The performance was repeated three times over. The prince was wild with delight, but one evening he looked very much worried.
“Unless I am very much mistaken,” said the mistress of the robes to the princess, “Rassi is trying to play us some trick. I would suggest that your Highness should have some acting to-morrow night. The prince will act badly, and in his despair, he will tell you something.”
As a matter of fact the prince did act very ill; he was hardly audible, and could not contrive to wind up his sentences. By the end of the first act the tears were almost standing in his eyes. The duchess kept close beside him, but she was cold and unmoved. The prince, finding himself alone with her for a moment in the green room, went over to the door and shut it. Then he said:
“I shall never be able to get through the second and third acts. I will not submit to being applauded out of good nature. The applause I was given to-night almost broke my heart. Advise me. What am I to do?”
“I will go upon the stage; I will make a deep courtesy to her Highness, and another to the audience, and I will announce that the actor who was playing the part of Lelio has been taken suddenly ill, and that therefore the play will be wound up with a little music. Count Rusca and the little Ghisolfi will be too delighted to have a chance of showing off their thin voices before such a brilliant assembly.”
The prince seized the duchess’s hand and kissed it passionately. “Why are you not a man?” he cried. “You would give me good advice! Rassi has just laid a hundred and eighty-two depositions against the persons accused of murdering my father on my writing-table, and besides the depositions there is an indictment which covers more than two hundred pages. I shall have to read them all, and further, I have given my word not to say anything about them to the count. All this is sure to end in executions. Already he is pressing me to have Ferrante Palla, that great poet whom I admire so much, carried off from a place near Antibes, in France, where he is living under the name of Poncet.”
“From the day when your Highness hangs a Liberal, Rassi will be bound to the ministry by iron chains, and that is what he most earnestly desires. But it will not be safe for your Highness to let it be known you are going to take a drive, two hours before you start. Neither the princess nor the count shall hear, through me, of the cry of anguish which has just escaped you, but as my oath forbids me to keep any secret from the princess, I shall be glad if your Highness will tell your mother what you have just permitted me to hear.”
This idea diverted the sovereign’s mind from the distress with which his failure as an actor had overwhelmed him.
“Very good. Go and call my mother. I will go straight to her cabinet.”
The prince left the theatre, crossed the drawing-room leading to it, and haughtily dismissed the great chamberlain and the aide-de-camp in waiting, who had followed him. The princess, on her part, hastily left the auditorium. As soon as she had reached her own apartments the duchess courtesied profoundly to mother and son, and left them alone together. The excitement of the courtiers may be conceived; that is one of the things which makes a court so entertaining. In an hour’s time, the prince himself appeared at the door of the cabinet, and summoned the duchess. The princess was in tears, the prince looked very much disturbed.