'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the one I possess.'
'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be pride—the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'
'They are not all simpletons.'
'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well as of the Wurstel-Prater.'
The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up, nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.
The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain, and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras, and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.
'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold, as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of their stalls.
'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert, as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with 'Willkommen' written on it.
She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single word.
How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.