See how her eyes flash, how her heart beats--how beautiful she is in the
warm glow of excitement, this beautiful Anna Leopoldowna.
The door opens, and a smiling young maiden looks in with many a nod of
her little head.
“Ah, is it you, my Julia?” calls the princess, opening her arms to press
the young girl to her heart. “Come, I will kiss you, and imagine it is
he who receives the kiss! Ah, what would this poor Anna Leopoldowna
be if deprived of her dear friend, Julia von Mengden?” And drawing her
favorite down into her lap, she continued: “Now relate to me, Julia.
Set your tongue in motion, that I may hear one of your very pleasantest
stories. That will divert me, and cause the long hours before his coming
to pass more quickly.”
Julia von Mengden roguishly shook her beautifully curling locks with
a comic earnestness, and, very aptly and unmistakably imitating the
somewhat hoarse and nasal voice of Prince Ulrich, said:
“Your grace forgets that you are regent, and have to hold the reins of
government in the name of the illustrious imperial squaller, your son,
since his imperial grace still remains in his swaddling-clothes, and
has much less to do with state affairs than with many other little
occupations!”
Anna Leopoldowna, breaking out in joyous laughter, exultingly clapped
her little hands, which were sparkling with brilliants.
“This is superb,” said she. “You play the part of my very worthy husband
to perfection. It is as if one saw and heard him. Ah, I would that he
resembled you a little, as he would then be less insupportable, and it
would be somewhat easier to endure him.”
Julia von Mengden, making no answer to this remark, continued with her
nasal voice and comic pathos:
“Your grace, this is not the time to analyze our diverting little
domestic dissensions, and occupy ourselves with the quiet joys of our
happy union! Your grace is, above all things, regent, and must give
your attention to state affairs. Without are standing three most worthy,
corpulent, tobacco-scented ambassadors, who desire an audience. Your
grace is, above all things, regent, and must receive them.”
“Must!” exclaimed Anna, suddenly contracting her brows. “We will first
hear what they desire of us.”
“The first is the envoy of the great Persian conqueror,
Thamas-Kouli-Khan, who comes to lay at your feet the magnificent
presents of his master.”
“Bah! they are presents for the young Emperor Ivan. He may, therefore,
be conducted to the cradle of my son, and there display his presents. It
does not interest me.”
“The second is a messenger from our camp. He brings news of a great
victory obtained by one of your brave generals over the Swedes!”
“But what does that concern me?” angrily cried the regent. “Let them
conquer or be defeated, it is all the same to me. That concerns my
husband the generalissimo! Let me be spared the sight of the warlike and
blood-dripping messenger!”
“The third is the ambassador of the wavering and shaking young Austrian
Empress Maria Theresa. He comes, he says, upon a secret mission, and
pretends to have discovered a sort of conspiracy that is hatching
against you.”
“Let him go with his discovery to Golopkin, our minister of the
interior. That is his business!”
“Your grace is, above all things, regent, and should remember--”
“Nothing--I will remember nothing!” exclaimed Anna Leopoldowna,
interrupting her favorite. “I will not be annoyed, that is all.”
“Well, thank God!” now cried Julia von Mengden, in her natural
tone--“thank God, that such is your determination, princess! you are,
then, in earnest, and I am to send these three amiable persons to the
devil, or, what is just the same, to your husband?”
“That is my meaning.”
“And this is beautiful in you,” continued Julia, cowering down before
her mistress. “These eternal, tiresome and intolerable state affairs
would make your face prematurely old and wrinkled, my dear princess. Ah,
there is nothing more tedious than governing. I am heartily sick of it!
At first I was amused when we two sat together and settled who should
be sent to prison and who should be pardoned; whom we should make counts
and princes, or degrade to the ranks as common soldiers. But all that
pleased only for a short time; now it is annoying, and why should we
take upon ourselves this trouble? Have we not the power to act and live
according to our own good pleasure? Bah! that is the least compensation
you should receive for allowing these horrid Russians the privilege of
calling you their regent and mistress!”
“But, my little chatterer, you forget the three envoys who are waiting
without,” said Anna, with a smile.
“Ah, that is true! I must first send those wig-blocks away!” said Anna,
tenderly looking after her departing favorite. “She is, indeed, my good
genius, who drives away the cares from my poor brain.”
