"Reserved, prudent, or simple. She is either intensely artful, or strangely simple."
"Oh! we will see," said the princess, the eyes of whom glittered with the influence of a mind used to penetration and distrust. "Let her come in."
During her short stay in the dressing-room, Porporina saw the strangest array of furniture which ever decorated the boudoir of a beautiful princess: spheres, compasses, astrolabes, astrological charts, vials filled with nameless mixtures and deaths-heads—in fine, all the materials of sorcery. "My friend is not mistaken," said she, "and the public knows all about the secrets of the king's sister. She does not even seem to conceal them, as she suffers me to see all this apparatus.—Well—courage!"
The Abbess of Quedlimburgh was then twenty-eight or thirty years of age. She had been beautiful as an angel, and yet was when seen by candlelight at a distance. When she was close to her, however, Porporina was amazed to find her face wrinkled and covered with blotches. Her blue eyes, which had been beautiful as possible, now had a red rim around them, like those of a person who had been weeping, and had an evil glare and deep transparency, not calculated to inspire confidence. She had been adored by her family and by all the court, and for a long time had been the most affable, the most joyous and benevolent king's daughter ever described in the romances of royal personages, of the old patrician literature. During the few last years, however, her character had changed as much as her person had. She had attacks of ill-humor, and even something worse, which made her like Frederick in his worst point of view; without seeking to resemble him, and even while in secret she criticised him severely, she was irresistibly led to contract all the faults she censured in him, and to become an imperious and absolute mistress, a skeptical, bitter, learned and disdainful person. Yet, amid these fearful characteristics, which every day look fatal possession of her, there was yet seen to pierce a native kindness, a correct mind, a courageous soul, and passionate heart. What then was passing in the mind of this unfortunate princess? A terrible cause of suffering devoured her, which she was yet forced to conceal in her heart, and which she hid from the eyes of the curious, malicious, or careless world, under the disguise of a stoical and joyous bearing. By means, therefore, of dissimulation and constraint, she had unfolded in herself two different beings, one which she dared reveal to scarcely any one, and the other which she exhibited with a kind of hatred and despair. All observed that in conversation she was become more keen and animated: this uneasy and forced gaiety, though, was painful to the observer, and its icy and chilling effect cannot be described. Successively excited, almost to puerility, and stern even to cruelty, she astonished both others and herself. Torrents of tears extinguished the fire of her anger, and then a savage irony, an impious disdain, snatched her from those moments of salutary depression, she was permitted neither to feel nor to know.
The first thing that Porporina observed, when she met her, was this kind of duality. The princess had two aspects and two faces: the one was caressing, the other menacing: two voices, one soft and harmonious, which seemed to have been vouchsafed her by heaven that she might sing like an angel, and the other hoarse and stern, apparently coming from a burning heart, animated by some devilish inspiration. Our heroine, surprised at so strange a being, divided between fear and sympathy, asked herself if an evil genius was about to take possession of her.
The princess, too, found Porporina a far more formidable person than she had imagined. She had hoped that, without her theatrical garb and the paint which makes women so very ugly, whatever people please to say about it, she would justify what the Baroness von Kleist had said—that she was rather ugly than beautiful. Her clear dark complexion, so uniform and pure; her powerful and dark eyes; her fresh mouth; her suple form; her natural and easy movements—the array of all the qualities of an honest, kind and calm being, or, at least, of one possessed of that internal power conferred by justice and true wisdom, filled the uneasy Amelia with a species of respect, and even of shame, as if she knew herself in the presence of a person of unimpeachable loyalty.
Her efforts to hide how ill at ease she was were remarked by the young girl, who, as we may conceive, was amazed to see so great a princess intimidated before her. She began, then, to revive the failing conversation, to open a piece of the music into which she had placed the cabalistic letter, and arranged it so that the great sheet covered with large characters, should meet the princess's eye. As soon as the effect was produced, she pretended to wish to withdraw the sheet, just as if she had been surprised at its being there. The abbess took possession of it immediately, however, saying—
"What is the meaning of this signora? For Heaven's sake, whence had you it?"
"If I must own all to your highness," said Porporina, significantly, "it is an astrological calculation I have been intending to present, when it shall be your highness's wish to question me about a matter to which I am not entirely a stranger."
The princess fixed her burning eyes on the singer, glanced at the magic characters, ran to the embrasure of a window, and, having examined the scroll for a time, uttered a loud cry, and fell almost suffocated into the arms of the Baroness von Kleist, who, when she saw her tremble, had hurried to her.