“How Monsieur the Baron loves His Serene Highness!” said Henriette’s maid to her mistress at hairbrushing time that night. “Fancy, Madame, he rocked him in his arms as an infant, and taught him to ride his little horse. Monseigneur would go nowhere without his good M. von Steyregg, who plunged into a boiling torrent (into which Monseigneur’s nurse had accidentally dropped him) and saved him at the risk of life. It is incredible, such devotion! It makes one weep to hear Monsieur the Baron talk!”
And the maid made good her words with a snuffle or two; and the mistress even wept a little in sympathy. Tears came at call to those beautiful eyes of Henriette’s.
Thus, daily drawing nearer to the scene of destined humiliation and well-earned disgrace, the green chariot and the brown landau rolled on, until at high noon upon the Vigil of the Assumption, after a three hours’ drive through ancient oak and beech-forests, when a hundred unseen church-bells were tripling the Angelus, the gray walls and gates of the towers of Widinitz rose before the travelers, venerable in their setting of ivy only less ancient, whose rugged stems grew thick as the body of a man.
It was a city in a forest, with the tops of more trees waving over the ivied walls of it. Oak and beech followed the chariot and the landau to the drawbridge, fell back as the vehicles crunched over the gravel-covered timbers, started up under the gateway, and marched with them through the streets that were bordered with runnels of clear water. Signs of preparation for the morrow’s solemnities were not lacking. Men leading donkeys burdened with panniers of white or reddish-colored sand, were distributing this medium in astonishing patterns over the principal thoroughfares. Others, who followed, were strewing them with pine-branches and the glossy leaves of laurel and bay. Lamps, as yet unlighted, twinkled among the boughs. Venetian masts of the Bavarian colors supported garlands of many-colored streamers. The Market Place was a blaze of color, with temporary altars erected at the opening of every street. And nearly every householder, with his family and servants, was engaged in decorating his dwelling with carpets, bunting, and wreaths. Said von Steyregg, as he tumbled out of the brown landau, and ran with servile hurry and flapping coat-tails, to open the door of the green chariot when it finally stopped under the sign of “The Three Crown” inn: “One would think, Highness, that the news of your intended visit had reached Widinitz before you.” His tear hung trembling upon his eyelid as, with an egregious affectation of respect and reverence, he assisted his principal to descend.
“It is in honor of Our Lady’s Feast to-morrow, all that you see,” explained the landlord, a short man in claret-colored kersey knee-breeches, blue yarn stockings, snowy shirt-sleeves, and spotless apron, who had come out to receive the strange guests. He possessed a suite of private rooms, worthy of persons of such distinction. He pointed out one or two of the lions of Widinitz before he ushered them in—the Schloss, a square building of red granite with pepper-box towers, topping a green hill that breasted up upon the northern side of the Market-Place. Another steeper hill rose upon the southern side of the great white square that was spangled with silver, dancing fountains; and the towers and roofs and steeples of the city proper covered this like a fungus-growth. The ancient Gothic pile of the Cathedral crowned the summit; the smaller, fortress-like building adjoining, the host pointed out as the Archbishop’s Palace, an episcopal habitation, reared on the foundations of what had been a Roman camp.
“Sprung, your Excellencies, or our most learned Professors lie,” explained the voluble landlord, “from the ruins of a temple where the Old Slavonians used to sacrifice white cocks and new mead to Svantovid, their god of War. God or no god, the gentleman had a sufficiently queer name, as your Excellencies will agree; and as to white cocks, the broth of one is—according to the old nurse-women of our principality—a certain remedy for tetters. Heathen they were that drank sickly mead in preference to sound wine!—but thanks be to Heaven and St. Procopius, who converted them, we that are come down from those old sinners know better to-day; and the vineyards of the Wid yield a liquor that has no equal in Bavaria.”
And the landlord proudly pointed to a third hill that cropped up westwards; at the foot of which eminence a jade-green trout-river, spanned by three bridges of white marble, rushed foaming between rocky banks that were covered with vines, laden now with the glowing purple clusters from which an excellent red wine was made by the vine-growers of the principality.
Flasks of this sterling vintage figured upon the guest-table of the Inn of “The Three Crowns,” when the newly-arrived travelers sat down to dine, the occupants of the green chariot being served in their private apartment: the Marshal’s agents, for humility or for the sake of freer elbow-play than is licensed by strict good manners, preferring to eat at the common ordinary, spread in the coffee-room, together with Madame’s maid and the Colonel’s man.
Here, down both sides of a long table, were ranged perhaps a score of decent citizens of the sterner sex, indicating the nature of their several professions, trades, and occupations, in the fashion of their attire, as was the custom then; and engaged in discussing what, for the ninety-nine per cent. of Catholics among the company, was the single meal of the fasting-day.
Judge, then, how frigidly received by the faithful were Steyregg’s Gargantuan praises of the fish, flesh, fowl, and pastry which were set before himself and his partner, and of which both ate copiously, washing down their meal with plentiful libations of the juice of the local vine.