"Yes, Your Highness."
The man left the room with the noiseless, solemn step of a well-trained lackey.
"How can any one live without servants?" the countess asked herself, looking after him. "What should I have done, if I had dismissed mine?" She shuddered. Now that regal luxury again surrounded her she was a different person from this morning. No doubt she still felt what she had suffered that day, but only as we dimly, after waking from a fevered dream, realize the tortures we have endured.
Some one knocked, and the maid entered.
"I will take a bath before lunch. I feel very ill. Pour a bottle of vinaigre de Bouilli into the water. I will come directly."
The maid disappeared.
Everything still went on like clock-work. Nothing had changed--no one noticed what she had almost done that day. The struggle was over. The royal order, which it would have been madness to oppose, had determined her course.
But her nerves were still quivering from the experiences of the day.
The child, if only she were not hampered by the child! That was the only thing which would not allow her to breathe freely--it was her own flesh and blood. That was the wound in her heart which could never be healed. She would always long for the boy--as he would for her. Yet, what did this avail, nothing could be changed, she must do what reason and necessity required. At least for the present; nay, there was even something beautiful in a sorrow borne with aristocratic dignity! By the depth of the wound, we proudly measure the depth of our own hearts.
She pleased herself with the idea of doing the honors as mistress of ceremonies to kings and emperors, while yearning in the depths of her soul for a poor orphaned child, the son of the proud Countess Wildenau--whose husband was a peasant. Only a nature of the elasticity of Madeleine von Wildenau's could sink so low and yet soar so high, without losing its equilibrium.