That settled it.
I rode straight home, though I was expected to have joined the ladies in some expedition. I spent the whole day in a most intolerable state of agitation; and then, my mind made up, I sat down after supper to write, beneath my uncle’s portrait. And the first half of the night went by in writing and re-writing the letter which was to offer the hand and heart of Basil Jennico to the Princess Marie Ottilie of Lausitz.
I wrote and tore up till the ground around me was strewn with the fragments of paper; and now I seemed too bold, when the whole incongruity and absurdity of my desire took tangible form to mock me in the silence of the night; and now too humble, when in the flickering glimmer of candle-light my great-uncle would frown down upon me, and I could hear him say:
“Remember that thou Jennico bist!”
At last a letter lay before me by which I resolved to abide. I believe that it was an odd mixture of consciousness of my own temerity in aspiring so high, and at the same time of conviction that the house of Jennico could only confer, and not receive, honour. I even proposed to present myself boldly with my credentials at the Court of Lausitz (and here of course the famous pedigree came in once more), and I modestly added that, considering my wealth and connections, I ventured to hope the Duke, her father, might favourably consider my pretensions.
This written and sealed, I was able to sleep for the rest of the night, but was awake again with dawn and counting the minutes until I could decently despatch a mounted messenger to Schreckendorf.
When the man rode forth I believe it was a little after eight; and I know that it was on the stroke of one when I heard his horse’s hoofs ringing again in the courtyard. But time had no measure for the strange agony of doubt in which I passed those hours, not (once again have I to admit it) because I loved her too dearly to bear the thought of life without her, but because of my fierce pride, which would not brook the shame of a refusal.
I called in a frenzy to hurry the lagging fool into my presence; and yet when he laid the letter on my table I stared at the great seal without daring to open it. And when at last I did so my hand trembled like an aspen leaf.
“Monsieur de Jennico,” it began abruptly, “I ought to call you mad, for what you propose is nothing less indeed than madness. You little know the fetters that bind such lives as mine, and I could laugh and weep together to think of what the Duke, my father, would say were you really to present yourself before him as you suggest.”
So it ran, and as I read I thought I was contemned, and in my fury would have crushed the letter in my hand, when a word below caught my eye, and with an intensity of joy on a par only with the passion of wounded pride that had preceded it, I read on: