“Hush, Fraulein Müller,” said the princess sternly. “These walls are not to be trusted—as I well know—and I would not have King Rudolph hear what you have just said for worlds. How little Uncle Wilhelm knows my heart! King Rudolph has been to me a father since my childhood. Sane or mad, king or exile, he deserves my loyalty and love. Listen, Gretchen! I would die with Rudolph in this rat-hole sooner than return to Wilhelm’s court and countenance his treachery by silent acquiescence. I have striven to prevent this awful crisis. I have labored to turn my Uncle Rudolph from his mad ways. I have failed. But let it not be said that the Princess Hilda of Hesse-Heilfels changes her colors with the fortunes of her house. If loyalty to Rudolph means imprisonment, or even death, I shall follow his banner to the end.”
She stood there, flushed, defiant, beautiful, her eyes dark with the fervor of her passion; a girl no longer, for the stern discipline of evil fortune had made her a woman in a night. Never again would her heart dance merrily with the mere gayety of youth. She had lost something of the precious vivacity of girlhood, but in its place had come the strength and firmness that add a touch of grandeur to maturity.
Fraulein Müller gazed at her mistress with admiration. Never before had the maiden she had served seemed so thoroughly a queen as at this moment when she stood, a fugitive skulking in a cellar, bereft of everything that makes royalty impressive, and voiced to a single listener the noblest sentiments of loyalty. Above her shone the bright light of the summer sun, awakening a people who would gladly welcome her return to the pomp and state that had been hers throughout her life. Above her reigned a king who would place her by his side and reward her allegiance to his cause with power and dominion. In contrast with all this, what was offered her? An existence of wretched discomfort in the damp darkness of a rat-haunted chamber. A miserable present and an uncertain future. The companionship of ruined men, of a king whose crazy folly had hurled him from the pinnacle of power into the abysmal depths of despair and ruin. Here was a girl of eighteen, upon whom nature had lavished all her gifts, and to whom the world bowed down in loving homage, confronted by a choice from which the boldest man would have shrunk back in dismay. And the Princess Hilda gave up the sunshine for the darkness, the light of day for the gloom of night, the pleasures of the gladsome world for the grim shadows of a living tomb! Is it strange that in Hesse-Heilfels you should hear it said that in the Schwartzburger blood there is a strain of heroism that breaks out now and then, as the generations come and go?
Something of all this passed through Fraulein Müller’s mind as she gazed at the princess with eyes that looked upon her royal mistress with new reverence. She bent forward and kissed Hilda’s hand with loving deference. There were tears on the Fraulein’s cheeks as she smiled up at her mistress, from whose face the flush of excitement had departed.
“Ah, Gretchen,” said the princess wearily, “you must not weep! Surely, nothing can be gained by tears. But to be a woman is so hard! How powerless we are! Oh, for a man’s arm to-day, Gretchen! Were I a prince, do you know what I would do? If they had driven me down into this hole, I would find the powder magazine and blow those rebels into bits.”
Fraulein Müller laughed merrily. The ludicrous side of a situation always appealed first to her mind.
“Would it not be a grim revenge?” she cried. “But I fear, your highness, we would not live to enjoy it.”
At that moment a knock at the door recalled them to the exigencies of the hour. Fraulein Müller ran merrily toward the entrance.
That she and her mistress were not wholly alone was a reassuring thought.