'Though I would fain go and see that great Parisian aurist,' she said plaintively. 'My hearing is not what it used to be.'
'The great aurist shall come to you, dear mother,' said Wanda. 'I will bring him back with me.'
She travelled with a certain state, since she did not think that the moment of a visit to a dethroned sovereign was a fit time to lay ceremony aside. She took several of her servants and some of her horses with her, and journeyed by way of Munich and Strasburg.
Madame Ottilie was too glad she should go anywhere to offer opposition; and in her heart of hearts she thought of her favourite. He was in Paris; who knew what might happen?
It was midwinter, and the snow was deep on all the country, whether of mountain or of plain, which stretched between the Tauern and the French capital. But there was no great delay of the express, and in some forty hours the Countess von Szalras, with her attendants, and her horses with theirs, arrived at the Hôtel Bristol.
The noise, the movement, the brilliancy of the streets seemed a strange spectacle, after four years spent without leaving the woodland quiet and mountain solitudes of Hohenszalras.
She was angry with herself that, as she stood at the windows of her apartment, she almost unconsciously watched the faces of the crowd passing below, and felt a vague expectancy of seeing amongst them the face of Sabran.
She went that evening, to the modest hired house where the young and beautiful sovereign she came to visit had found a sorry refuge. It was a meeting full of pain to both. When they had last parted at the Hofburg of Vienna, the young queen had been in all the triumph and hope of brilliant nuptials; and at Hohenszalras, the people's Heilige Bela had been living, a happy boy, in all his fair promise.
Meanwhile, the news-sheets informed all their leaders that the Countess von Szalras was in Paris. Ambassadors and ambassadresses, princes and princesses, and a vast number of very great people, hastened to write their names at the Hôtel Bristol.
Amongst the cards left was that of Sabran. But he sent it; he did not go in person.