“Why should I talk to a woman on this business?” he said. “If Augustus wants peace let him send a man to ask for it.” Without the least emotion he resisted the Count’s efforts to persuade and induce him to see the fair ambassadress.
“She will think you are afraid of her,” remarked the Count, with some malice.
“I have no doubt a woman’s vanity would go that length,” replied the King calmly. “Tell her I am afraid of her,” he gave his ugly smile, “if that will content her.”
“Nothing will content her but an interview with your Majesty.”
“Then she must leave dissatisfied,” said Karl, with an indifference more hopeless to combat than open anger.
The minister reported his ill-success to the Countess; she had not expected that the King would refuse even to see her, and angry disappointment nerved her with yet greater determination to gain her object.
“I will achieve my end by other means,” she said, and thanked Count Piper for his useless services.
Though she had been a week near the camp, lodging, most inconveniently, in one of the little village houses, she had not yet seen the King, save once when he had swept by with a number of his guards, and she had not been able to distinguish his person.
But she soon ascertained that it was his custom to ride abroad unattended in the early morning and the afternoon, and she resolved to encounter him on one of these occasions, and one day stationed herself in her little light carriage on the road the King took most frequently.
As soon as her servant pointed out a solitary horseman coming towards them, saying, “The King of Sweden!” Aurora descended into the road still covered with frozen snow, and put herself in the middle of the way, holding her black fur mantle up from the road, and looking steadily up under the broad brim of her beaver hat.