“Put your letter and your lover in your bosom,” said Julia, with a laugh; “he will be very happy there, and then you can receive the old count without betraying your lover’s presence! The count has so pressingly begged for an audience that I finally promised to intercede with you for him.”
“Ah, this eternal business!” angrily exclaimed the princess. “They will never let me have any peace; they harass me the whole day. Even now, when it is time to be making my toilet for the ball—even now I must be tormented with affairs of state.”
“Shall I, then, send away Count Ostermann?” sulkily asked Julia.
“That I may, consequently, for the whole evening see you with a dissatisfied face? No, let him come; but forget not that I submit to this annoyance only to please you.”
With a grateful smile, Julia kissed the regent’s hand, and then hastened to bear to Count Ostermann the favorable answer.
In a few minutes, Count Ostermann, painfully supporting himself upon two crutches, entered the regent’s cabinet.
Anna Leopoldowna received him, sitting in an armchair, and listlessly rummaging in a band-box filled with various articles of dress and embroidery, which had just been brought to her.
“Well,” said she, raising her eyes for a moment to glance at Ostermann, “you come at a very inconvenient hour, Herr Minister Count Ostermann. You see that I am already occupied with my toilet, and am endeavoring to find a suitable head-dress. Will you aid me in the choice, sir count?”
Ostermann had until now, painfully and with many suppressed groans, sustained himself upon his feet; at a silent nod from the princess he glided down into a chair, and staring at Anna with his piercing and wonderfully-flashing eyes, he said:
“You highness would select a head-dress? Well, as you ask my advice in the matter, I will give it; choose a head-dress so firm and solid as to prove a fortification for the defence of your head. Choose a head-dress that will protect you against conspiracies and revolutions, against false friends and smiling enemies! Choose a head-dress that will keep your head upon your shoulders!”