Louisa of Prussia and Her Times Part 56

An exclamation of surprise escaped from the lips of the three gentlemen, and their eyes turned toward the door, the threshold of which f.a.n.n.y Arnstein was crossing at that moment. She seemed just to have returned home; her tall form was still wrapped in a long Turkish shawl, embroidered with gold; a charming little bonnet, adorned with flowers and plumes, covered her head, and in her hand she held one of those large costly fans, adorned with precious stones, which were in use at that time in the place of parasols. She greeted the gentlemen with a winning smile; not the slightest tinge of care or uneasiness was visible in her merry face; not the faintest glimmer of a tear darkened the l.u.s.tre of her large black eyes.

"Gentlemen will please accept my apology for making them wait, although this is the hour when I am in the habit of receiving visitors," said the baroness, in a perfectly careless manner. "But I hope my husband has taken my place in the mean time and told you that I had to preside over a meeting of our Hebrew Benevolent Society, and you will acknowledge that that was a duty which I ought not to have failed to fulfil. Ah, you smile, Baron Weichs; you must explain to me what is the meaning of this smile, if you wish to intimate thereby, perhaps, that there are no important duties at all for us ladies to perform. Come, gentlemen, let us sit down and hear in what manner Baron Weichs will be able to defend his smile. Sit down here on my right side, prince, and you, Baron Weichs, on my left, and my husband may take a seat opposite us and play the role of an arbiter."

"I regret that I cannot comply any longer with your amiable invitation,"

said the prebendary, gloomily. "You have made me wait too long, baroness; my time has now expired, and I must withdraw. I suppose you will accompany me, Prince Lichtenstein?"

"Yes, I shall accompany you," said the prince, "for unfortunately my time has also expired, and I must go."

"Oh, no," exclaimed the baroness, smiling, "you must stay here, prince.

I dare not prevent the prebendary from attending to his important affairs, but you, prince, have no such pretext for leaving me; I therefore order you to remain and to tell me all about yesterday's concert at the imperial palace."

"I regret exceedingly that I am unable to obey your orders," said the prince, mournfully. "But I must go. You just said, dear lady, that an important duty had kept you away from home; well, it is an important duty that calls me away from here; hence I cannot stay. Farewell, and permit me to kiss your hand before leaving you."

She gave him her hand, which was as cold as ice and trembled violently when he took it. He pressed his glowing lips upon this hand and looked up to her. Their eyes met in a last, tender glance; the prince then rose and turned toward the prebendary, who was conversing with Baron Arnstein in a low and excited tone.

"Come, sir, let us go," he said, impetuously, and walked toward the door.

"Yes, let us go," repeated the prebendary, and bowing profoundly to the baroness, he turned around and followed the prince.

f.a.n.n.y, who was evidently a prey to the most excruciating anguish, followed them with her distended, terrified eyes. When the door closed behind them, she hastily laid her hand on her husband's shoulder, and looked at him with an air of unutterable terror.

"They will fight a duel?" she asked.

"I am afraid so," said the baron, gloomily.

The baroness uttered a shriek, and after tottering back a few steps, she fell senseless to the floor. Early on the following morning, four men with grave faces and gloomy eyes stood in the thicket of a forest not far from Vienna.

Two of them were just about divesting themselves of their heavy coats, embroidered with gold, in order to meet in mortal combat, their bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s only protected by their fine cambric shirts. These two men were Prince Charles von Lichtenstein and the prebendary, Baron Weichs.

The other two gentlemen were engaged in loading the pistols and counting off the steps; they were Baron Arnstein and Count Palfy, the seconds of the two duellists. When they had performed this mournful task, they approached the two adversaries in order to make a last effort to bring about a reconciliation.

"I implore you in my own name," whispered Baron Arnstein in the ear of the Prince von Lichtenstein--"I implore you in the name of my wife, if a reconciliation should be possible, accept it, and avoid by all means so deplorable an event. Remember that the honor of a lady is compromised so easily and irretrievably, and that my wife would never forgive herself if she should become, perhaps, the innocent cause of your death."

