His manner gave us confidence and gaiety, and we soon became attached to the kind-hearted Prelate. We were in truth but simple country-girls, quite unacquainted with the manners of the great world, and only wise enough to be sensible of our deficiency. Accustomed to be treated with nothing but severity, Count Herman’s gentleness delighted us; and his protection encouraged us to enter willingly into those societies, where it was his pleasure that we should be introduced.
The Count of Werdenberg is quite a different kind of person from his predecessors, the old Bishops of Coira. When I recollect the portraits of the venerable Adelfried-Herbert, and of the pious Thomas of Planta, such as I saw them in your closet; and when I compare their austere and mortified countenances with that of the penetrating, the polished, the gallant, the martial Herman of Werdenberg; when too I reflect how different their simple Priest’s habit appeared from the glittering and costly robes, in which our Cousin appeared when we were unexpectedly presented to him for the first time, though the day was not a festival; when I think on all these things, my dear mother, I can scarcely persuade myself, that he and the originals of your pictures ever have belonged to the same profession.
The manners of the Bishop’s court were entirely new to us, but were not the less pleasing. Certainly, our father must have been little aware of the nature of the place, whither he had sent us for shelter; or else it must have been the most bitter hatred against his daughters, which induced him to make us first acquainted with the pleasures of the world, in order that the recollection of the enchanting scenes which they were now witnessing, and the hopeless desire of witnessing them again, might make the cloister for which he destined them seem doubly hateful.
Everything here appeared new to us; not merely the amusements which offered themselves every day to our enjoyment, but the discovery which was made to us in a very few hours after our arrival, that we were beautiful.
—“Beautiful?” said I to Amalberga; “How could it possibly happen, that we should not have found this out long ago?—It is true, I always thought, there was something uncommonly pleasing in your countenance, my dear sister; but still your features were too much like my own, for me ever to have suspected them of being beautiful.”—
We consulted Amabel on this important point. She assured us with that simplicity which was natural to her, that we did not appear beautiful to her, for that on the banks of the Lake of Thun (where she was born) the blooming charms of the village damsels were far superior to ours, at least as far as she could give an opinion; a confession, which we heard her make without feeling the slightest displeasure.
Perhaps in time we should have returned to our former opinion of our beauty, if we had heard them praised by no one except the old Bishop, who was the first to make the remark. But among the young knights, whom the love of Tilts and Tournaments had collected at Count Herman’s court, there were many whose existence seemed to hang upon our smiles, and who loaded us with compliments which we not only heard but too willingly, but even began to consider as a tribute, which ought not to be withheld from us with impunity.
Among the youthful warriors whom a splendid Tournament had attracted to the court of Coira, were two who particularly attracted the attention of my sister and myself; and it happened to be precisely these two, who seemed blind to that beauty, on which we had now learnt to set so high a value. It is true, Count Eginhart of Torrenburg, to whom my sister gave the preference, afforded us strong reasons for suspecting, that he was not insensible of the power of Amalberga’s charms; yet his attentions to her were ever cold and constrained, like those of one who had already formed engagements, and had only just discovered, that he had been too hasty in making his choice.
As for me, my situation was still more unpleasant. The youthful Herman of Werdenberg, the Bishop’s nephew, had indeed paid me a few unmeaning compliments on my arrival, before he was informed of my name; but after our first interview, he treated me with utter neglect, and seized every excuse for avoiding my society. Nay; he carried his unjustifiable aversion so far, that when on the evening before the Tournament his Uncle gave him a scarf of my colours, with a command to wear it at the next day’s solemnity, it was not without difficulty, that he abstained from insulting me (whom this unexpected mark of the Bishop’s partiality for me had covered with blushes) by positively refusing to accept his gift.
—“These are the colours of the Lady Emmeline,” said the Bishop, “of the future Heiress of Carlsheim and Sargans. The permission to wear them publicly, which I now give you in her name, may authorize you to encourage hopes, whose completion will not be purchased too dearly with the most precious blood that runs in your veins.”——