The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the empire.
As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After all, I may do her some honour before I die.'
When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.
Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.
There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:
'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to him, under secrecy, what I know.'
They were fully signed——'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph. They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an old soldier does look at troops.