“What if you, Meinherr, who supply the Palace with groceries and are so highly respected, should drop a hint to his Lordship in writing? Retreat or no retreat, I’ll bet you a flask of my best the Archbishop takes measures, and promptly, too! Here, as it chances, is my cook’s errand-boy with his basket. Look you, I will put a new-caught trout from the Wid inside it, and your bit of paper under that. The Father Economus will be sure to spy it; the rest we may confidently leave to Heaven!”
Meanwhile the Marshal’s agents, having fed largely and drunk to correspond, rang the bell, summoned the innkeeper, and issued orders. Then von Steyregg mounted to the private room, scratched the door after the manner of the confidential attendants of royal personages, and appeared, contorted with bows, before the Colonel and Madame, hoping that the entertainment set before them had not been utterly unworthy of personages so exalted! “It is not, Your Serene Highness, as though you were at your own Schloss over yonder,” he said, spreading his thick hands and shrugging his big shoulders. “Ere long let us hope that Destiny and Your Serene Highness’s lucky star will restore you to your own! Meanwhile, I have ordered a barouche, with four outriders, being the best equipage the establishment can furnish. It is but fitting that Your Highness should utilize the earliest opportunity following your arrival to make a Royal Progress—I would say, a little tour of inspection—embracing the chief objects of interest in the town.”
Dunoisse, inwardly sickened by this prospect, made objections, but Henriette overruled them all. That idea of a Royal Progress was pleasantly titillating. The Eve in her snatched at the apple tendered by the serpent von Steyregg. The barouche came lumbering to the front door before the dispute ended in Madame’s favor; she glided away to “make herself beautiful,” leaving a mollifying glance and smile behind with her vanquished opponent. So, petulantly fuming, Dunoisse made ready to accompany her, mentally thanking Heaven that the Staff uniform of ceremony (in which the Baron suggested his victim should array himself) had been left behind in the Rue de Bac.
If the four stout, long-maned, and amply-tailed nags attached to the barouche had not proved pink-eyed and cream-colored; if the vehicle itself had not been so conspicuously yellow; if the blue-and-scarlet livery of the coachman and the brace of badly-matching footmen, who hung to the back-straps and occupied the board behind, had been less tawdry and belaced with grease; if the red-nosed elderly outriders had not been so obviously bemused with potent liquor, and their beasts less spavined, broken-kneed and cracked in wind, that so-called progress through the capital of his ancestors’ hereditary principality might have proved less intolerable to the unlucky scion of their race. But with Köhler and von Steyregg on the front seat, both bare-headed and bare-toothed, oozing with respect and deference, the Baron’s bosom heaving with loyal enthusiasm beneath the metal starfish previously described; some luckless subject of mediæval justice newly flayed, and paraded upon the hangman’s cart for the popular obloquy, might have felt as raw and smarting as did Dunoisse.
A straggling cortège of beggars, spectacle-hunters, servant-maids in their high crimped caps and silver breast-chains, loafers and idlers of both sexes accompanied the yellow barouche. Vocal dogs and an Italian organ-grinder with a pair of monkeys brought up the rear of this motley following. Every now and then von Steyregg would plunge his hand into a stout linen bag, which he nursed upon his knees, and scatter small change among these gentry. You may imagine this largesse received with yells, cheers, and scrambling. Black eyes and gory noses were distributed at each fresh shower.
The Town Hall and the Museum, occupying an entire side of the Market Place, the Church of the Pied Friars, and the Tower of the Clock with its life-sized brazen woman spinning at the top of the weathercock, occupied but passing notice from the distinguished visitors. The yellow barouche, with its huzzaing tail of ragamuffins, breasted the State Street, while the holiday strollers that thronged the sidewalks stood still to stare, and heads were projected from upper windows. And reaching the Cathedral Square that crowned the hilltop, the noble party alighted at the west porch of the stately building and passed in.
Not for years had Dunoisse set foot across the threshold of the House of God; the cult of devotion and worship, the high belief in glorious things unseen, the fulfillment of the obligations of the Catholic faith, had long ceased to be indispensable or even necessary to the man; he looked back upon the piety and fervor of his boyhood with a wonder that was largely mingled with contempt. Now, as he mechanically dipped two fingers in the miniature font that was supported by a sculptured shield bearing the casque with the panache, surmounted by the sable heron of Widinitz, made the Sign of the Cross, and bent the knee before the solemn splendors of the High Altar—gleaming upon the vision from the distant end of the huge echoing nave—he glanced at Henriette in wonder at the contained and modest reverence of her demeanor; and, seeing her sink down gracefully amidst her whispering flounces and bow her lovely head as though in adoration, felt the muscles of his lips twitch with the ironical desire to smile.
“Wonderful!” he thought, more nearly approaching to a critical analysis of her than he had ever permitted himself. “Whether she believes or not, she never dispenses with the outward observance of religion! She is an enigma, a problem to baffle Œdipus! One would say she and not the son of my mother had Carmel in the blood!”
For how strangely amorous license and devotional fervor commingled in the nature of this woman, who should know better than this man....