"Pardon me, your highness, but this is your day for receiving the foreign ambassadors, and his excellency of Austria craves an audience?"
"Cobenzl? Is he alone?"
"Yes, your highness."
"In ten minutes, admit him here."
CHAPTER CXXXV.
THE AUSTRIAN AMBASSADOR.
Ten minutes later the door was opened, and Count Cobenzl, on the point of his toes, tipped into the room. Potemkin, on the sofa, was looking the picture of indifference; his eyes half-shut and his tall form stretched out at full length, he seemed just to have awakened from sleep. But during those ten minutes he had been doing any thing but sleeping. He had been decorating himself with the cross of the Black Eagle, and had allowed the broad ribbon to which it was attached to trail upon the carpet.
"It is well, Count Cobenzl," said Potemkin, greeting the minister, "that you did not come five minutes later, for you would not have met me at all."
"Pardon me, I should then have had but five minutes to wait in your anteroom," replied Cobenzl. "I detest anterooms, and wish that I had come ten minutes later, that I might have been introduced to your presence at once."
"You would not have seen me at all, I tell you; for I am about to have an audience of the empress."