"But what said Bernasconi of the Polish singer?"
"She does not know her name, your majesty. She showed me a letter from
Colonel Dumourriez, the French plenipotentiary to the Polish Republic.
He designates her only as a Polish lady of noble birth, whose remarkable
vocal powers were worthy of your majesty's admiration."
"Do you hear that?" said Frederick to Kaunitz. "Do you hear that? The French plenipotentiary sends this prima donna to sing before the emperor. Vraiment, it seems that France is disgusted with war, and intends to try her hand at sentiment. Petticoat-government is so securely established there, that I suppose the French are about to throw a petticoat over the heads of their allies. France and Poland are two fevimes galantes."
"Yes, sire," replied Kaunitz, "but one of them is old and ugly. Lindaine La Pologne is an old coquette, who puts on youthful airs, and thinks she hides her wrinkles with paint."
"Does your highness, then, believe that her youth is forever past? Can she never be rejuvenated?" asked Frederick, with a searching look at Kaunitz's marble features.
"Sire, people who waste their youth in dissipation and rioting, have no strength when the day of real warfare dawns."
"And it would seem that the Empress of Russia has some intention of making a serious attack upon the poor old lady," said Frederick, while for the second time he took a pinch from the snuff-box of the crafty Austrian.
Meanwhile the concert was going on. Bernasconi, completely restored, sang the beautiful air from "Orpheus and Eurydice," and Frederick applauded as before. But the emperor sat silent and abstracted. His thoughts were with that Polish woman, whose love of country had brought her to Neustadt to remind him of the promises he had made to the Confederates at Eperies.
"How enthusiastically she loves Poland!" said he to himself. "She will of course find means to cross my path again, for she seeks to interest me in the fate of her fatherland. The next time she comes, I will do like the prince in the fairy-tale, I will strew pitch upon the threshold, that she may not be able to escape from me again."
Kaunitz, too, was preoccupied with thoughts of the bewitching Confederate, but the fact that she would be sure to come again was not quite so consoling to him as to Joseph.