"Should the Duke of Lorraine be forced to raise the siege a second time, I hope that the war department will remember that it was I, and not my commander-in-chief, who rejected their advice. So that, if we should be unfortunate, mine be the blame of the disaster, for I ordered the attack."
At this moment the door of the council-chamber was opened with some precipitation, and the chamberlain of the day appeared on the threshold.
"What do you come to announce?" asked Leopold.
"Sire, a bearer of dispatches from his highness of Lorraine."
"Ah, lupus in fabula" said the emperor, with a smile. "Well—let in the lupus."
"Your majesty," interrupted the Margrave of Baden, "would it not be better for me to receive the dispatches, and communicate their contents to you? The news of another disaster will be a great blow: your mind should be prepared to receive it."
"I am prepared for whatever it may please God to assign," replied Leopold, reverently. "If the news be bad, it is my duty to confront it like a man; if good, let me taste it pure, as it comes from the lips of the messenger. Let him enter!"
The chamberlain stepped back, made a sign to the page in the anteroom, and both sides of the door were flung open.
"Our bearer is a person of distinction," said Leopold to himself. "Both doors are opened for a reigning prince, a grandee of Spain, or—"
Just then the bearer of dispatches appeared—a small, slight person, in a simple uniform, but his breast well covered with orders, both Austrian and Spanish.