FRÄULEIN ANNE
When the Elector returned to the palace occupied by the Saxon Court
during this stay in Leipsic, he was still engaged in considering the
wisdom of this marriage of his ward.
He had striven for it during three years, and he had accomplished it in
spite of King Philip, in spite of the Landgrave of Hesse, but now, on
the eve of success, his heart misgave him.
True, there was no possible objection to the marriage from any worldly
point of view. Anne of Saxony could not hope for any better match, and
so the Elector had always argued. There remained also his strong
personal reasons for getting the girl—whose sex alone prevented her
from filling his place—out of the country with a husband whose
interests did not lie in Germany. But there was always the one fact
that troubled the conscience and vexed the repose of Augustus—the fact
that had caused the old Landgrave Philip to withhold his consent and
only bestow a very chary blessing on his granddaughter—she was to
marry a Roman Catholic Prince, a friend of Philip, a one-time
favourite of Charles; and the bridegroom's assurances that she should
be allowed to practise according to the Augsburg Confession were
extremely vague and unsatisfactory—indeed, he had stated that the
Lutheran Princess would be expected to 'live Catholicly' when she took
up her residence in the dominions of Philip of Spain.
However, it was a fine marriage, a brilliant marriage, a marriage
eminently convenient to the Elector, and he endeavoured to stifle these
late doubts and scruples.
As soon as he reached the palace he went in search of his niece that he
might at once present her with the protective amulet, which was to
preserve her from the snares and lures of Popery.
The rooms were overcrowded with people; everywhere was confusion and
excitement. No one, from the scullions to the Electress, talked of
anything but the wedding; preparations for receiving the guests, the
coming and going of armourers, tailors, cooks, confectioners, filled the
air with noise and bustle; the stewards and heralds were overwhelmed
with work; loud disputes as to the arrangements for the feasts and
tourneys echoed in the corridors; the pages and valets were too excited
to be useful; and the women did nothing but chatter about clothes.
As the Elector made his way through the confusion and thought of the
cost of his share in all this elaborate merry-making, he, too, began to
be sick of this wedding, to wish it well over and his niece safely in
the Netherlands.
He found the Lady Anne in the dark, lofty, antechamber of her
apartments. Here the confusion of the palace had culminated, the whole
room was strewn with dresses, hats, cloaks, and bales of stuff;
waiting-women, serving-women, and tailors were running here and there
displaying, explaining, and arranging their wares.
Near the tall, pointed Gothic window stood a structure of polished wood
the shape of a gallows, and on this elegant gibbet hung several
brilliantly dressed dolls, swinging by their necks like so many gay
little corpses.
They were the models showing the bride the completed splendours of some
of her bridal gowns, and she stood near them, pulling them out on their
strings and examining them; the strong sunlight was over her and them
and lying in a pool of gold at her feet.
Anne of Saxony, the heroine of this important and long-debated marriage,
whose name was now in every one's mouth, and whose approaching union to
a Papist noble had roused the compassionate chivalry of others beside
Vanderlinden's two apprentices, was now sixteen years of age. Being the
sole child of the great Elector Maurice, she would, if a boy, have been
in the place her uncle now held. Connected by her mother's side with the
Hesses, she was of the finest blood in Germany, and numbered most of the
great families among her kinsmen; and her early orphanage, her high
rank, the glory of her father's fame, and this famous marriage project
had made of her a heroine in the eyes of Lutheran Germany.
The maiden who stood turning over the dressmaker's dolls looked,
however, far from a heroine of any manner of romance.
She was of medium height, and her whole body was twisted, crooked in
shoulder and hip; when she walked she halted in the fashion known in her
country as the devil's limp; her figure was thin, undeveloped; her face
pale, her features commonplace, save for the mouth, which was abnormally
wide and loose though closed with a certain firmness; her eyes were
light, large, and expressive; her hair dull, between brown and flaxen,
and growing in a straight ugly fashion from her high brows.
In her whole person there was not one charm nor grace, ill-health had
robbed her even of the bloom of her early youth, nor did her manners or
her expression compensate for her defects; her gestures were awkward and
ungraceful, her voice shrill, and her look conveyed the utmost arrogance
and unbridled temper.
She was indeed both so unattractive and so unamiable, that the Elector
had used her defects with the Landgrave as an argument to induce him to
consent to her marriage.
"There will not be too many suitors for one crooked in mind and body,"
he had said, and, looking at her now as she stood eagerly snatching at
the swinging dolls, his scruples and regrets at having found her a
Papist husband banished in satisfaction at having found her any husband
at all.
"Gracious uncle," said Anne, giving him a quick glance, "I am very much
occupied."
Augustus took no notice of this rebuke, he was used to her curtness. She
considered herself his superior, and her haughtiness, her tempers, and
her unreasonableness had often caused the Electress to beseech her
husband to hasten, at any cost, the marriage which would relieve them of
her.
