Hungary was once the land of kings, and it was still the land of nobles. Half oriental, half western, the Hungarian is next in magnificence to the Moslem. He gives his last ducat for a shawl, a jewel-hilted sabre, or a gilded cap, which nothing but his fear of being mistaken for a Turk prevents him from turning into a turban. The Princess Juliana of Marosin sat in the centre of a chamber that might have made the cabinet of the favourite Sultana of the Lord of the Infidels. She sat on a low sofa covered with tapestry from Smyrna; her caftan, girdled with the largest emeralds, was made by the fair fingers of the Greek maidens of Saloniki; her hair, long, black, and drooping round her person, in rich sable wreaths, like the branches of a cypress, was surmounted by a crescent which had won many an eye in the jewel mart of Constantinople; and in her hand she waved a fan of peacocks’ plumes, made by the principal artist to the serail of Teheran. Thus Oriental in her drapery, colours, and costume, she sat in the centre of a chamber, which, for its gloomy carvings, yet singular stateliness of decoration, might have reminded the spectator of some Indian shrine, or subterranean dungeon of the dark spirits enclosing a spirit of light; or, to abandon poetry, and tell the truth in plain speech, the chamber reminded the spectator of the formal, yet lavish splendour of the old kingly times of the land, while its possessor compelled him to feel the fact, that all magnificence is forgotten in the presence of a beautiful woman.
The Princess received the homage of the glittering circle with the complacency of conscious rank, and repaid every bow with one of those sweet smiles, which to a courtier are irresistible evidences of his personal merit; to a lover, are spells that raise him from the lowest depths to the most rapturous altitudes; and to a woman, cost nothing whatever. But, to an eye which none of these smiles had deprived of all its powers of reading the human countenance, there was in even this creature of birth, beauty, and admiration, some secret anxiety, which, in despite of all conjecture, proved that she was no more than mortal. There was a wavering of her colour, that bespoke inward perturbation; a paleness followed by a flush that threw the crimson of her gorgeous shawl into the shade; a restless movement of the fingers loaded with gems; a quick turn of the head towards the door, though the most potential flattery was at the moment pouring into the ear at the opposite side. There were times, when a slight expression of scorn upon her fine features escaped her politeness, and gave sign that she agreed with mankind of all ages, in the infinite monotony, dulness, and commonplace of the élite of the earth, the starred and ribboned society of the high places of mankind. But all was peace to the emotion of her features, when the door slowly opened; and after a note of preparation worthy of the arrival of the Great Mogul, the chamberlain announced, “Prince Charles of Buntzlau.” Pride and resentment flashed across her physiognomy, like lightning across the serenity of a summer sky. Her cheek grew crimson, as the gallant lover, the affianced husband, came bowing up to her; her brow contracted, and the man would have been wise who had augured from that brow the hazard of taking her hand without first securing her heart. But all was soon over; the lovely lady soon restrained her emotion, with a power which showed her presence of mind. But her cheek would not obey even her determination, it continued alternately glowing and pale; wild thoughts were colouring and blanching that cheek; and the fever of the soul was burning in her restless and dazzling eye. On the birthdays of the great in Hungary, it is the custom that none shall come empty-handed. A brilliant variety of presents already filled the tables and sofas of the apartment. But the Prince’s present eclipsed them all; it was a watch from the Horlogerie of the most famous artist of Paris, and a chef-d’œuvre in point of setting. The Princess looked at it with a disdain which it cost her an effort to conceal. “Prince,” said she, “I regret the want of patriotism which sends our nobles to purchase the works of strangers, instead of encouraging the talents of our own country.”—“Yes, but your Highness may condescend to reflect,” said the lover, “on the utter impossibility of finding anything of this kind tolerable except in Paris.” The Princess turned to one of the Bohemians who formed her band of minstrels, and said, “Vladimir, desire the jewel-keeper to bring my Hungarian watch.” The Bohemian went on his mission—the jewel-keeper appeared with the watch, and it was instantly declared, by the unanimous admiration of the circle, to be altogether unrivalled in the art. The Prince, chagrined at this discomfiture, asked, with more than the authority of a lover, if the Princess “would do him the honour to mention the artist so deserving of her patronage.” She handed the watch over to him. He opened it, and a paper dropped out. On it was written the name of Mohammed Ali Hunkiar.
