CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE RIVALS.
The baron had no sooner closed the door of the boudoir when the young Prince von Lichtenstein hastened to Fanny, and, impetuously seizing her hand, looked at her with a passionate and angry air.
“You did that for the purpose of giving me pain, I suppose?” he asked, with quivering lips. “You wished to prove to me that you did not confer any special favor upon me; Yesterday you were kind enough to assure me that no man ever had set foot into this room, and that I should be the first to whom it would be opened today; and I was such a conceited fool as to believe your beatifying words, and I rush hither as early as is permitted by decency and respect, and yet I do not find you alone.”
“It was my husband who was here,” said Fanny, almost deprecatingly.
“It was a man,” he ejaculated, impetuously, “and you had given me the solemn assurance that this door had never yet opened to any man. Oh, I had implored you on my knees, and with tearful eyes, to allow me to see you here to-day; it seemed to me as though the gates of paradise were to be at last opened to me; no sleep came into my eyes all night, the consciousness of my approaching bliss kept me awake; it was over me like a smiling cherub, and I was dreaming with open eyes. And now that the lazy, snail-like time has elapsed, now that I have arrived here, I find in my heaven, at the side of my cherub, a calculating machine, desecrating my paradise by vile accounts—”
“Pray do not go on in this manner,” interrupted Fanny, sternly. “You found my husband here, and that, of course, dissolves the whole poetry of your words into plain prose, for she, whom in your enthusiastic strain you styled your cherub, is simply the wife of this noble and excellent man, whom you were free to compare with a calculating machine.”
“You are angry with me!” exclaimed the young prince, disconsolately. “You make no allowance for my grief, my disappointment, yea, my confusion! You have punished me so rudely for my presumption, and will not even permit my heart to bridle up and give utterance to its wrath.”
“I did not know that you were presumptuous toward me, and could not think, therefore, of inflicting punishment on you,” said Fanny; “but I know that you have no right to insult the man whose name I bear.”