“And very soon after that we were ready,” continued Baroness Paula, “and my mother conducted us out. The Queen’s crape veil quite hid my face, and no one seemed to have a suspicion. The commandant was waiting in the hall, and he bowed very low and regretted the necessity for disturbing me at such an hour. I said that he was only doing his duty, and that I was grateful to him for his fidelity—imitating the Queen’s voice as well as I could. The gentlemen of the household were all ready too, and we drove away from the villa with proper ceremony,—the commandant had had the carriages prepared while we were dressing. The soldiers marched on either side, and we reached the Bishop’s palace without any alarm.”
“I can best describe to his Excellency the next development of the plot,” said Pavlovics, the King’s chamberlain. “Rooms were provided for us at the palace, Count, and we were left in peace during the night; but in the morning the commandant appeared with a file of soldiers in the apartments which had been allotted to us of his Majesty’s household, and ordered that the King should be roused, dressed, and brought to him. The Government, so he said, had decided that for the safety of the kingdom it was imperative that his Majesty should become a member of the Orthodox Church, and the Bishop was already waiting in the cathedral to perform the ceremony of confirmation. The Queen had agreed to the measure, but would appear to resist it, for fear of the anger of her German relatives, and therefore it would be best if it could be carried out without arousing her Majesty. Thunderstruck, and not knowing what to believe, I asked to speak to Mrs Jones, who declared she would not give up the King for any such purpose, and that his Majesty was ill in bed. Going back to the commandant, I told him this, and both Herr Batzen and I endeavoured to induce him to abandon his intention——”
“Yes, indeed,” put in the old pastor, whose mild eyes had acquired a look of startled surprise during the stirring events of the last fortnight. “I represented to him as forcibly as I could the extreme folly and wickedness of the course he proposed; but he pushed me rudely aside, and thrust his way into the King’s room——”
“Where Mrs Jones stood in front of the bed, and defied him to approach,” went on Pavlovics. “He called two soldiers to drag her away (we were already under guard), and pulled off the bedclothes. To his stupefaction and ours, there was no child in the bed, but only a large doll. Mrs Jones, seeing her advantage, began to abuse him, assuring him that the King was far away, and safe out of his reach, and that he might take the doll, and welcome, and do what he liked with it, and much good might it do him! Utterly astonished, they searched the room, to discover whether his Majesty was concealed anywhere about it, and then went away, to question the sentries. After a time an officer came to tell us to go to the Queen, and inform her of the disappearance of her son, and we prepared, very unwillingly, to do this.”
“Now it is my turn again,” said Baroness Paula. “When M. Pavlovics and Herr Batzen had joined us, and we had explained things to them and to the ladies who were not in the plot, and warned them to keep up the farce, we were startled by the entrance of the commandant and some soldiers. I stood up, and in a most regal voice demanded what they meant by such an intrusion; but he answered politely that it was necessary to discover who it was that had kidnapped the King, that the criminals might be pursued and punished. He had a list in his hand, and calling over the names, discovered that Fräulein von Staubach, the King’s governess, and Paula von Hilfenstein, a maid of honour, were missing. Then they left us, and we never saw the commandant again, except at a distance.”
“They did not try to drag you into their schemes?” asked Cyril.
“No; they left us severely alone. Oh, it was fearfully dull, Count—you can’t imagine how dull, for my mother would not allow me to relax my dignity for a moment, lest there should be spies watching us. She drilled me in my part from morning to night; and there I sat in the Queen’s clothes, with the veil arranged so as to hide my face from any one coming into the room. When we went out, I had the veil down, of course.”
“But surely they did not let you go into the town?”
“Oh no; but each day we were allowed to walk for an hour in an inner courtyard with some weeds in it. They took the sentries out of the way for the time, and never allowed even the servants to cross the square. But on the first day I felt certain that we were being watched, and I pinched Madame Stefanovics’s arm—she was walking with me—and we both glanced up, and saw some one looking at us out of a little window; but I thought it was the Bishop, and she thought it was the commandant.”
“Both, no doubt,” commented Cyril. “Their suspicions had been roused as to the genuineness of their capture. Did they ever try to induce you to sign any document for them, Baroness?”