The leaves in the forest were turning brown for the sixth time since their return from Jerusalem, the autumn gale was sweeping fresh heaps of withered leaves to add to the piles towering like walls around the deserted building, the height was constantly growing colder and more dreary, the drawing-rooms below were continually growing warmer, the Palace Wildenau, with its Persian hangings and rugs and cosy nooks behind gay screens daily became more thronged with guests. People drew their chairs nearer and nearer the blazing fire on the hearth, which cast a rosy light upon pallid faces and made weary eyes sparkle with a simulated glow of passion. The intimate friends of the Countess Wildenau, reclining in comfortable armchairs, were gathered in a group, the gentlemen resting after the fatigues of hunting--or the autumn manœuvres, the ladies after the first receptions and balls of the season, which are the more exhausting before habit again asserts its sway, to say nothing of the question of toilettes, always so trying to the nerves at these early balls.
What is to be done at such times? It is certainly depressing to commence the season with last year's clothes, and one cannot get new ones because nobody knows what styles the winter will bring? Parisian novelties have not come. So one must wear an unassuming toilette of no special style in which one feels uncomfortable and casts aside afterwards, because one receives from Paris something entirely different from what was expected!
So the ladies chatted and Countess Wildenau entered eagerly into the discussion. She understood and sympathized with these woes, though now, as the ladies said, she really could not "chime in" since she had a store of valuable Oriental stuffs and embroideries, which would supply a store of "exclusive" toilettes for years. Only people of inferior position were compelled to follow the fashions--great ladies set them and the costliness of the material prevented the garments from appearing too fantastic. A Countess Wildenau could allow herself such bizarre costumes. She had a right to set the fashions and people would gladly follow her if they could, but two requirements were lacking, on one side the taste--on the other the purse. The Countess charmingly waived her friends' envious compliments; but her thoughts were not on the theme they were discussing; her eyes wandered to a crayon picture hanging beside the mantel-piece, the picture of a boy who had the marvellous beauty of one of Raphael's cherubs.
"What child is that?" asked one of the ladies who had followed her glance.
"Don't you recognize it?" replied the Countess with a dreamy smile. "It is the Christ in the picture of the Sistine Madonna."
"Why, how very strange--if you had a son one might have thought it was his portrait, it resembles you so much."
"Do you notice it?" the Countess answered. "Yes, that was the opinion of the artist who copied the picture; he gave it to me as a surprise." She rose and took another little picture from the wall. "Look, this is a portrait of me when I was three years old--there really is some resemblance."
The ladies all assented, and the gentlemen, delighted to have an opportunity to interrupt the discussion of the fashions, came forward and noticed with astonishment the striking likeness between the girl and the boy.
"It is really the Christ child in the Sistine Madonna--very exquisitely painted!" said the prince.
"By the way, Cousin," cried a sharp, high voice, over Prince Emil's shoulder, a voice issuing from a pair of very thin lips shaded by a reddish moustache, "do you know that you have the very model of this picture on your own estates?"