“I am to be permitted to speak henceforth, as a true ambassador, what my heart dictates?”
“O, fie, monsieur!” she said; “to think that perfection could need any trumpeting!” And, with those smiling ambiguous words, she left him.
For some moments after she was gone Tiretta stood motionless, frowning into vacancy. Then, with a sigh, he stirred, and, perceiving in the act a little spray of some blue flower which had fallen from her bosom to the ground, stooped, and secured it, and held the thing wonderingly in his hand.
“Love-in-a-mist!” he whispered: “So in the strange North lands—my lands—they call it. Love-in-a-mist!”
CHAPTER VIII.
CORRESPONDENCE
A couple of communications, relating to the rather fantastic business in hand, were despatched about this date from Colorno, the one by Tiretta and the other by the gouvernante. The soldier wrote, inter alia, to his royal friend and patron:
“You will recall your words, that in this affaire—one of policy, it is true, but still an affaire—you were determined to woo your own way—c’est-à-dire, the way of a prince, who cannot desire plums but he must have a lackey to put them into his mouth for him. Well, as your Highness’s lackey, I have the honour to inform your Highness that the plum forthcoming is a very blooming and delectable one, promising satisfaction on all the points specified, and indeed, I think, on others supernumerary. The question is merely if the plum, for her part, wishes to be devoured; but, even so, there is always a sweet provocation in coyness. Rest assured, at least, that I have left nothing undone to commend to it the fine taste of the connoisseur for whose enjoyment it is distinguished in being selected. I put it so for the reason that, whether by way of intuition or tittle-tattle, my mission, as I soon discovered, was suspect. That made my task none the easier; and none the easier the allaying of the prejudice which, as your Highness correctly surmised, did exist against yourself. There is no blinking the fact that the lady had learnt to associate the Count of Falckenstein of a certain occasion with the heir to the Austrian throne, and that the knowledge stood at first in the way of a perfect reconciliation between her impressions of fact and the laudatory image, even a little strained, which I was moved to draw of your Highness. But that impression, I flatter myself, and the true devotion which gives fervour to my poor art, is surely if slowly in process of readjusting itself; and I look confidently to the near time when the complete conversion I anticipate shall see eye to eye with me in the regard of your Highness’s true character, its essential greatness and nobility. In the meanwhile I pray that that state of grace may be quickly forthcoming, in order to my release from a task to which nothing but my sense of friendship (I say it with all deference) could reconcile me. Carpet-mongering is not to my taste, nor am I pleased to have my soul sit and grin like a monkey on a hurdy-gurdy, while I grind out the music to order. Improvisation to command is a pure paradox, is it not? So that, to end, if your Highness is dissatisfied with my progress, I have only to suggest that I possess another instrument at least as familiar to my hand as the mandolin, and as ready to ring true in the service of Austria, and that your father the Emperor waits at this moment for recruits in Silesia.”
This missive the young archduke received and pondered in his cabinet at Schönbrunn. He frowned over it a good deal; it interested and yet irritated him. Truth to tell, this romantic venture of his had, in the multitudinous pressure of State affairs, got rather crowded out of his mind. Fervours and enthusiasms have a distressing way of dwindling, like toy balloons, when put aside after an exciting game, and of incontinently bursting when one seeks to re-inflate them. So this unphilosophical afflatus had come to appear just a little limp and puckered to Joseph now he was invited to resume it, and to threaten, if incautiously reblown, to explode into thin air. The private mission it had inspired appeared to him all at once an extravagance, and more calculated to cheapen than to vindicate the imperial virtues which were its theme. This affected humility was perhaps a bad precedent to set in view of future relations; after all, he was answerable to no one but himself for his principles and actions; and he was particularly annoyed in that connection to learn that his purpose had been more or less divined. Tiretta must have managed very badly to make such a thing possible. He trusted at least that the suspicion was limited to Colorno, since he had an idea that the Empress, were it to reach her ears, would strongly disapprove his action. On the whole, he regretted having embarked on a project which had grown, or was growing, distasteful to his better sense of fitness.
And yet—that vision! The archduke was unphilosophically impressionable, as has been said, to feminine attractions, and fain, where women were concerned, to be admired for himself rather than his position. Perhaps, all considered, as things had progressed so far and so favourably, it would be folly to recall his advocate at the crucial moment. At the same time there was something in that advocate’s tone which disturbed him. Under its veneer of homage he seemed to detect a shadow of mockery, a humorous independence of mind, an imperfect conception of the sacro-sanctity of the task imposed. Humour, if the “something” was due to that objectionable quality, was quite out of place in a matter so momentous. He would be relieved to be satisfactorily done with a man whom he had never really fathomed or understood.
He answered Tiretta, commending what he had accomplished, advising the nicest tact, and promising to recall him the moment, in the deputy’s own opinion, his mission was fulfilled.