“And now, to complete the ceremony,” said she, as soon as she could speak at all, “let me introduce the Court, represented to-day by myself. Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie. Two Ottilies as you will perceive, but easily explained, thus: Feu the Highest her Sérénissime’s gracious ducal grandmother being an Ottilie and godmother to us both—Mademoiselle Ottilie: the rest concerns you not. Well, Monsieur de la Faridondaine, Capitaine et Seigneur, etc., etc.,—charmed to have made your acquaintance. So far, so good. But ... these gentlemen? Surely also nobles in disguise. Will you not continue the ceremony?”
She waved a little sunburnt hand towards my immovable body-guard, and the full absurdity of my position struck me with the keenest sense of mortification.
I looked back at the three, biting my lips, and miserably uncertain how to conduct myself so as to save some shred of dignity. My ancient János had seen too many strange things during his forty years’ attendance on my great-uncle to betray the smallest surprise at the present singular situation; but out of both their handsome faces, set like bronze,—they had better not have moved a muscle otherwise or János would have known the reason why,—the eyes of my twin attendants roamed from me to the ladies, and from the ladies to me, with the most devouring curiosity. I tartly dismissed them all again to a distance, and then, turning to the mysterious Princess I begged to know, in my most courtlike manner if I might presume to lay my services at her feet for the time of her sojourn in this, my land.
With the same adorable yet dignified bashfulness that I had already noted in her, the lovely woman looked hesitatingly at her lady-in-waiting, which lively wench, not being troubled with timidity (as she had already sufficiently demonstrated), promptly took upon herself to answer me. But this time she so delightfully fell in with my own wishes that I was fain to forgive her all that had gone before.
“But certainly,” she exclaimed, “her Serene Highness will condescend to accept the services of M. de Jean Nigaud. It is not every day that brings forth such romantic encounters. Know, sir, that we are two damozels that have by the most extraordinary succession of fortunate accidents escaped from school. You wonder? By school, I mean the insupportable tedium, etiquette, and dulness of the Court of his most gracious and worshipful Serenity the father of her Highness. We came out this noon to make hay, and hay we will make. Or rather we shall sit on the hay, and you shall make a throne for the Princess, and a little tabouret for me, and then you may sit you down and entertain us ... but on the ground, and at a respectful distance, that none may say we do not observe proper forms and conventions, for all that we are holiday-making. And you shall explain to us how you, an Englishman, came to be master of Château des Fous, and masquerading in peasant’s attire. Is masquerading a condition of tenure? After which, her Serene Highness having only one fault, that being her angelic softness of heart, which is pushed to the degree of absolute weakness, she will permit me to narrate to you (as much as is good for you to know) how we came to be here at such a distance from our own country, and in such curious freedom—for her Highness quite sees that you are rapidly becoming ill with suppressed curiosity, and fears that you may otherwise burst with it on your way home to your great castle, or at least that the pressure on the brain may seriously affect its delicate balance—if indeed,” with a peal of her reckless childish laughter, “you are not already a lunatic, and those your keepers!”
This last piece of impudence might have proved even too much for my desire to cultivate an acquaintance so extraordinarily attractive to one of my turn of mind and so alluring by its mysteriousness, but that I happened to catch a glance from her Highness’s eyes even as the speaker finished her tirade, which glance, deprecating and at the same time full of a kindly and gentle interest, set my heart to beat in a curious fashion between pleasure and pain. I hastened therefore to obey the younger lady’s behests, and began to gather together enough of the sweet-smelling hay to form a throne for so noble and fair an occupant.
Whereupon the little creature herself—she seemed little by reason of her slenderness and childishness, but in truth she was as tall as her tall and beautiful mistress—fell to helping me with such right good-will, flashing upon me, as she flitted hither and thither, such altogether innocently mocking looks from her yellow-hazel eyes, that I should have been born with a deeper vanity, and a sourer temper, to have kept a grudge against her.
Once seated in our fragrant court, in the order laid down for us, the attendant, so soon as she had recovered breath sufficient, began to ply me with questions so multiplied, so searching, and so pointed, that she very soon extracted from me every detail she wished to know about myself, past and present.
But although, as from a chartered and privileged advocate, the sharp cross-questioning came from the Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie, it was to the soft dumb inquiry I read in the Princess Marie Ottilie’s eyes that were addressed my answers. And then those eyes and the listening beauty of that gracious face, made it hard for me to realise, as later reflection proved, that their owner did not utter a single word during the whole time we sat there together.