DEAR FRANZ,—The gipsy Wilhelm and I visited is not at all like the ones that occasionally come to Essen at fair-time or by way of caravans. You know we always thought them impostors and, small doubt, they were, for the same yarn had to do for everybody: the tall, dark man, that would come into one's life, was conjured up even for little Barbara at the rate of ten pfennigs.
Mother Zara is a hundred years old if she is a day; a face the colour of an old green-back American bank-note crumpled up—thousand and one crow's-feet to the inch. Dress: rusty black silk, edged with moth-eaten sable; sugar-loaf hat, filigreed with zodiacal signs; white mice following her wherever she goes.
This much I observed while waiting. She was in an adjoining room and, as I observed through the glass door, in no hurry to meet her visitors, even though the servant had recognised the young master of Bellevue Castle.
Meanwhile the Crown Prince was walking up and down, smacking his high boots with the riding-whip. I believe he was looking for a mirror—vain boy—and was furious at not finding one. Young Wilhelm affects to be as nervous and impatient as Uncle Majesty, and won't sit down a second if there is room to move about.
At last the door opened and the stooping figure of the clairvoyante appeared on the threshold, a blackbird perching on her left shoulder and half a dozen white mice circling round her feet, or riding on the train of her dress.
"Mother Zara," cried Wilhelm advancing, "I brought my cousin——"
She shut him up with an imperious gesture. "Hold your tongue, young braggart, for this is serious business."
She spoke in a high-pitched, authoritative voice, and I tell you, Franz, I was all a-tremble when Zara fixed her eyes upon me—eyes that looked you through, like the eyes of a sorceress you read about in the story books.
"What do I see?" she murmured to herself, drawing figures on the sanded stone floor.
"A deuced pretty girl," remarked the Crown Prince gallantly.