“It is,” said I, “one of your Princess’s Court ladies.” And here his volubility spared me further circumlocution.
“It can certainly not be,” he cried, “that you have formed an unhappy attachment for the Frau Gräfin von Kornstein? There remains then only the young Comtesse d’Assier, Fräulein von Auerbach and her sister, and Fräulein Ottilie Pahlen—these are all of our fair circle that are now in attendance at the palace.”
“It is the last lady,” I said, and was at once glad of my own circumspection and troubled in my mind that she should be keeping her secret so well.
“Mes compliments,” said he with a smirk, but I thought also with a shade of patronage, as if by mentioning her last he had also shown her to be the last in his worldly esteem. Once, doubtless, this would have galled me.
“Then if I write now,” I cried, “and you, according to your kind offer, take charge of my letter, how soon can it be in her hands?”
“But as soon as the guard has relieved me, good sir, am I free to act the gallant Mercury—pity it is that these sordid details of sickness and quarantine should come to spoil so pretty an errand. This was a fair Court for Cupid before the ugly plague came on us. Yes,” he added, “I have seen days!”
I had already drawn out my tablets, and, thanking him hurriedly (without, I fear, evincing much interest in his sentimental reflections), turned and, making a standing desk of my horse, with the sheet spread upon the saddle, began, all in the dreary drizzle, to trace with fingers stiffened from the cold the few lines which were to bring my wife back to me.
I had little time for composition, and so wrote the words as they welled up from my heart.
“Dear love,” said I, in the French which had been the language of our happiest moments, “your poor scholar has learnt his lesson so well that he cannot live without his teacher. Forget what has come between us. Remember only all that unites us, and forgive. I have, it seems, involved myself in difficulty by passing through Budissin, and so will, I fear, have to endure delay before being permitted sight of your sweet face again. But let me have a word which may help me to bear the separation, let me know that I may carry home my wife.” I signed it, “Your poor scholar and loving husband.” Then I folded it, fastened it with a wafer, and after a minute’s pause decided to burn my ships and address it by the right name of her to whom I destined it—“Madame Ottilie de Jennico, Dame d’honneur de S. A. S. la Princesse Marie Ottilie de Lusace.”
Bending over the living desk,—the poor patient brute never budged but for his heaving flanks,—I laid for a second, unperceived I thought, my lips upon that name which haunted me, sleeping and waking, and turning, with the letter in my hand, found the Freiherr watching me, with his head upon one side and so comic an air of sympathy that, at another moment, I should have burst out laughing.