"I have brought you the jewel which Vanderlinden made for you," he said,
and held out the little box-wood case.
Anne turned from the dolls and came forward with some interest. She wore
a long gown of tawny coloured cloth, and a white lawn wimple; the
heaviness of her attire added to her years but hardly disguised her
deformity.
She took the jewel-case with hands that trembled a little, her lips were
dry, her eyes bright, in her cheeks an unusual flush showed; excitement
burnt her like a fever, her whole poor distorted body was quivering.
The Elector saw this, and a strange sort of pity for his brother's only
child touched him; after all she was but a girl, and this was three days
before her wedding.
"Dear niece," he said, putting his great hand gently on her crooked
shoulder, "may that amulet preserve your faith pure in the strange land
and keep you safe in body and spirit."
Anne laughed affectedly and gazed critically at the jewel in her palm.
"It is not very beautiful," she remarked.
"It is very potent, and I hope you will always wear it," replied her
uncle anxiously. "And every time you look at it, remember you were born
and bred in the Reformed Faith."
"As to that," said Anne, "His Highness himself said I was to read Amadis
de Gaul and play the lute and enjoy such diversions as were fitted to
one of my station, and not trouble my head about matters of religion."
Anne had often quoted this remark of her future husband, and the Elector
frowned to hear it again on her lips.
"The Prince spoke as a man to a child," he returned, "but you are no
longer a child and cannot reason as one. His Highness has promised to
respect your faith, and you must respect it also in heart and in spirit,
Anne."
The girl carelessly placed the amulet round her neck.
"Oh, I shall do very well, dear uncle," she replied. "I am quite content
to trust to His Highness."
"But it is you yourself who must keep the faith alive within you when in
the midst of idolaters," said the Lutheran Prince sternly.
"You speak like Grandfather Hesse!" cried the girl peevishly. "I believe
you regret my marriage already, but, as I wrote His Highness, God wills
it, and the Devil shall not hinder it!"
His frown deepened and a flush of anger mounted to his cheek.
"I shall regret it if you behave like a wilful child, dear niece."
"I have put on your amulet," returned Anne ungraciously. "What else
would you? And my serving-women wait——"
"I shall not keep you from them," interrupted the Elector, "but remember
that there are more serious matters than gowns and chains appertaining
to this marriage."
With that he turned away, for he saw that to argue further with the
bride was useless, since her natural pride and vanity had been augmented
past reason by the excitement and importance of her present position.
Anne was, indeed, almost beside herself. For three years she had been
bent on this marriage with all the passion of which she was capable. She
wanted her freedom, she wanted increased grandeur, she wanted the
enjoyments of the gay court of Brussels—of which she had heard so
much—and she believed herself violently enamoured of the gorgeous
cavalier whom she had seen once on the occasion of his visit to Dresden
and who was to be her husband.
She watched with pleasure the departure of her uncle, and impatiently
called the tailor who was responsible for the dolls. She had some fault
to find with each of them: one model had the skirt too long, in another
the colour was hideous, the gold lacing of a third did not please her.
These objections were taken at random, for she was far too overwrought
to consider or even notice the details of the beautiful little dresses.
When the man had bowed himself out with his small gallows full of
puppets, Anne sank into one of the deep chairs of blue-and-yellow
velvet; her back ached from standing, her head throbbed, her heavy gown
dragged at her shoulders, she had not slept for several nights and her
whole feeble body was fatigued, but she would spare neither herself nor
those who had to please her humour.
Gowns, petticoats, mantles, caps, hoods, gloves, shoes, jewels, every
ornament or trinket luxury could devise was brought before her for her
inspection. She had been most extravagant in her purchases, and it was
already said that when her debts and the feasts had been paid, there
would not be anything left of the hundred thousand thalers that formed
her dowry. Her thin, feverish fingers handled the brocades and velvets,
the silks and lawns, the girdles and chains with a kind of eager energy,
as if these things were so many weapons she was piling up against fate.
And so unconsciously she regarded them, she meant to be the grandest
lady at the Court of the Regent; her whole small soul was centred on
this childish ambition and had no room for any other emotion save a
fierce, jealous, but inchoate desire that her brilliant husband should
love her. She thought all this bravery would help her accomplish both
ends, and therefore devoted all her passionate interest to these
splendours of silvered silk, Venetian velvet, cloaks of miniver and red
fox, skirts of many coloured brocade, doeskin fringed gloves and shoes
sewn with gold thread.
At last her weakness could endure no more; with an hysteric petulance
that bordered on tears she dismissed every one, and, taking the arm of
her favourite waiting-woman, she limped through the bowing ranks of
tailors, jewellers, and sewing-maids into her inner and private chamber.