“So, it is done!” cried Julia, quickly returning to the room. “I
have sent the gentlemen away. To the Persian envoy I said: ‘Go to our
emperor, Ivan. He feeds upon brilliants, and, as he has had no breakfast
this morning, his appetite will be good. Go, therefore, and give him
your diamonds for breakfast. Anna Leopoldowna wants them not; she is
already satiated with them!’--To the second I said: ‘Go and announce
your glorious victory to our sublime generalissimo. He is at his toilet,
and as he every morning touches his noble cheeks with rouge, your new
paint, prepared from the purple blood of the enemy, will doubtless be
very welcome to him!’--‘And as to what concerns your secret mission and
your discovered conspiracy,’ said I to the Austrian ambassador, ‘I
am sorry that you cannot here give birth to the dear children of your
inventive head; go with them to our midwife, Minister Golopkin, and
hasten a little, for I see in your face that you are already in the
pangs of parturition!’”
“Well,” asked Anna Leopoldowna, loudly laughing, “what said their
worships to that?”
“What did they say? They said nothing! They were dumb and looked
astonished. They made exactly such eyes as I have seen made at home,
upon my father’s estate in Liefland, by the calves when the butcher
knocked them upon the head. But now,” continued Julia, nestling again at
the feet of her mistress, “now give me a token of your favor, and forget
for a while that you are regent. Let us chat a little like a couple of
real genuine women--that is, of our husbands and lovers. Oh, I have very
important news for you!”
“Well, speak quickly,” said Anna, with eagerness. “What have you to tell
me?”
Julia assumed a very serious and important countenance. “The first and
most important piece of news is, that your husband, Prince Ulrich of
Brunswick, is very jealous of me, and yet of one other!”
“Bah!” said Anna, contemptuously, “let him be jealous. I do not trouble
myself about it, and shall always do as I please.”
“No, no, that will not do,” seriously responded Julia. “It is so
tiresome to always hear the wrangling and growling of a jealous husband!
I tell your grace that I must have quiet in his presence; I can no
longer bear his grim looks and his constant anger and abuse. You must
soothe him, Princess Anna, or I will run away from this horrible court,
where a poor maiden is not allowed to have her friend and mistress, the
charming Princess Anna Leopoldowna, with all her heart and soul!”
The regent’s eyes filled with tears. “My Julia,” she tremulously said,
“can you seriously think of leaving me? See you not that I should be
thereby rendered very solitary and miserable?”
And, raising up her favorite into her arms, she kissed her.
Julia’s bright eyes also filled with tears. “Think you, then, princess,
that I could ever leave, ever be separated from you?” she tenderly
asked. “No, my Princess Anna has such entire possession of my heart,
that it has no room for any other feeling than the most unbounded love
and devotion to my dear, my adored princess. But for the very reason
that I love you, I cannot bear to have your husband fill the palace with
his jealous complaints, and thus publishing to St. Petersburg and all
the world your unfaithfulness and criminal intrigues. Oh, I tell you I
see through this generalissimo, I know all his plans and secret designs.
He would gladly be able to convict you of infidelity to him--then, with
the help of the army he commands, declare his criminal wife unfit for
the regency, and then make himself regent! He has a cunningly devised
plan, but which my superior cunning shall bring to naught! I will play
him a trick!--But no, I will tell you no more now! At the right time you
shall know all. Now, Princess Anna, now answer me one question. Do you,
then, so very much love this Count Lynar?”
The princess looked up with a dreamy smile. “Do I love him!” she then
murmured low. “Oh, my God, Thou knowest how truly, how glowingly my
heart clings to him. Thou knowest that of all the world I have never
loved any other man than him alone! And you, Julia, you who know every
emotion and palpitation of my heart, you yet ask me if I love him--when
he stood before me in all his proud manly beauty, with his conquering
glance, his heart-winning smile? Ah, my whole heart already then flew to
meet him. I revelled in the sight of him, I thought only of him, I spoke
to him in my thoughts, and my prayers, I loved only when I saw him; and
that happy, that never-to-be-forgotten day when he confessed his love,
when he lay at my feet and swore eternal truth to me--ah, why could I
not have died on that day? I was then _so_ happy!”
“Poor Princess Anna,” said Julia, sympathetically, “they soon grudged
you that happiness!”
