"A king, nevertheless, and a very handsome man; and she was inconsolable when he ceased to love her."
"Ah! she was abandoned, then, was she?" cried the Countess Wielopolska.
"Oh no, dear Anna! Your sister-in-law was not guilty of the belise of playing Queen Dido. As she felt quite sure that the king would leave her soon or late, she anticipated the day, and left him. Was it not excellent? She went off with Prince Repnin."
"Prince Repnin!" exclaimed the countess with horror. "The Russian ambassador!"
"The same. You should have seen the despair of the king. But he was amiable even in his grief. He tried all sorts of lover's stratagems to win back the countess; he prowled around her house at night singing like a Troubadour; be wrote her bushels of letters to implore an interview. All in vain. The liaison with Repnin was made public, and that, of course, ended the affair. The king was inconsolable. [Footnote: Wraxall, "Memoirs of the Court of Vienna," vol. ii., p. 96.] He gave ball after ball, never missed an evening at the theatre, gambled all night, gave sleighing parties, and so on, but it was easy to see that his heart was broken; and had not Tissona, the pretty cantatrice, succeeded in comforting him, I really do believe that our handsome king would have killed himself for despair."
"Ah, he is consoled, is he?" said the countess with curling lips. "He jests and dances, serenades and gambles, while the gory knout reeks with the noblest blood in Poland, and her noblest sons are staggering along the frozen wastes of Siberia! Oh Stanislaus! Stanislaus! A day of reckoning will come for him who wears the splendor of royalty, yet casts away its obligations!"
"Vraiment, dear Anna, to hear your rhapsodies, one would almost believe you to be one of the Confederates who lately attempted the life of the king," cried the Countess Zamoiska, laughing.
"Who attempted the king's life?" said the countess, turning pale.
"Why three robbers: Lukawski, Strawinski, and Kosinski."
"I never heard of it," replied the countess, much agitated. "Tell me what you know of it, if you can, Luschinka."