There she dropped into the cushion-piled chair near the window that
stood open on the sunshine, and so sat, looking huddled and dwarfish,
her right hand, sparkling with the hard brilliance of an emerald ring,
supporting her aching head, her feet resting on a great footstool, her
knees drawn up.
The waiting-woman stood at the end of the huge crimson-curtained bed,
waiting the pleasure of her mistress.
She was a tall girl, subdued, quiet, patient—qualities to which she
owned the dangerous favour of capricious Anne's preference. Her father
had served under the Elector Maurice, but returning to his native city,
Ghent in the Netherlands, he had been executed as a heretic under the
rule of the late Regent, and his entire property confiscated. His wife
had fled with her child to the Saxon Court, where she had soon after
died of her miseries, leaving her daughter under the protection of the
Electress.
Such was the short, sad experience of Rénèe le Meung, which had left her
reliant, reserved, self-effacing, humble, but passionately attached to
the faith for which her parents and her happiness had been sacrificed,
and of an earnest gravity beyond her years.
She endured the whims and caprices, the tempers and tyrannies of Anne
with more than the usual submission of the dependant, and her lack of
vanity and her indifference made her a foil that was precious to the
arrogance of her mistress.
Rénèe was beautiful with the opulent beauty of her country, but she
ignored it, and she had no lover, so Anne was content to ignore it too.
Besides, her own vanity was too great for her to be aware how her own
unattractiveness was heightened by the loveliness of the graceful
Fleming, with her crimson-brown hair and eyes, her rose complexion, her
white skin, and exact features, though she was so plain in her dress, so
grave in her manner, so always and completely in the background that
many besides her mistress might have discounted this beauty that lacked
all flash and allure.
As she stood now, outwardly patiently at attention, her thoughts were
far away, returning, as always, to the dear past when she had had a home
and those who loved her, the times when she had heard her father laugh,
her mother sing, when she had herself been full of life and hope and all
pleasantness; her present situation, that of an exile employed by
charity, she forgot—she seemed for a moment free, as she had once been
behind the loved walls of Ghent——
"Rénèe," said Anne, opening her eyes, "the Prince wrote to know what my
colours were. When he enters Leipsic he will have a thousand knights and
gentlemen with him—is it not magnificent?"
The waiting-woman closed her thoughts.
"Indeed, Your Grace is very fortunate," she answered quietly, taking up
her wearisome part of confidante. She endured Anne's futile vanities not
so much from good humour as from sheer indifference; her disinterest in
her present life was her surest buckler against what she had to endure.
"He is indeed a very splendid cavalier," said Anne, with vast
satisfaction, "and he made me such fine speeches and compliments. I wish
you had seen him when he came to Dresden, but you will soon see him now.
And I am higher born than he, for he is only a Count in Germany. Yet he
is a sovereign Prince too, and I shall give way to no one at the Court
of Brussels. Is it not all very pleasant?"
So the girl chattered on in her shrill, high voice, and the
waiting-woman dutifully assented to all she said; but Rénèe's calm,
Rénèe's self-effacement, usually so grateful to Anne, to-day offended
her. She wanted a more human interest shown in her affairs, some
excitement, some envy, some jealousy.
"You talk as if you were sick!" she cried fretfully. "Do you not care at
all about my wedding?"
Rénèe flushed at the rare personal address; it was seldom Anne spoke to
her as to another human being.
"Of course I care," she answered gravely, "but how can I comment on
matters so much above me?"
Anne was mollified.
"Would you not like a husband, rich and handsome?" she asked, trying to
provoke the flattery of the other's envy.
"I?" asked Rénèe, in genuine surprise. "Who will ever marry me?"
Anne smiled.
"Perhaps some day I shall find some one for you. How old are you?"
"Twenty-five, Your Grace."
"That is not very young! Nearly ten years older than I am! Is it not
very fine to be married at sixteen? Would you not like to be married
soon?"
"I would never marry any but a Lutheran," replied Rénèe calmly.
Anne flushed, and her bright eyes flashed with amazing fury.
"Ah! You, too, dare to blame me because the Prince is a Papist!" she
exclaimed.
"Nay," said Rénèe gently. "I know there are reasons of State."
"Reasons of State?" shrieked Anne. "I love him and he loves me! You are
jealous because you will never have such a knight!"
"Never, truly," replied the waiting-woman with undiminished sweetness.
"It is only great ladies like Your Grace who can wed with such as the
Prince of Orange."
"You would not marry save with a Lutheran," said Anne. "Then you would
not marry the Prince?"
"That is a jest—to suppose such a thing."
"Ay, but would you?" insisted Anne.
Rénèe's native courage and honesty flashed through her long reserve, her
self-effacement.
"I would not wed with a Papist were he the Emperor himself," she replied
firmly.
"You proud hard creature!" cried Anne, vexed to tears. "But it is all a
lie—a jealous lie, you would wed the first Papist who asked you."
Rénèe was silent.
"Wait until you see the Prince," insisted Anne childishly. "There is no
one like him—no one."
"So I have always heard," said Rénèe sincerely.
"Did you ever see his first wife?" asked Anne abruptly. "Was she pretty?
Did he care for her?"
"I never saw the first Princess, Your Grace. They were very young when
they married, and she died very soon."
"Well, I am sure he has forgotten her. If you are so afraid of the
Papists and hate them so, why do you come with me to Brussels?" she
added maliciously.
The bitter truth, "I must go where I can earn my bread," rose to Rénèe's
lips, but she suppressed it and merely replied, "I am not afraid of any
one corrupting my faith, Your Grace, and I shall be with a Protestant
mistress."
"I suppose you would rather stay here," said Anne, "if you could find
some Lutheran to marry, but you are not very young and you have red
hair, therefore you must make the best of it and come to Brussels."
Rénèe was absolutely unmoved by her mistress's rudeness; she hardly
heard the words.
"Have you any relations in Brussels?" asked Anne.
"No," replied the waiting-woman, "nor any in the Netherlands. I think—we
are all scattered—wandering, or still for ever in the grave;" then
quickly changing a subject on which she had been betrayed into speaking
with feeling, she asked, "Has His Grace's alchemist's experiment
succeeded? It was to be known whether or no this week."
"The Elector said nothing to me of it," replied Anne fretfully. "He gave
me a silly little jewel Vanderlinden made. Of course the experiment has
failed."
"Poor alchemist!" said Rénèe. A vast pity for all endeavour, all
disappointment, was now her strongest feeling; the grief of others had
more power to move her than her own distress.
Anne began to moan that her head was aching beyond bearing; she indeed
looked ill. There was something tragic in her frailty and her
excitement, her deformity and her vanity.
Rénèe went to fetch the sweet wine and comfits for which she called and
which were her usual medicine; as always, she drank greedily and soon
fell heavily asleep.
The waiting-woman put back the engraved silver plate and tankard on the
black sideboard, and crept softly to the window where the August sun
might fall on her face.
She turned her full gentle eyes with a great pity on the wretched little
figure of her mistress, whose thin hands were nervously twitching, even
in her sleep.
What could this marriage promise?—the groom one of King Philip's
courtiers, worldly, handsome, able; the bride this miserable, fretful,
ignorant child, mad with vanity, sick with excitement, diseased in body,
unbalanced in mind. Rénèe, who knew Anne as few did, was almost sorry
for the Papist Prince who could not know her at all.
"And for such a union they rejoice and dance and hold their jousts!"
thought the waiting-woman wearily.
She gazed out into the sunny air, it was near late afternoon and very
peaceful.
Rénèe did not see the towers of Leipsic; her mind spread the world
before her like a great map painted with bright pictures—great tyrants
slaughtering, burning, oppressing; poor people flying homeless, dying
unnoticed—everywhere wrong, violence, cruelty—and no one to rise against
it, no one to defy such a man as King Philip.
Every one was for himself, his private gain; even the Protestant Princes
of Germany who had stood for the faith of Martin Luther, they put their
own convenience first, as in this marriage which the Elector had urged
forward for his personal interest. There was a Protestant monarch on the
throne of England, but she remained friendly with Catholic potentates
and raised no finger to help those of her faith so horribly persecuted.
"Always policy, ambition, self-seeking," thought Rénèe wearily. "Is
there not _one_ in all the world would stand for his God, his country
only? Not _one_ to be the champion of liberty of faith?"
Not one, she believed; they kept the gaudy show of chivalry in the
tourneys and jousts, but the spirit of it was long since lost. There
were no more knights, there was no one to stand forward for the weak and
the miserable, the humble and the helpless; the Reformed Faith had
produced saints and martyrs but not yet a champion or a protector.
"They all bow to circumstance, these great princes and nobles," thought
Rénèe; "there is not one of them who would endanger the tenth part of
his possessions for the cause of the poor Protestants, for liberty, for
country—not one."
She leant her sick head against the mullions and closed her eyes; life
seemed so long, so futile, the world so wrong, so ugly.
"There _have_ been heroes," the eternal romance of youth whispered in
her heart. "Why should not one come now when he is so needed, ah, so
sorely needed?"
She opened her eyes on the sun, on the hot, silent city with the
languorous air of festival and holiday.
"If I ever met such an one, or knew of him, how I would worship him!"
Love she never thought of; she did not believe that it was possible for
her to ever love, but she knew that she would gladly die for one who
would champion her persecuted faith, her oppressed country—very gladly
die, or live, in happy abnegation in his service.
The clock struck six; the tire-women entered to rouse Anne and dress her
for supper; it was René's one time of freedom. She hastened away before
her mistress's peevish caprice should have decided to detain her, and
went forth into the clean, bright streets.