The long weeks of tumultuous days and sleepless nights had reduced her feebleness to utter exhaustion, but passionate excitement supported her, and gave her the strength to stand there bearing the weight of her heavy robes, the heated air, the fatigue of standing.
The Elector, with four thousand nobles, gentlemen, and soldiers, had ridden to meet the bridegroom and his escort outside the city; to those waiting here the return of Augustus and his guest seemed wearisomely delayed.
"Why do they not come—why do they not come?" muttered Anne again and again.
Rénèe le Meung, who stood close behind, remarked her mistress's gorgeous figure with a tired curiosity.
The waiting-woman was herself so remote in heart from all this festivity which she stood in the centre of, so far in spirit from all the excitement by which she was surrounded, that these people seemed to her in a strange way lifeless—splendid puppets like those the tailor had brought on the polished wood gallows; and when she looked at the bride she was sorry, in a vague way, that Anne was not more lovely, more gracious, more sweet. The long-stifled romance of her own youth told her the central figure of all this pageantry should be more worthy.
Since seven that morning Anne had stood on her feet being attired, and it was now towards two of the clock—the actual time of the wedding being five.
All those hours of her women's labour and fatigue, her own screaming impatience and trembling nervousness, had resulted in an appearance almost grotesquely brilliant.
She wore a gown of stiff satin, interchangeable wine red and yellow—the colour of old amber; it flowed fold on fold from her tight waist, to fall heavily on the floor, weighted by a hem of ruby and topaz embroidery; in front it was slightly caught up by a gold cord, to display a petticoat of black and crimson brocade in a design of flowers, and the pointed shoes cloth of gold with red silk tissue roses.
The bodice was crimson cloth of gold, cut low in the front, and rising behind to a high upstanding collar of finest gold lace, the full sleeves were of pale yellow satin, laced across and across with gold and crimson cords; round the throat and over the bosom hung strings of pearls and rubies and long chains of curious enamel; the dull-coloured hair was crowned by a gold cap sewn with pearls, and long emeralds swung in the ears.
From Anne's stooping shoulders there hung, despite the heat, an orange mantle lined and bordered with ermine, which lay a full yard on the polished boards behind her. But none of this costly and princely magnificence could disguise the thin malformed figure, and the fierce fire of the gems only served to make the pale weary face look like a colourless mask—and colourless she was, from her pallid lips to her light brows—only in her pale eyes burned the flame of her passionate, jealous, eager soul.