"Precisely the same question which Prince Waldenberg asked. 'Your Highness,' I replied, 'I am no enthusiast about the artillery; but, after all, I would rather dance with a man who is not noble than not to dance at all."
This allusion to a misfortune which had twice occurred to Hortense last night, put the poor lady in such an excited state that the rouge on her cheeks became quite useless. She was just about to commit the folly of betraying by a violent answer how deep the venomous arrow shot by Emily had wounded her, when the servant announced "Professor and Mrs. Jager."
The man was so well trained that he did not, as usually, admit the persons he announced at once into the parlor, but closed the door behind him and remained standing there bolt upright, waiting for further orders.
"You will excuse me, my friends," said Anna Maria, apologizing, and turning to the company present, "if I receive the professor and his wife. The good people have always shown themselves loyal, and quite aware of their social position. I think it is our duty to encourage such people."
Upon a sign of his mistress the servant went out, and there appeared the man of the Fragment and the poetess making deep bows and courtesies, which were returned with a gentle nod by the noble company. Only the old baron rose, shook hands with them, and bade them welcome in his cordial, unvarnished manner.
If Primula, who looked somewhat shyly from under the cornflowers on her bonnet, seemed to stand rather in need of some such encouragement, the editor of Chrysophilos evidently could very well do without it. Humility, it is true, spoke from his small eyes, which squinted suspiciously above the golden rim of his spectacles as he approached with bent back; modesty, it is true, smiled from the unpleasant lines which, marked the large mouth with its low-drawn comers; but they were the humility and the modesty of a cat rubbing her back against the foot of the ladder which leads to the garret where the fat pigeons are cooing. He went up to the baroness, kissed repeatedly her graciously-extended hand, bowed low to the other two ladies, not quite so low to the gentlemen, seated himself after some hesitation on the edge of a chair which stood rather outside of the circle, and waited, his head slightly on one side, till somebody should feel disposed to honor him with a question.
The conversation of the company turned on a most interesting subject, the person of his Highness, First Lieutenant Prince Waldenberg, who had been ordered a few weeks ago from his regiment of the Guards at the Capital to the line regiment which was in garrison at Grunwald, and who had of course, from his first appearance, become, the lion of the whole country nobility now residing in town.
"Only I should like to know why he has been ordered here," said Cloten. "Felix, with whom I talked it over yesterday--apropos, it is very well, madame, you make him keep his room; he looks really very badly--Felix thinks the prince has probably had another duel; they say he is the most passionate man in the world."
"Why, Arthur!" said Emily. "You talk as if passion were a crime. I wish some people I know had a little more of it."
"Are not the Waldenbergs of Slavonic descent?" asked Hortense. "It seems to me the prince looks like a Mongolian."