'You, youngster?'
Brühl blushed.
'Your Majesty shall punish me--'
Augustus looked at him penetratingly.
'Come,' said he going to the window. 'There is the letter; read it, and give a negative answer, but you must hint that the answer is not definite. Let them think that there is some hope, but do not actually show it. Do you understand?'
Brühl bowed and wished to go out with the letter.
'Where are you going?' cried the King. 'Sit at this table and write at once.'
The page bowed again and sat on the edge of the chair which was upholstered in silk; he turned up his lace cuffs, bent over the paper and wrote with a rapidity that astonished the King.
Augustus II looked attentively, as though at a curious phenomenon, at the good-looking boy, who assumed the gravity of a chancellor and wrote the diplomatic letter as easily as he would have written a love-letter.
One might have thought, that the page, in accomplishing a task so important to his future, had forgotten about his pose.