“Here lie Your Serene Highness’s illustrious forefathers!” And ostentatiously dried his sympathetic tear with a vast flapping handkerchief of Isabella hue.
Certainly the sacred fane was populous with departed von Widinitz, from Albertus I., First of the Line, and his spouse, the chaste Philippina; to Ludovicus, the latest departed, whose Bathildis had predeceased him by a generation or two.
You saw them represented from life-size to the quarter-bust, in brass, bronze, lead, marble, porphyry, granite, alabaster—every conceivable medium known to sepulchral Art. And to Dunoisse’s peculiar torment, those tricksy sprites, von Steyregg and Köhler, united in discovering between the cast or sculptured countenances of these worthies and the moody visage of their harassed descendant resemblances of the striking kind. To hear the knaves appeal to one another—warrant, justify, and approve the claim of a thirteenth-century nose to its modern reproduction—to witness them scouring aisles or rummaging chapels in full cry after a chin, or mouth, or ear, or forehead; to see them run the elusive feature from metal or stone to living earth; and congratulate one another on the fortunate issue of the chase; would have provoked a smile on the countenance of a Trappist. Their sacrifice laughed even whilst he writhed.
The ceremony of leaving cards upon the Archbishop of Widinitz followed. A trap-mouthed, blue-shaven ecclesiastic of the humbler sort, who wore a bunch of keys at the girdle of his well-darned cassock, opened the oaken, iron-studded door, and took the proffered oblongs of pasteboard without enthusiasm, intimating that His Lordship did not receive strangers upon days of solemn retreat. With this janitor von Steyregg parleyed vainly, maintaining a brisk exchange of arguments at the top of the Palace doorsteps, whilst his principals waited at the bottom in the yellow barouche.
A sportive Fate at this juncture breaks the thread of the narrative with a Pantomime Interlude. For as, more in sorrow than in anger at the obstinacy of the janitor, the Baron shook off his tear upon the inhospitable threshold, and turned upon his heel—a little white-headed, berry-brown urchin—a bare-legged messenger, arrayed in a tattered shirt and the upper half of a pair of adult breeches, carrying a reed-basket in which reposed a fine, fat, silvery trout, newly-caught and tempting,—dived between the legs that so strikingly resembled balusters, and dodged into the Palace with a flourish of dirty heels.
If a portly Magyar of noble rank, in the act of rolling down a steepish flight of limestone steps, could possibly be regarded as a mirth-provoking object, one might be tempted to smile as von Steyregg, recording each revolution upon his person with grievous bumps and bruises, performed the horizontal descent. Henriette screamed, Köhler beat his bosom, the tag-rag and bobtail roared with glee, while Dunoisse, compelled to share in their amusement despite the sickness at his heart, jumped out of the carriage and picked up the groaning Baron, restored him his battered curly-brimmed hat, the comb, hairbrush, and piece of soap which had escaped from his coat-tails in the course of transit, thrust him into the vehicle, and bade the coachman return to “The Three Crowns.”
LVIII
What the Father Economus said when he found the grocer’s billet under the red-spotted trout we may not hear. How the Archbishop received the warning must be equally a matter of conjecture. Hasten on to the smarting conclusion of the Day of Disgrace that dawned so fairly, that shone so brightly, that promised such a harvest to those who failed to mark how upon the southwest horizon huge formless ramparts of blue black cumuli were steadily building, while faint mutterings of distant thunder presaged the breaking of the storm....
The four adventurers had supped together upon the best the inn could furnish. Now, seated at ease about the relics of the banquet, in the dining-room of the private suite occupied by His Serene Highness and Her Excellency, they discussed the Plan of Campaign. Fragrant vapors of choicest Habanas enhaloed them, by permission of Her Excellency, who held between her exquisite lips a Turkish cigarette. And as they smoked and talked, the contents of a capacious China Bowl of Maraschino Punch (compounded by Köhler, who was a clever hand at such delicious chemistry) sank lower, inch by inch....
You may picture Steyregg, revived by much food and a great deal of liquor; his cuts and scratches plastered with diachylum, the Alpine summit of his bald occiput adorned by a compassionate chambermaid with patches of brown-paper steeped in vinegar, retained in place by a linen bandage of turban-shape, reading from a folio sheet of coarsely printed rag-paper, blackened with ancient Gothic capitals (and filched from where it had fluttered, held by a pin, upon one of the notice-boards exposed in the porch of the Cathedral), the Programme for the following day.