was, at the best, but a pang that I felt."

"A pang?" asked the baron, in surprise; and he fixed his dark eyes, with a wondrously impa.s.sioned expression, on the face of his beautiful wife.

"Yes, I felt a pang," she exclaimed, vividly, "for, on hearing your words, which evidently issued from the depths of your soul, on witnessing your unaffected and pa.s.sionate grief, your courageous self-abnegation, I felt that your heart had received a wound which never would close again, and that you never would faithlessly turn from your first love to a second one."

"Oh, my G.o.d," murmured the baron, and he averted his face in order not to let her see the blush suddenly mantling it.

f.a.n.n.y did not notice it, and continued: "But this dead love of yours laid itself like the cold hand of a corpse upon my breast and doomed it to everlasting coldness. With the consciousness that you never would love me, I had to cease striving for it, and give up the hope of seeing, perhaps, one day my heart awake in love for you, and the wondrous flower of a tenderness after marriage unfold itself, the gradual budding of which had been denied to us by the arbitrary action of our parents, who had not consulted our wishes, but only our fortunes. I became your wife with the full conviction that I should have to lead a life cold, dreary, and devoid of love, and that I could not be for you but an everlasting burden, a chain, an obstacle. My pride, that was revolting against it, told me that I should be able to bear this life in a dignified manner, but that I never ought to make even an attempt to break through this barrier which your love for another had erected between us, and which you tried to raise as high as possible."

"I!" exclaimed the baron, sadly.