Every moment the count's cheeks grew more colorless, and the quivering of his lips more pronounced. He never looked up, and several times he covered his face with his hands. For weeks, for months, he had anticipated this hour; it seemed life could have nothing more painful in store, and must it be?
Day by day he had asked himself this question; and now he was carried away with indignation at his wife's severity, and with shame at his weakness in yielding to her. What he had undergone the past four months he considered as undeserved; for though his sin had been great, his had been an unheard-of penance.
He had married her in Weimar; what more could she ask? Yet she did. She allowed him to do as he wished with the boy--indeed, it was as if it were her own desire; but when he said they must keep from home until the excitement was over, she urged him to go to Vienna, that they might bring about the recognition of their marriage. He resisted, but she said: "My whole soul hangs on this one thing. Grant this request, and I will reward you well."
"With what?" he thought. "With love and fidelity!" He had earned that before God and men by a greater sacrifice than any man of his position had ever made. Ought she not to be faithful to him, she for whose sake his best friends had been faithless, she for whom he had incurred so many slights? But his resistance grew weaker. His character was not adapted to resist a feeble will, much less this one of iron.
Finally he yielded, because he thought she would see for herself, when in Vienna, the impracticability of her desire. "If you do not succeed, we will go to Italy for two years," he said, and to this she agreed.
Convinced of the futility of her attempt, and annoyed at the gossip she was inciting, he watched her curiously. It was during the régime of Metternich--a régime which bowed only to the church, and therefore the more impossible. Whenever she spoke of it, he assured her that her object was unattainable.
But she never tired of devising new ways and means, and when these proved useless, she set herself to work to gain the aid of the church itself. A young prelate of an impoverished noble family was the first won over.
Soon her apartments in the "Wilder Mann" swarmed with soutanes and hoods, and one morning she exclaimed: "Congratulate me, Agenor; I am going to Metternich." They had been in Vienna six weeks, and only the banker who had charge of her funds knew how costly all this had been.
Agenor looked at her in astonishment. As she stood before him in her dark, flowing robe, her grayish hair wrapped in a black mantilla, her clearly cut features pale and fixed, only her lips showing her excitement, she inspired him with an emotion curiously compounded of respect and fear. The love he had now and then faintly felt of late was wanting. Never had he realized it as now.
"Are you certain he will receive you?" he asked, hesitatingly. She showed him a card admitting to an audience.