"n.o.body will find out that we fight a duel for her sake," said the prince. "My honor requires me to give that impertinent fellow a well-deserved lesson, and he shall have it!"

Count Palfy, the prebendary's second, approached them. "If your highness should be willing to ask Baron Weichs to excuse your conduct on yesterday, the baron would be ready to accept your apology and to withdraw his challenge."

"I have no apology to offer," exclaimed the prince, loudly, "and I am unwilling to prevent the duel from taking its course. I told the prebendary that I disliked his nose, and that I wished to amputate its impertinent tip. Well, I am now here to perform this operation, and if you please, let us at once proceed to business."

"Yes, let us do so," shouted the prebendary. "Give us the pistols, gentlemen, and then the signal. When you clap for the third time, we shall shoot simultaneously. Pray for your poor soul, Prince von Lichtenstein, for I am a dead shot at one hundred yards, and our distance will only be twenty paces."

The prince made no reply, but took the pistol which his second handed to him. "If I should fall," he whispered to him, "take my last greetings to your wife, and tell her that I died with her name on my lips!"

"If I should fall," said the prebendary to his second, in an undertone, but loud enough for his opponent to hear every word he said, "tell the dear city of Vienna and my friends that I have fought a duel with Prince Lichtenstein because he was my rival with the beautiful Baroness Arnstein, and that I have died with the conviction that he was the lover of the fair lady."

A pause ensued. The seconds conducted the two gentlemen to their designated places and then stood back, in order to give the fatal signals.

When they clapped for the first time, the two duellists raised the hand with the pistol, fixing their angry and threatening eyes on each other.

Then followed the second, the third signal.

Two shots were fired at the same time.

The prebendary stood firmly and calmly where he had discharged his weapon, the same defiant smile playing on his lips, and the same threatening expression beaming in his eyes.

Prince Charles von Lichtenstein lay on the ground, reddening the earth with the blood which was rushing from his breast. When Baron Arnstein bent over him, he raised his eyes with a last look toward him. "Take her my last love-greetings," he breathed, in a scarcely audible voice. "Tell her that I--"

His voice gave way, and with the last awful death-rattle a stream of blood poured from his mouth.

"Hasten to save yourself," shouted Count Palfy to the prebendary, who had been looking at the dying man from his stand-point with cold, inquisitive glances. "Flee, for you have killed the prince; he has already ceased to breathe. Flee! In the shrubbery below you will find my carriage, which will convey you rapidly to the next post-station."

"He is dead and I am alive!" said the prebendary, quietly. "It would not have been worth while to die for the sake of a woman because she has got another lover. It is much wiser in such cases to kill the rival, and thus to remove the obstacle separating us from the woman. But I shall not escape; on the contrary, I shall go to the emperor myself, and inform him of what has occurred here. We are living in times of war and carnage, and a soul more or less is, therefore, of no great importance.

Inasmuch as the emperor constantly sends hundreds of thousands of his innocent and harmless subjects to fight duels with enemies of whom they do not even know why they are their enemies, he will deem it but a matter of course that two of his subjects, who know very well why they are enemies, should fight a duel, and hence I am sure that his majesty will forgive me. Brave and intrepid men are not sent to the fortress. I shall not flee!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

THE LEGACY.

Three days had pa.s.sed since that unfortunate event. Early on this, the third day, the corpse of the prince had been conveyed to the tomb of his family; a large and brilliant funeral procession had accompanied the coffin; even the carriages of the emperor, the archdukes, and high dignitaries of the state had partic.i.p.ated in the procession, and the Viennese, who for three days had spoken of nothing else but the tragic end of the young and handsome Prince Charles von Lichtenstein, derived some satisfaction from the conviction that they were sharing the sympathy of the imperial family for the deceased; thousands of them consequently joined the procession and accompanied the coffin.

But this manifestation of sympathy did not seem sufficient to the good-hearted and hot-blooded people. They did not merely wish to show their love for the deceased; they also wanted to manifest their hatred against the man who had slain him; and, on their return from the funeral, the people rushed to the Kohlmarkt and gathered with loud shouts and savage threats in front of the house of the prebendary, Baron Weichs.

