'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,' answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else, had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'
That would have been better than to an adventurer.'
'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest aristocracies of the world, if poor.'
'Ce que femme veut,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the Church had been worsted by women.
The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband, and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself, as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always will. If not—if not—well, he must go!'
One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires. She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.
'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'
'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with those roses.'
'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment. It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'
'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your coronet, to which I can add none!'