The countess was "herself" again, as she called it. "Thank God!"
The Ammergau episode--with all its tragic consequences--belonged to the past. To-day, under the emotional impressions and external circumstances at that luckless castle, where everything conspired against her, she had thought seriously of breaking with her traditions and the necessities of life, faced the thought of poverty and shame so boldly that this appointment to the highest position at court saved her from the gulf of ruin. Stopped at the last moment, tottering, giddy, the startled woman sought to find a firm footing once more. She felt like a suicide, who is not really in earnest, and rejoices when some one prevents his design.
She stood holding the document in her hand. This was truth, reality, the necessity for self-destruction was imagination. The disgrace whose brand she already felt upon her brow could no longer approach her!
She set her foot upon the shaggy skin of a lion--the earth did not yet reel beneath her. She pressed her burning brow against a slender marble column--this, too, was still firm! She passed her slender fingers over the silk plush of the divan on which she reclined and rejoiced that it was still hers. Her eye, intoxicated with beauty, wandered over the hundreds of art-treasures, pictures and statues from every land with which she had adorned her rooms--nothing was lacking. Upon a pedestal stood the Apollo Belvedere, whose pure marble glowed warmly in a sunbeam shining through red curtains, as if real blood were circulating in the stone. The wondrous face smiled in divine repose upon the motley array, which the art and industry of centuries had garnered here.
The past and the present here closed their bewitching chain. Yonder stood a Venus de Milo, revealing to the charming owner the majesty of her own beauty. In a corner filled with flowers, a bathing nymph, by a modern master, timidly concealed herself. In a Gothic niche a dying Christ closed his eyes to the splendor of the world and the senses. It was a Christ after the manner of Gabriel Max, which opened and shut its eyes. Not far away the portrait of the countess, painted with the genius of Lenbach stood forth from the dark frame--the type of a drawing-room blossom. Clad in a soft white robe of Oriental stuff embroidered with gold, heavy enough to cling closely to the figure--flight enough to float away so far as to reveal all that fashion and propriety permitted to be seen of the beauty of a wonderful neck and arm. And, as Lenbach paints not only the outward form but the inward nature, a tinge of melancholy, of yearning and thoughtfulness rested upon the fair face, which made the beholder almost forget the beauty of the form in that of the soul, while gazing into the spiritual eyes which seemed to seek some other home than this prosaic earth. Just in the direction of her glance, Hermes, the messenger of death, bent his divine face from a group of palms and dried grasses. It seemed as if she beheld all these things for the first time--as if they had been newly given back to her that day after she had believed them lost. Her breath almost failed at the thought that she had been on the point of resigning it all--and for what? All these treasures of immortal beauty and art--for a weeping child and a surly man, who loved in her only the housewife, which any maid-servant can be, but understood what she really was, what really constituted her dignity and charm no more than he would comprehend Lenbach's picture, which reflected to her her own person transfigured and ennobled. She gazed at herself with proud satisfaction. Should such a woman sacrifice herself to a man who scarcely knew the meaning of beauty! Destroy herself for an illusion of the imagination? She rang the bell--she felt the necessity of ordering something, to be sure that she was still mistress of the house.
The lackey entered. "Your Highness?"
Thank Heaven! Her servants still obeyed her.
"Send over to the Barnheim Palace, and invite the Prince to dine with me at six. Then serve lunch."
"Very well. Has Your Highness any other orders?"
"The maid."