“My father may please or not please,” he said to them. “I do not go without Madame de Roux!”
The Marshal received the information with a fearful outburst of profanity.
“He is not to be moved, Monseigneur!” said Köhler.
“Excellency,” put in von Steyregg, “the Prince, your son, is a chip of the old block. Without the petticoat he will not budge, I pledge you the word of a Magyar nobleman!” He shook his bald and flaming head, and shook off the tear that as usual hung pendulous from the weeping eyelid, as he added:
“And the lady is a highly attractive person!”
“We shall split on the rock of her attractive person!” said the Marshal with a detonating oath. And so it ultimately proved.
Neither then, nor long afterwards, when the scar of the appalling fiasco had partially healed, could Dunoisse rid himself of the impression that the expedition had been of the type of adventure that is wrought of the stuff of dreams.
In the highlands of South Bavaria, sheltered by the skirts of the Alps, lay the Principality of Widinitz, a mountainous district cloaked with beech-woods and pine-forests, jeweled by turquoise lakes, and valleys like hollowed emeralds, kept green in the fiercest heats by the mountain-torrents and glacier-rivers and streams of melted snow....
That August journey was one of unclouded pleasure. The handsome officer and the lovely lady in the luxurious dark green traveling-chariot, that was lined with pale green satin and drawn by three powerful grays, were taken by the hosts and hostesses of the picturesque, vine-draped and rose-covered posting-inns where they slept, or halted to change horses, to be a honeymooning couple. One may imagine how the princely coronet that gleamed above the coat-of-arms emblazoned on the door-panels of the green chariot (a touch of von Steyregg’s) and engraved upon the silver plating of the harness (a happy inspiration of Köhler’s) swelled the totals of the bills. As for the Marshal’s agents, sharing with the Colonel’s valet and Madame’s maid the big brown landau that lumbered at the heels of four stout beasts in the wheel-tracks of the green chariot, they were supposed to be the major-domo and the chaplain of the distinguished pair.