"Your castellan, then, has not informed you of the horrible noise last night in the palace?" asked Napoleon, angrily. "You ought to get better nails, count, to hang up paintings, so that they do not fall down. He who wants to hang anybody or any thing, even though it be but a painting, ought to have at least a substantial gallows."
"Sire," faltered Count Munster, "I do not comprehend—this palace—"
"Is not even fit to be a gallows, for it drops those who have been hung in it," exclaimed Napoleon, vehemently. "It is an accursed place, and the air in it as sultry and oppressive as in a rat-hole. Have the carriages brought to the door. Let us depart!" He did not deign the count another glance, and returned into the adjoining room, whither none but the grand marshal and his adjutants were permitted to follow.
Fifteen minutes afterward, the emperor, with his numerous suite, left the palace of Baireuth and set out for Plauen, where he intended to join the Empress Maria Louisa, who had stopped there over night, and continue with her the journey to Dresden. The streets of Baireuth, which had presented so animated a spectacle the day before, were at this early hour quiet and deserted; all the windows were closed; only here and there a wondering, inquisitive face appeared behind the panes and looked at the carriages that rolled through the streets, and at the melancholy countenance of the emperor, who sat in his open calash. When out of the gate, he turned again, and cast an angry glance on the palace, whose high gray walls were brightened by the morning sun. "An accursed old palace!" he muttered to himself. "I shall never spend there another night." [Footnote: Napoleon's own words.—Vide Minotoli, p. 17.] And leaning back in a corner of the carriage he gazed in silence at the sky.
Count Munster, however, stood inside the palace of Baireuth, at the window of the Gallery of Palms, and looked anxiously after the emperor. The carriages disappeared at a bend in the road behind the green willows, and the count turned to Castellan Schluter, who was standing behind him.
"But tell me, for Heaven's sake, Schluter," exclaimed the count, "what did the emperor refer to? What happened to him last night?"
"There happened to him what will happen to all those who dare disquiet the White Lady of Baireuth or defy her power," said Schluter, solemnly.
"You really believe, then, that she appeared to him?" asked the count, in terror.
"The emperor sent for me late last night, and again this morning. Shall I tell your excellency what it was for? The portrait of the White Lady, which I had put yesterday into the cabinet adjoining the audience-hall in the other wing of the palace, had walked over to this side, and, in the room directly above the emperor, had thrown itself down with so much violence, that the noise resounded through the whole building."
"But that is altogether impossible," exclaimed Count Munster, in dismay. "Why, you told me that the portrait was standing in the other wing of the palace, and that you had carefully locked all the doors."