The young man smiled. “The Emperor’s not a bad shot.”
“For an amateur. But you’re a professional. I wager now, that you wouldn’t for the world change places with the Emperor?”
How the chamois hunter laughed at this, and showed his white teeth! There were those, in the towns he scorned, who would have been astonished at his light-hearted mirth.
“Change places with the Emperor! Not—unless I were obliged, gna’ Fräulein. Not now, at all events,” with a complimentary bow and glance.
“Thank you. You’re quite a courtier. And that reminds me of another thing they say of him in my country. The story is, that he dislikes the society of women. But perhaps it is that he doesn’t understand them.”
“It is possible, lady. But I never heard that they were so difficult of comprehension.”
“Ah, that shows how little you chamois hunters have had time to learn. Why, we can’t even understand ourselves, or know what we’re most likely to do next. And yet—a very odd thing—we have no difficulty in reading one another, and knowing all each other’s weaknesses.”
“That would seem to say that a man should get a woman to choose his wife for him.”
“I’m not so sure it would be wise. Yet your Emperor, we hear, will let the Chancellor choose his.”
“Ah! were you told this also in your country?”