“Yes,” continued Anna with a bitter smile, “yes, the virtuous Empress
Anna blushed in the arms of her lover, Biron, at this aberration of
her sold and coupled niece. She found it very revolting that the poor
sixteen-year-old Anna Leopoldowna dared to have a heart of her own and
to feel a real love. They must therefore rob her of the only happiness
Heaven had vouchsafed her. Consequently, they wrote to Warsaw, asking,
nay, commanding the recall of the ambassador, and Lynar was compelled to
leave me.”
“Ah, I well know how unhappy you were at that time,” said Julia,
pressing the hand of the princess to her bosom; “how you wept, how you
wrung your hands--”
“And how I nowhere found mercy or commiseration,” interposed Anna, with
bitterness, “neither on earth nor in heaven. I was and remained
deserted and solitary, and was compelled to marry this Prince Ulrich of
Brunswick, for whom I felt nothing but a chilling, mortal indifference.
But you must know, Julia, that when I stood with this man at the altar,
and was compelled to become his wife, I thought only of him I loved; I
vowed eternal love only to Lynar, and when the prince folded me in
his arms as his wife, then was my God gracious to me, and in a happy
deception it seemed to me that it was my lover who held me in his
arms--I thought only of him and breathed only his name, and loved
him, kissed him, and became his wife, although he was far, alas, so
immeasurably far from me! And when I felt a second self under my heart,
I then loved with redoubled warmth the distant one whom I had not seen
for years; and when Ivan was born, it seemed to me that the eyes of
my lover looked at me through his, and blessed my son whose spiritual
father he was! And, my child, what think you gave me the courage to
overthrow Biron and assume the regency? Ah, it was only that I might
have the power to recall Lynar to my side! I would and must be regent,
that I might demand the return of Lynar as ambassador from Warsaw. That
gave me courage and decision; that enabled me to overcome all timidity
and anxiety. I thought only of him, and when the end was attained, when
I was declared regent, the first exercise of my power was to recall
Lynar to Court. Julia, what a happy day was that when I saw him again!”
And the princess, wholly absorbed in her delightful reminiscences,
smilingly and silently reclined upon the cushions of the divan.
“Ah, it must be love that so thinks and feels,” thoughtfully observed
Julia. “I no longer ask you, Princess Anna, if you love the count, I
now know you do. But answer me yet one question. Have you confidence in
me--full, unlimited confidence? Will you never mistake, never doubt me?”
“Never!” said Anna Leopoldowna, confidently. “And if all the world
should tell me that Julia von Mengden is a traitress, I would
nevertheless firmly rely upon you, and reply to the whole world: ‘That
is false! Julia von Mengden is true and pure as gold. I shall always
love her.’”
Julia gratefully glanced up to the heavens, and her eyes filled with
tears.
“I thank you, princess,” she then said, with a happy smile. “I now have
courage for all. You shall now be enabled to love your Lynar without
fear or trembling, and your husband’s clouded brow and reproaching
tongue shall molest us no more. Confide in me and ask no questions. It
is all decided and arranged in my mind. But hark! do you hear nothing?”
Anna’s face was transfused with a purple glow, and her eyes flashed.
“It is my beloved,” said she. “Yes, it is he. I know his step!”
Julia smilingly opened the concealed door, and Count Lynar, with a cry
of joy, rushed to the feet of his beloved.
“At length!” he exclaimed, clasping her feet, and pressing them to his
bosom.
“Yes, at length!” murmured Anna, looking down upon him with a celestial
smile.
Julia stood at a distance, contemplating them with thoughtful glances.
“They should be happy,” she murmured low, and then asked aloud: “Count
Lynar, did you receive my letter?”
“I did receive it,” said the count, “and may God reward you for the
sacrifice you are so generously disposed to make for us! Anna, your
friend Julia is our good angel. To her we shall owe it if our happiness
is henceforth indestructible and indissoluble. Do you know the immense
sacrifice this young maiden proposes to make for us?”
“No, Princess Anna knows nothing, and shall know nothing of it,” said
Julia, with a grand air. “Princess Anna shall only know that I love her,
and am ready to give my life for her. And now,” she continued, with
her natural gayety, “forget me, ye happy lovers! Lull yourselves in
the sweet enjoyment of nameless ecstasies! I go to watch the spies, and
especially your husband, lest he break in upon you without notice!”
And Julia suddenly left the room, shutting the door upon Anna
Leopoldowna and her lover, the Polish Count Lynar.