While Joseph spoke, his mother looked earnestly at his blushing face, and perfectly divined both his embarrassment and its cause. She turned her eyes upon her daughters, who, with theirs cast down, were sharing their brother's perplexity.
"I must wait then until my mirrors are made," said the empress, after a pause. "You must think that I have less than woman's vanity, my son, if you expect me to remain for weeks without a greeting from my looking-glass. Of course the small-pox has not dared to disfigure the face of an empress; I feel secure against its sacrilegious touch. Is it not so, my little Marie Antoinette? Has it not respected your mother's comeliness?"
The little archduchess looked frightened at the question, and timidly raised her large eyes. "My imperial mamma is as handsome as ever she was," said the child, in a trembling voice.
"And she will always be handsome to us, should she live until old age shall have wrinkled her face and paled her cheeks," cried Joseph warmly. "The picture of her youthful grace and beauty is engraved upon our hearts, and nothing can ever remove it thence. To the eyes of her children a noble and beloved mother is always beautiful. "
The empress said nothing in reply. She smiled affectionately upon her son, and inclining her head kindly to the others, retired to her sitting-room. She walked several times up and down, and finally approached her mirror. In accordance with an old superstition, which pronounces it ill-luck to allow a looking-glass in the room of a sick person, this large mirror had been covered with a heavy silk curtain. The empress drew it back; but instead of her looking-glass, she was confronted by a portrait of her late husband, the emperor. She uttered an exclamation of surprise and joy, and contemplated the picture with a happy smile. "God bless thee, my Franz, my noble emperor!" whispered she. "Thou art ever the same; thy dear smile is unaltered, although I am no longer thy handsome bride, but a hideous and disfigured being, from whom my children deem it fit to conceal a looking-glass. Look at me with thy dear eyes, Franz; thou wert ever my mirror, and in thy light have I seen my brightest day of earthly joy. My departed beauty leaves me not one pang of regret, since thou art gone for whom alone I prized it. Maria Theresa has ceased to be a woman—she is nothing more than a sovereign, and what to her are the scars of the small-pox? But I must see what I look like," said she, dropping the curtain. "I will show them that I am not as foolish as they imagine."
She took up her little golden bell and rang. The door of the next room opened, and Charlotte von Hieronymus entered. The empress smiled and said: "It is time to make my toilet. I will dine to-day en famille with the emperor, and I must be dressed. Let us go into my dressing-room."
The maid of honor courtesied and opened the door. Every thing there was ready for the empress. The tire-woman, the mistress of the wardrobe, the maids of honor were all at their posts; and Charlotte hastened to take her place behind the large arm-chair in which the empress was accustomed to have her hair dressed.
But Maria Theresa saw that she had not been expected in her dressing-room, for her cheval-glass was encumbered with shawls, dresses, and cloaks. She took her seat, smilingly saying to herself, "I shall see myself now, face to face."
Charlotte passed the comb through the short hair of the empress, and sighed as she thought of the offering that had been laid in the emperor's coffin; while the other maids of honor stood silent around. Maria Theresa, usually so familiar and talkative at this hour, spoke not a word. She looked sharply at the cheval-glass, and began carelessly, and as if by chance, to remove with her foot, the dresses that encumbered it; then, as if ashamed of her artifice, she suddenly rose from the chair, and with an energetic gesture unbared the mirror.
No mirror was there! Nothing greeted the empress's eyes save the empty frame. She turned a reproachful glance upon the little coiffeuse.