He smiled down upon Ranata and shook her hand slightly. “Can I come up here again?” he asked. “I like it much better than any other part of the palace.”
“Perhaps,” said Ranata, smiling, but angry at the quick response within her to the warm and personal attitude of the lordly male. “You have had your own way too much. I think you need disciplining.”
Alexandra was retiring through the outer room. Fessenden raised the hand he held and pressed his lips to it twice quickly. “I am humblest of your slaves,” he said unsteadily.
“No you are not!” replied Ranata almost as unsteadily. “And I wish you would go. I have never been late for dinner in my life.”
When she was alone she turned her eyes to the rocking-chair; then, after a manifest effort in another direction, she moved slowly towards it, regarded it impatiently, tenderly, then sank slowly into its embrace and dropped her head against the cushion.
XIX
The palace at Buda to-day (restored by Maria Theresia) is chiefly remarkable for the imposing beauty of its exterior; within, the severe elegance of its walls and furniture conveys not a hint of the ornate luxury, the gorgeous magnificence of the palace of the fifteenth century, during the reign of Matthias Corvinus, son of John Hunyadi, the period in which Hungary commanded the admiration and homage of Europe.
Not content with the reputation of a soldier second only to that of his great father, Matthias, ascending the throne at the age of fifteen, and giving immediate evidence of intellectual and governing qualities of a rare precocity and order, quickly ripened into a scholar and the most liberal patron of the arts in the world of his day. This great and singular man, who on the battle-field endured the hardships of the meanest of his soldiers; who, disguised, entered the camp of his enemies again and again, or calmly took his observations amid a rain of bullets and spears, whose justice passed into a proverb, and who was a rigorous administrator of finance, had a love of luxury, matched by no contemporary, that would have sapped the energies of another man, and a delight in purely intellectual pursuits and discussions that rounded one of the most versatile and grandly equipped characters known to history. He established and personally disciplined a body of foot soldiers—the Black Troop—modelled upon and equal to the famous Janissaries of Turkey, conquered the Czechs, and captured Vienna, driving out Frederick, the German Emperor, forcing him to take refuge in a wagon drawn by oxen, and to beg from convent to monastery like any common mendicant. The court of this ardent soldier became the rallying-ground of scholars and artists, who not only lived on his bounty, but were raised to the highest positions in the royal household. He spent his hours of leisure in day-long arguments with the scientists and savants who had deserted all other courts for this most enlightened and fascinating of monarchs, or lying at ease on a couch covered with a golden tapestry embroidered with pearls, in one of the most splendid libraries that any mortal has ever possessed. This library, sacked with the rest of the palace by the Turks after the battle of Mohács, was contained in two immense rooms, whose walls were covered with carved shelves of precious woods and tapestries of velvet embroidered with gold. The books, collected by Matthias, and in many cases written for him, numbered ten thousand. They were inscribed on white vellum, illuminated by the most accomplished masters of the art, and bound in colored skins set with precious and semi-precious stones. On the cover of each volume was a miniature of Matthias and his coat-of-arms. The furnishings of the Palace of Buda, its objects of art, many made from gold or silver and of a great size, the tapestries, the pleasure-rooms, the hanging gardens of his several palaces, were marvels of beauty and costliness; and the embassies which he constantly sent to the various courts of Europe so surpassed the efforts of other monarchs in extravagance that his resources of wealth alone struck despair to the hearts of those who may have meditated an assault upon his kingdom. When about to take a second wife, Beatrice, daughter of the King of Naples, the splendors and luxuries of Buda were augmented two-fold; and on the day of the wedding the great hall of the palace, in addition to its silken hangings interwoven with gold and precious stones, its tapestry of sheer gold, its thousand vessels of silver, its golden service chased with the history of the world, silver casks of wine were suspended from the ceiling, and a huge silver fountain spouted the choicest and costliest of all wines, the Tokay of Hungary.
The manuscripts in their jewelled cases, the thousand objects of barbaric magnificence, were gone forever. There was no modern art that could simulate them, even could craftsmen be found with patience for the attempt; but Ranata had persuaded the Emperor to send to Buda some twenty of the superfluous Gobelins which the Hapsburgs have retained throughout their vicissitudes. Her argument had enlivened the mood of her father, and raised still higher his hope in his youngest born.
“The Hungarians,” Ranata had written, “no doubt resent the very obvious fact that there are so few treasures in the Palace of Buda, and, knowing that our tapestries are packed away in large numbers, and are as priceless as they are beautiful, must infer that we fear to trust them in this most precarious of our possessions. So it has seemed to me that it would be another stroke of diplomacy to send several of the best, with the understanding that they are to remain here. It is a small yet impressive sum to stake as an expression of our confidence in ourselves and our Hungarian subjects.”