“The murdered ambassador!” instinctively exclaimed fifty voices.—The Princess rose from her seat, overwhelmed with surprise and alarm. “The Turkish ambassador!” said she; “then this must have been a part of his plunder.” The jewel-keeper was summoned to give account of the circumstances connected with the purchase. His answer was, that “it was no purchase whatever.” But he produced a note which he had received along with it. The note was “a request that her Highness would accept so trivial a present on her birthday, from one of her faithful subjects;” and that, unable to discover the name of the donor, he had accepted it accordingly. Her circle soon after broke up. In a court all things are known; in a province all things known or unknown are an invaluable topic as long as they are new. The story of the Hungarian watch was turned into shapes innumerable. But the result of the investigation which immediately took place, by order of the Princess, was, that it had actually been made by an artist of Buda for the Sultan, by whom it was sent among the presents designed for the Emperor. On the fall of the Turk it had disappeared, like all the rest of his plunder, and had been unheard of until it started into light in the household of the Princess of Marosin.
The little perturbation excited by this incident lasted but till the high and mighty of the circle had withdrawn, to communicate the fact to a dozen other circles, and talk of it until the world was weary alike of the tale and the tellers. But there was a perturbation in the mind of this young and lovely being, which came from a deeper source, and lasted longer than even the delight of her dear five hundred friends, in surmising all the possible modes in which the stately relative of Emperors had contrived to charm into her fair hands the most superb montre under the roofs of the city of Presburg.
Sunset began to shed its quiet gold on the hill-tops round the city—the sounds of day were fading fast—the glittering crowd had left her halls to silence—and as she walked through the suite of magnificent chambers in her gala dress, tissued with emeralds and rubies, and her regal loveliness contrasting with her eye fixed upon the ground, and her slow and meditative step, she might have been taken for the guardian genius of those halls of ancestry, or a new avatar of the tragic muse. Arrived at the balcony, she almost fell into the flowery seat, below which spread a vast and various view of the most fertile plain of Hungary. But the vision on her eye was not of the harvest heavily swelling before her at every wave of the breeze. Her thoughts were of valleys, where the sun never reached their green depths; of forests, where the roebuck fed and sported in scorn of the hunter; of mountains, whose marble spines were covered only with clouds, and whose only echoes were those of the thunder or the eagle. All before her eye was beauty cultured, and calm pleasure. The peasantry were driving their wains homeward loaded with the luxuriance of the Hungarian fields, proverbially rich where they are cultivated at all. Large droves of quiet cattle were speckling the distant pasture, and enjoying the heat and light of evening. The citizens were issuing from the city gates to taste the freshness of the hour, and troops of the nobles attendant on the imperial ceremony, relieved from the labours of etiquette and antechambers, were driving their glittering equipages through the avenues, or caracolling their Ukraine chargers through the meadows. Yet for the living landscape the young gazer had no eyes. The scene on which her spirit dwelt was one of savage majesty and lonely power. A vast pile of rocks, through which a way seemed to have been cloven by the thunderbolt, opened on a glen as desolate as if it had never been trodden by the foot of man. Yet, under the shelter of one of its overhanging cliffs, peeping out from a drapery of heath, lichens, and wild flowers, as rich as a Persian carpet, was seen the outline of a rude building, half cottage, half tower, and resting on the slope beside it, a hunter with his boar-spear fixed upright in the turf—a greyhound beside him, and his whole soul employed in listening to the roar of the Mediterranean, whose waters chafed and swelled at the entrance of the ravine, and spread to the horizon like a gigantic sheet of sanguined steel.
The murmur of the church bells for the evening service at length scattered the vision. The mountain forests vanished, the glen of eternal marble was a garden embroidered with all the cultivation of art, and nothing was left of the whole proud picture but the star that now came, like a bride from her chamber, and stood showering radiance upon her head. That star, too, had gleamed upon the sky of the Croatian ravine, and in her enthusiasm she could almost have addressed it like a friend, or put up a prayer to its shrine as that of a beneficent divinity. In the strong sensibility of the moment she uttered a few broken aspirations to its brightness, and a wish that she might escape the infinite weariness of life, and, like that star, be a gazer on existence, from a height above the cares and clouds of this world. A sudden movement among the shrubs below caught her ear; she glanced down, and saw, with his countenance turned full on her, as if she were something more than human, the hunter whom her fancy had pictured in the glen!
It was midnight, when twenty individuals, evidently of high rank, had assembled in an obscure house in one of the suburbs. But it was evident, from the plainness of their dress, that they had some object in concealing their rank; and from the weapons under their cloaks it was equally evident that they had come upon some business, in which either danger was to be guarded against, or violence intended.
For some time there was silence, the only words exchanged were in whispers. At intervals, a low knock at the door, a watchword, and a sign exchanged between the keeper of the entrance and the applicant without, announced a new comer. Still nothing was done; and as the cathedral bells tolled midnight, the anxiety for the arrival of some distinguished stranger, who had unaccountably delayed his coming, grew excessive. It gradually escaped, too, that the Cardinal di Lecco, the Papal Internuncio, was the expected individual.