This conversation took place, as I have already told you, the evening previous to the day on which I was to be presented to the princess my cousin. I left my aunt, and returned to my own apartments.
You have often told me, my dear Maximilian, that I was totally free from vanity; I must therefore trust to that to prevent my appearing vain during this recital.
As soon as I was alone I reflected with a secret satisfaction that the Princess Amelie, after seeing my portrait, painted five or six years ago, had inquired after "her cousin of the olden time."
Nothing could be more absurd than to build the slightest hope on so trivial a circumstance, I acknowledge; but I always treat you with the most perfect confidence, and I acknowledge that this trifling circumstance delighted me.
No doubt the praise I had just heard bestowed on the princess by so grave and austere a person as my aunt, by raising her in my estimation, rendered this circumstance more agreeable.
Why should I tell you? The hopes I conceived from this trifling event were so mad that, now that I look back more calmly on the past, I ask myself how I could have indulged in ideas that must have ended in my destruction.
Although related to the grand duke, and always treated by him with the greatest kindness, yet it was impossible to entertain the slightest hope of a marriage with the princess; even had she returned my affection it would still have been impossible. Our family holds an honourable position, but it is poor when compared with the grand duke, the richest prince of the German confederation; and besides, I was only one and twenty, a simple captain in the guards, without any reputation or any position. Never could the grand duke think of me as a suitor for his daughter.
All these reflections ought to have saved me from a passion I did not as yet feel, but of which I had a strange presentiment.
Alas! I rather gave way to fresh puerilities; I wore on my finger a ring that Thecla (the countess of whom I have so often spoken) had given me, although this souvenir of a boyish love could not have much embarrassed me. I sacrificed it to my new flame, and, opening the window, I cast the ring into the waves of the river that flowed beneath.
I have no need to tell you what a night I passed, you can imagine; I knew the princess was very beautiful; I sought to picture to myself her features, her air, her manner, her figure, the sound of her voice; and thinking of my portrait which she had noticed I recollected that the artist had flattered me excessively, and I contrasted the picturesque dress of a page of the sixteenth century with the simple uniform of a captain of the Austrian guards.