The great pile of Hohenszalras seemed to tower up into the very clouds; the evening sun, not yet sunk behind the Venediger range, shone ruddily on all its towers and its gothic spires, and the grim sculptures and the glistening metal, with which it was so lavishly ornamented, were illumined till it looked like some colossal and enchanted citadel, where soon the magic ivory horn of Childe Boland might sound and wake the spell-bound warders.
If only Bela, lord of all, had lived!
But her regret was not only for her brother.
In the October of that year her solitude was broken; her Sovereign signified her desire to see Hohenszalras again. They were about to visit Salzburg, and expressed their desire to pass three days in the Iselthal. There was nothing to be done but to express gratitude for the honour and make the necessary preparations. The von Szalras had been always loyal allies rather than subjects, and their devotion to the Habsburg house had been proved in many ways and with constancy. She felt that she would rather have to collect and equip a regiment of horse, as her fathers had done, than fill her home with the tapage inevitable to an Imperial reception, but she was not insensible to the friendship that dictated this mark of honour.
'Fate conspires to make me break my resolutions,' she said to the Princess; who answered with scant sympathy:
'There are some resolutions much more wisely broken than persevered in; your vows of solitude are amongst them.'
'Three days will not long affect my solitude.'
'Who knows? At all events, Hohenszalras for those three days will be worthy of its traditions—if only it will not rain.'
'We will hope that it may not. Let us prepare the list of invitations.'
When she had addressed all the invitations to some fifty of the greatest families of the empire for the house party, she took one of the cards engraved 'To meet their Imperial Majesties,' and hesitated some moments, then wrote across it the name of Sabran.