“That is already done,” the General replied.
“You are free.”
“How is it possible? How can I thank your
Excellency!”
“You owe me no thanks,” he replied; “Frau
von Kubinyi bought you out.”
The poor poet’s heart seemed to stop; he could
not speak, nor even stammer a word; but with a low
bow, he rushed out and tore wildly through the streets,
until he reached the mansion of the woman whom he
had so misunderstood, quite out of breath; he must
see her again, and throw himself at her feet.
“Where are you going to?” the porter asked
him.
“To Frau von Kubinyi’s.”
“She is not here.”
“Not here?”
“She has gone away.”
“Gone away? Where to?”
“She started for Paris two hours ago.”
In a former reminiscence,[6] we made the acquaintance
of a lady, who had done the police many services in
former years, and whom we called Wanda von Chabert.
It is no exaggeration, if we say that she was at the
same time the cleverest, the most charming and the
most selfish woman whom one could possibly meet.
She was certainly not exactly what is called beautiful,
for neither her face nor her figure were symmetrical
enough for that, but if her head was not beautiful
in the style of the antique, neither like the Venus
of Milo nor Ludoirsi’s Juno, it was, on
the other hand, in the highest sense delightful like
the ladies whom Wateau and Mignard painted. Everything
in her little face, and in its frame of soft brown
hair was attractive and seductive, her low, Grecian
forehead, her bright, almond shaped eyes, her small
nose, and her full, voluptuous lips, her middling
height and her small waist with its, perhaps, almost
too full bust, and above all her walk, that half indolent,
half coquettish swaying of her broad hips, were all
maddeningly alluring.
[Footnote 6: An Exotic Prince.]
And this woman, who was born for love, was as eager
for pleasure and as amorous as few other women have
even been, but for that very reason she never ran
any danger of allowing her victims to escape her from
pity; on the contrary, she soon grew tired of each
of her favorites, and her connection with the police
was then extremely useful to her, in order to get
rid of an inconvenient, or jealous lover.
Before the war between Austria and Italy in 1859,
Frau von Chabert was in London, where she lived alone
in a small, one-storied house with her servants, and
was in constant communication with emigrants from all
countries.
