“Yes. For the gossip is that she’s an English Princess. Now, what’s the good of being a powerful Emperor, if he can’t even pick out a wife to please his own taste?”
“I know nothing about such high matters, gna’ Fräulein. But I fancied that Royal folk took wives to please their people rather than themselves. It’s their duty to marry, you know. And if the lady be of Royal blood, virtuous, of the right religion, not too sharp-tempered, and pleasant to look at, why—those are the principal things to consider, I should suppose.”
“So should I not suppose, if I were a man, and—Emperor. I should want the pleasure of falling in love.”
“Safer not, gna’ Fräulein. He might fall in love with the wrong woman.” And the chamois hunter looked with half shamed intentness into his guest’s sweet eyes.
She blushed under his gaze, and was so conscious of the hot color, that she retorted at random. “I doubt if he could fall in love. A man who would let his Chancellor choose for him! He can have no warm blood in his veins.”
“There I think you wrong him, lady,” the answer came quickly. “The Emperor is—a man. But it may be he has found other interests in his life more important than woman.”
“Bringing down chamois, for instance. You would sympathize there.”
“Chamois give good sport. They’re hard to find. Harder still to hit when you have found them.”
“So are the best types of women. Those who, like the chamois (and the plant I spoke of) live only in high places. Oh, for the sake of my sex, I do hope that some day your Emperor will change his mind—that a woman will make him change it.”
“Perhaps a woman has—already.”