"Is it possible? Is that—she—our King—is that?"
"Who should it be, domine illustrissime?" answered the person thus addressed, with the Latin courtesy of the country. "Who should it be, friend?"
Again Otmar found force to falter forth—
"And he, who has given her his hand to mount the throne—he who now stands behind her, glittering in all the rich fancifulness of that outlandish dress—who is he?"
"Humph!" replied the old Hungarian, in no very amiable tone of voice. "That is her favourite German minister, the young Prince Kaunitz—a silly fop! She might have better and less compromising servants about her person, methinks. As you seem a stranger, domine," he pursued, unheeding Otmar's agitation, "you may like to know that the old ecclesiastic, who has taken the other place behind her, is our Archbishop Primate, the Prince Emmeric Esterhazy, at whose summer palace she took up her residence, incognita, on first arriving here."
"Kaunitz! her favourite minister, and she called him 'my friend!'" muttered the young man, trembling with emotion.
"Yes! and they do say," continued his informant lightly, "that now her husband, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, is absent with the remains of her discomfited army, she and the young prince"—and he whispered in Otmar's ear.
A pang of the bitterest feeling passed through the young noble's heart. But that pang, by its very revulsion, gave him fresh energy.
"Calumny!" he exclaimed, angrily, to his companion, whom he doubted not to be one of those disaffected to the cause of the persecuted Queen. "Calumny!" But his voice was drowned in the loud murmur which arose on all sides calling for silence.
Maria Theresa had risen from the throne, upon which she had seated herself on her first entrance to calm her feelings; and she gazed, with evident emotion, and with faltering purpose, upon the vast crowd before her. No doubt that she saw a stern discouraging frown upon many a brow: no doubt that she knew how deeply the seeds of discontent and disaffection had been sown among her subjects—how great a majority was unfavourable to her cause: and she trembled and faltered for a moment.