It was reported that the prebendary, whom the people charged with having a.s.sa.s.sinated Prince Lichtenstein, was constantly in Vienna; and as this fact seemed to indicate that the emperor did not intend to punish his misdeed, the people wanted to take it upon themselves to chastise him, or to give him at least a proof of the public hatred.

"Smash the murderer's windows!" shouted the people, who were constantly reenforced by fresh crowds appearing on the Kohlmarkt. And, pa.s.sing from threats to deeds, hundreds and hundreds of busy hands tore up the pavement in order to hurl the stones at the house and windows of the prebendary. And the rattling of the windows, the loud noise of the stones glancing off on the walls, increased the rage and exasperation of the people. Soon they were no longer contented with doing this, but wished to get hold of the malefactor himself, and to punish him for his crime. The crowd rushed with wild clamor toward the closed street-door of the baron's house; one among them quickly climbed on the shoulders of another, in order to tear down the coat-of-arms of the prebendary, fixed over the entrance, and thundering applause greeted him when he had accomplished his purpose. The infuriated men then commenced striking at the door itself, which offered, however, to all attacks, a firm and unyielding resistance.

Suddenly a stern, imperious voice shouted: "Stop! Stand back! stand back!"

The people turned around in terror, and discovered only then that a carriage, surrounded and followed by twenty mounted policemen, was approaching from the alley on which the princ.i.p.al door of the prebendary's house was situated. This carriage, with its sinister escort, could make but slow headway through the dense ma.s.s of the people, who looked inquisitively through the lowered windows into the interior of the coach. Every one was able to recognize the three gentlemen who were seated in the carriage, and who were none other than the prebendary, Baron Weichs, and two of the best known and most feared high functionaries of the police. The baron's face was pale and gloomy, but the defiant, impudent smile was still playing on his thin lips. He looked, with an air of boundless contempt, at the crowd surging around his carriage and staring at him as if it wished to read in his pale features the sentence that had been p.r.o.nounced against him.

"How inquisitive is the populace!" said the prebendary, disdainfully.

"They are so anxious to find out whether I am now being conveyed to the place of execution, which would be a most welcome spectacle for them.

You ought to have mercy on this amiable rabble, gentlemen, and inform them of the evil tidings that I have unfortunately not been sentenced to be hanged on the gallows, nor to be broken on the wheel, but only to be imprisoned in a fortress for ten years, which I shall pa.s.s at the beautiful citadel of Komorn."

The two officers only replied to him by silently nodding, and the carriage pa.s.sed on. But some compa.s.sionate and talkative police agent had informed the people that the emperor had sentenced the prebendary, Baron Weichs, to ten years' imprisonment in a fortress, and that he was at this moment on his way to Komorn. The people received this intelligence with jubilant shouts, and dispersed through the city in order to inform their friends and acquaintances of the welcome news, and then to go home, well satisfied with the day's amus.e.m.e.nts and diversions.

And the waves of life closed over the lamentable event, and carried it down into the abyss of oblivion. A few days pa.s.sed by, and another occurrence caused the colloquies concerning the duel of Prince Lichtenstein and what had brought it about to cease, as some new subject of conversation took its place.

One heart alone did not console itself so rapidly; one soul alone bewailed him on comfortless days and restless nights, and paid to him the tribute of tears and sighs. Since that last meeting with the prince, f.a.n.n.y Arnstein had not left her cabinet again; its doors had been closed against everybody, and she had wept and sighed there during these three days, without taking a morsel of food.

Vainly had her husband often come to her door in order to implore her to open it at last, and to take some nourishment. f.a.n.n.y had never answered him; and if he had not, constantly and stealthily returning to her door at night, heard her low sobs and half-loud wailing, he would have believed that grief had killed her, and that love had intended to unite her in heaven with him to whom her heart belonged, as they had been so hopelessly separated on earth.

To-day, after the prince's funeral, the baron again entered the reception-room adjoining his wife's cabinet, but this time he did not come alone. A lady, whose face was covered with a large black veil, accompanied him, and walked at his side to the constantly closed door.

The baron knocked at this door, and begged his wife, in words of heart-felt sympathy, to open it to him.