In spite of herself, the Princess could not but smile; but, putting on a grave look the moment after, she replied, "Well, well. Far be it from me to lay any restraint upon gallant and noble devotion to the fair; it is the high moving power to all great actions; and on it am I ready to rest for support myself, should need be; but remember, Master Lovet, I will have no scandals in my court; that is an indispensable condition to your sojourn with it."
"Scandal, your Highness! Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Lovet; "I would not have a scandal for the world. Always consider what such a thing would imply; I declare the very thought of it would spoil my breakfast, had I not made one good meal before I came out. The consequences would be frightful: first, I should lose your Highness's favour; next, I should have to cut the throat of a little fat, small-eyed husband--work for a pork-butcher, but not for a cavalier with clean hands; and last, I should have to marry the fair dame myself, which would certainly put an end to all our fine Platonics. No, no, by that fair hand I swear, you shall have no scandal by any act of William Lovet."
"Well, Sir William," answered the Electress, "you will recollect that false names do not cover well-known faces; that your reputation is not quite so clear and bright as a new crimson velvet cloak, laced with gold; and that, knowing the person and his ways, I have my eye upon him. As to the other matter, I will think of what you have said concerning your noble cousin, and will act after due deliberation. We must not lose him on any account, if it be possible to keep him; but, ere I decide on aught, I must speak with his Highness; for these are matters, in regard to which a woman's judgment is not worth much."
"Oh, a woman's judgment for ever!" cried William Lovet; "in love, war, wine, and policy, there is nothing like a woman's judgment--But now I will take my leave; for I see these fair ladies around marvelling sadly at our long conversation in an unknown tongue--though, Heaven help us! what we should have done on many great occasions I know not, if certain wise gentlemen of antiquity had not thought fit to build a high and very impious tower of Babel, and been cursed with strange languages, which have proved very serviceable to their posterity. However, if we talk farther in one of our Babel dialects before these bright dames, their sweet wits will find or frame treason in it; and I shall be impeached to the Elector for talking something more soft than German to his lovely Princess. Thus, then, I humbly take my leave; and, if you follow my sage advice regarding my good cousin, I will so play my part as to insure that he is bound hand and foot to promote your great and glorious undertakings."
CHAPTER VII.
About an hour after his liberation, Algernon Grey sat alone in his chamber at the Golden Stag, absorbed in deep meditation. The servants came and went, bringing down from the castle all those parts of his baggage which had been carried up during his imprisonment, but he took no heed of them; and even Frill, the page, obtained little notice, though he endeavoured strongly to attract attention by eloquent speech and graceful demeanour. The great question on which man's fate turns so frequently throughout life: "How shall I act at this next step?" was then before his eyes; but his mind wandered back into the past, and, scrutinizing what had occurred during the last three days, Algernon Grey could not free himself altogether from the reproaches of his own heart. "I have been weak," he said, "I have been wrong; I have yielded to circumstances, where I should have resisted them; I have been tender in tone and manner, where I should have been cold as ice. Better, far better, that she should think me rude, discourteous, unkind, than that she should have hereafter to say, that I did her wrong and sought her love secretly, when I could not ask it honourably. Even now it is far wiser to encounter any sort of reproach than give good cause for dark, well-founded accusation. I will go--that is determined. To-morrow's sunset shall not find me in Heidelberg."
His thoughts ran on from that starting point into the future, and he asked himself, "What was before him; what was the path he should pursue; what was the end to which it would lead?" The prospect was dark and gloomy: no light shone upon it; no variety appeared to cheer it, but one wild waste of life spread out before him, overhung with clouds, and bearing nought to shelter or console. He felt like one of those anchorites of old, who voluntarily quitted the sunshine and the richness of cultivated nature, to plunge into the gloom and sterility of the desert. He felt that, at that moment, there was beauty and brightness around him, all that could charm the eye or captivate the heart; that gaiety and pleasure, the exercise of the mind, the sport of the fancy, the kindling of passion, the ecstasy of love, the wild enthusiastic delights of a free heart revelling undisturbed in the enjoyment of the best gifts of Heaven, were ready for his grasp, if he chose to seize them, with but one obstacle--but that obstacle, to his mind, insurmountable. He felt that he was about to fly them all, voluntarily to resign everything that his heart longed for; with the parched mouth and thirsty lip to renounce the cooling draught of the deep well of happiness open before him; and to speed on through the arid desert of existence, with no one to support or cheer, with not one spring of the sweet waters of comfort to give him hope along his desolate course. Barren, barren spread out the years before him. As he looked through the long sunless vista, it seemed as if an open tomb was all that closed the far perspective to receive him at the end of his weary journey, and afford the dull sleep of death and corruption. "May it come soon!" he thought, "may it come soon!" and, with his hands pressed upon his eyes, he remained pondering bitterly over his sad, strange fate.
"Ah, Algernon," cried a voice, as the door opened, "you look marvellous joyful over your emancipation. One would think you had been in a dungeon a whole year, to see your intemperate gaiety at the recovery of your freedom. But I knew how it would be, and I told the Electress the result. I urged her strongly to keep you in your soft bondage, telling her, that to set you at liberty was but to restore you to the slavery of a most perverse education.--But how goes it, my good cousin?"
"Well, I thank you, William," answered Algernon Grey, rising and shaking off his gloom, determined to encounter Lovet's keen jests with a careless tone. "Faith, you are quite right, my cousin. The cheerful society that you afforded me every day in prison made captivity so sweet, that I could have staid in it for ever."
"See the ingratitude of man!" cried Lovet, laughing. "I have given him up one-third of my whole time, and yet he is not satisfied, although, by the code of love and gallantry, as he well knows, the other two-thirds were not my own to give; they were pledged, pawned, impignorated, and I might as well have stolen a jewel out of Madam de Laussitz's ear, or taken any ring off her finger but one, with as much right and justice as I could have taken one minute more than I did to bestow upon my kinsman's affairs. Did I not thrice see the Elector? Did I not twice see the Electress? Did I not make love to seven of her ladies? Did I not bow nine times to nine old gentlemen? Did I not fee a page for an audience? And actually embrace a chamberlain--the most disgusting task of all--entirely to obtain his liberty? although I knew the first use he would make of it would be to work his own unhappiness and my disappointment."