With my trim fellows behind me, and with as perfect a piece of horseflesh between my knees as the Emperor himself could ever hope to bestride, I set out in high delight and anticipation.
Now, on this freezing winter’s night, when I look back upon those days and the days that followed, it seems to me as though it were all a dream. The past events are wrapped to memory in a kind of haze, out of which certain hours marked above the rest stand out alone in clearness.—That particular day stands forth perhaps the clearest of all.
I remember that the Princess Ottilie looked even more queenly to my mind than at first, with her fair hair powdered and a patch upon the satin whiteness of her chin. In the complacency of my young man’s vanity, I was exceedingly elated that she should have considered it worth while to adorn herself for me. I remember, too, that the lady-in-waiting examined me critically, and cast a look of approval upon my altered appearance; that she spoke less and that her mistress spoke more than upon our first meeting; that even the presence, mute, dark, and scowling, of their female attendant could not spoil the pleasure of our intercourse.
In the vineyards, it is true, an incident occurred which for a moment threatened to mar my perfect satisfaction. The peasant girls—it is the custom of the country on the appearance of strangers in the midst of their work—gathered round each lady, surrounding her in wild dancing bands, threatening in song to load her shoulders with a heavy hodful of grapes unless she paid a ransom. It was of course most unseemly, considering the quality of the company I was entertaining, and I had not foreseen the possibility of such a breach of respect. Never before, it was evident, in the delicately nurtured life of the Princess, had such rough amusement been allowed to approach her. This being the case, it was not astonishing that the admirable composure of her usual attitude should break down—her dignity give way to the emotion of fear. She called—nay, she screamed—to me for help. The while her pert lady-in-waiting, no whit abashed, laughed back at her circle of grinning sunburnt prancers, threw mocking good-humoured gibes at them in German, and finally was sharp enough to draw her purse and pay for her footing, crying out to her mistress to do the same. But the latter was in no state to listen to advice, and, alas! I found myself powerless to deliver the distressed lady. In my ignorance of their language I could do nothing short of use brute force to control my savages, who were after all (it seems) but acting in good faith upon an old-established privilege. So I was fain, in my turn, to summon Schultz to the rescue from a distant part of the ground. He, practical fellow, made no bones about the matter; with a bellow and a knowing whirl of his cane every stroke of which told with a dull thwack, he promptly dispersed the indiscreet merrymakers.
I suppose it is my English blood that rises within me at the sight of a woman struck. Upon the impulse of the first moment I had well-nigh wrenched the staff from his hands and laid it about his shoulders; but fortunately, on second thought, I had wisdom enough to refrain from an act which would have been so fatal to all future discipline. Nevertheless, as I stood by, a passive spectator of it, the blood mounted, for very shame, to my cheek, and I felt myself degraded to the level of my administrator’s brutality.
The poor fools fell apart, screaming between laughter and pain. One handsome wench I marked, indeed, who withdrew to the side of a sullen gipsy-looking fellow, her husband or lover apparently; and as she muttered low in his ear they both cast looks charged with such murderous import, not only at the uncompromising justiciary, but also at me, and the man’s hand stole instinctively to his back with so significant a gesture, that I realised for the first time quite fully that there might be good reasons for János’s precautions anent the lord’s precious person when the lord took his walks abroad.
Another girl passed me close by, sobbing aloud, as she returned to her labour. She rubbed her shoulder sorely, and the tears hopped off the rim of her fat cheeks, contorted like those of a blubbering child. In half-ashamed and sneaking fashion, yet unable to resist the urging of my heart, I followed her behind the next row of vines and touched her on the arm.
She recognised me with a start, and I, all fearful of being noticed by the others, in haste and without a word—as what word could I find in which to communicate with a Slovack?—hastily dropped a consolatory coin, the first that met my touch, into her palm.
It was a poor plain creature with dull eyes, coarse lips, and matted hair, and she gazed at me a moment stupidly bewildered. But the next instant, reading I know not what of sympathy and benevolence in my face, as a dog may read in his master’s eyes, she fell at my feet, letting the gold slip out of her grasp that she might the better seize my hand in hers and cover it with kisses, pouring forth the while a litany of gratitude, as unintelligible to me as if she had been indeed a dog whining at my feet.