Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a
little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.
The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.
'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your
heart; God speaks in it!'
With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn
benediction.
'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I
shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father
calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but
make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be
alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'
'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent
misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though
it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'
'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you
are happy yourself?'
'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but--but--yes, I am happy; I hope that
Bela knows.'
The Princess kissed her once again.
'Ah! he loves you so well.'
'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'
'I did for the best.'
'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he
cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'
'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,
whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,
Wanda; you were very harsh.'
'I know it. I will atone to him.'
The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'
'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.
'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of
unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that
their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!
If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so
monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing
but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her
hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she
would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may
have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would
have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with
the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of
course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church----But her
faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too
many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the
cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose
religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'
Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.
'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank
you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'
The Princess smiled.
'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly
rest, perhaps too willingly. But you--you will have no eyes for any
other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'
'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite
and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life
shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the
uttermost gratitude.'
'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly
on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that
she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman
to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will
comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force
her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will
leave you free as air--for she is not made of that poor stuff which
would enslave what it loves--she would not soon forgive too great abuse
of freedom. I mean if you were ever--ever unfaithful----
'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there
another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be
dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'
'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.
'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at
least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'
'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness
in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will
be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor
steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast
in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!
(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all
unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain
that human love can spare her.'
'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the
Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently
bent.
When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their
midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of
praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling
slowly on a lonely shore.
He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;
faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the
fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart
swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight
of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years
he also praised God.
No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose
refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the
glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour
would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing
except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks
rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,
he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip
of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were
rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night
were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched
broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely
and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.
He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it
represented and symbolised that he thought now.
It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of
wealth and lands.
'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he
thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed
to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like
our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.
He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of
Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.
Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement
the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the
mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras
had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her
intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to
honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula
of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters
they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though
it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.
All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;
a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to
Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain
past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,
Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his
ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service
could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,
the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her
cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could
bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.
'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.
'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less
irritation.
'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself
born in exile.'
'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!
'And there have been stories----'
'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;
the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'
'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in
_l'escrime!_'
'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to
say it.'
'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society
he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been
indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that
of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life _dans le
milieu parisien_; what more would you have me say?'
'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly
pressed his suit on Wanda.'
'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood
royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'
'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near
'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which
blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far
afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your
duty to say it.'
'He is a gambler.'
'He has renounced gambling.'
'He is a duellist.'
'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual
phlebotomy.'
'He has been the lover of many women.'
'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'
'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'
'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of
Dagobert.
'He has nothing but a _pignon sur rue_ in Paris, and a league or two of
rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough
by cards and speculation to be for three years the _amant en titre_ of
Cochonette.'
Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.
'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,
not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'
'But you have so much influence with her.'
'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in
the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,
but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it
to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'
'He is _gentilhomme de race_, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the
Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.
'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess
Ottilie.
'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a
difficult position--an invidious one.'
'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position
which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and
I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you
who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere
absence of money.'
'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'
'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'
'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'
'I should be were I forty years younger.'
The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure
to congratulate them both.
'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only
remember that he is a Parsifal _doublé_ by a de Morny.'
Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than
the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of
the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.
De Morny!--a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The
comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!
She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or
remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had
so much of the '_éternel féminin_' in her that she was only the more
resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and
exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was
natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All
the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those
who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances
produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as
Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again
Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had
no power of persuasion.
The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more
graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as
might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were
present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that
he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The
sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,
whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of
many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had
they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her
hand.
'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of
this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of
birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere
difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or
the inches of one's stature.'
The Princess shook her head.
'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he
is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always
be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at
large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'
'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what
matters the opinion of others?'
'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt
those motives?'
Wanda did not reply.
'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has
been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him
as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to
him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the
power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'
As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was
listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ
within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of
grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous
years to come.
When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:
'I want you to promise me one thing.'
'I promise you all things. What is this one?'
'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those
great fortunes which form the _acte d'accusation_ of socialists against
society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of
Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It
is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed
by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious
barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one
of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!--Promise me that
you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may
enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'
He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to
speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still
remained silent.
'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is
too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against
me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a
few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too
much!'
He stooped and kissed her hand.
'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with
passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that
I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be
right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away
from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'
A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her
hands as he held them clasped in his.
'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it
will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.
Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,
so much it aroused of remorse.
Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling
flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded
consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save
this one fact--she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life
and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with
her, her whole existence surrendered to him.
For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering
him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct
offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred
to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable
appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the
Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it
had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious
feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.
It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.
'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad
for him to bear an Austrian name.'
'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.
'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she
was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and
a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie
in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the
years to come.
Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to
enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course
of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;
she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her
possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince
Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine
sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and
authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.
Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she
chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property
to prevent her availing herself of the law.
Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every
one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'
said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the
dangers of a rein too loose.'
'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,
marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,
tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of
action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'
'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.
'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good
humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him
to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth
shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable
of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be
justified.'
'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the
Princess.
'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.
'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.
'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,
'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'
'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;
'surely that is great waste sometimes?'
'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You
forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she
would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'
'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'
answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,
had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'
That would have been better than to an adventurer.'
'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest
aristocracies of the world, if poor.'
'_Ce que femme veut_,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the
Church had been worsted by women.
The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the
marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any
possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,
and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of
action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the
deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,
as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud
to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your
hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he
will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always
will. If not--if not--well, he must go!'
One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment
emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She
spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He
looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush
that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow
tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.
She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of
the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before
him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.
'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you
to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of
Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their
feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been
lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the
reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary
passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'
'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with
those roses.'
'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced
flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.
It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'
'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your
coronet, to which I can add none!'
But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique
blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their
sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time
she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.
'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on
that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you
Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I
have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will
confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very
proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title
from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not
have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser
and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of
Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'
He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood
gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For
the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite
softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:
'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since
we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less
is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the
fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for
ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a
greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my
sake!'
'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony
passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate
self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,
he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and
magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled
to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed
her hands against his heavily-beating heart.
'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.
'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve
your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal
of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught
else?'
'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'
'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues--No.'
'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she
insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at
all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become
you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona
itself.'
'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want
you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,
it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But
liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in
your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the
Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'
'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you
wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I
will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues--well, we will
not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions
for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your
children.'
She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one
of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which
were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.
She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him
lightly on the shoulder with its blade.
'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead
with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the
roses and held it to his lips.
'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his
face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the
moment seemed to call for in him.
'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'
he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!
Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy
you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and
your----'
'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and
for the first time kissed him.
What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these
cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at
her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from
Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.
'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your
happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your
crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no
benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may
all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have
seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in
your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me
for any service--which it is most unlikely you ever will do--I entreat
you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or
more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'
The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to
Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had
loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected
to be present at her marriage.
In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court
Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that
a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of
the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.
Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.
At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken
up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and
glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and
Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron
Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.
'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.
It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the
parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.