Some of their real friends tried to settle the matter
in another way, but his bad angel, his mistress, who
required thirty thousand florins, drove the Count
to his death. He was found in the Prater, with
his friend’s bullet in his chest. A letter
in his pocket spoke of suicide, but the police did
not doubt for a moment that a duel had taken place.
Suspicion soon fell on the Italian, but when they
went to arrest him, he had already made his escape.
The husband of the beautiful, problematical woman,
called on the broken-hearted father of the man who
had been killed in the duel, and who had hastened
to Vienna on receipt of a telegraphic message, a few
hours after his arrival, and demanded the money.
“My wife was your son’s most intimate
friend,” he stammered, in embarrassment, in order
to justify his action as well as he could. “Oh!
I know that,” the old Count replied, “and
female friends of that kind want to be paid immediately,
and in full. Here are the thirty thousand florins.”
And our Goldkind? She paid her debts,
and then withdrew from the scene for a while.
She had been compromised, certainly, but then, she
had risen in value in the eyes of those numerous men
who can only adore and sacrifice themselves for a
woman when her foot is on the threshold of vice and
crime.
I saw her last during the Franco-German war, in the
beautiful Mirabell-garden at Salzburg.
She did not seem to feel any qualms of conscience,
for she had become considerably stouter, which made
her more attractive, more beautiful, and consequently,
more dangerous, than she was before.
The Princess Leonie was one of those beautiful, brilliant
enigmas, who irresistibly allure everyone like a Sphinx,
for she was young, charming, and singularly lovely,
and understood how to heighten her charms not a little
by carefully-chosen dresses. She was a great lady
of the right stamp, and was very intellectual into
the bargain, which is not the case with all aristocratic
ladies; she also took great interest in art and literature,
and it was even said that she patronized one of our
poets in a manner which was worthy of the Medicis,
and that she strewed the beautiful roses of continual
female sympathy on to his thorny path. All this
was evident to everybody, and had nothing strange about
it, but the world would have liked to know the history
of that woman, and to look into the depths of her
soul, and because people could not do this in Princess
Leonie’s case, they thought it very strange.
No one could read that face, which was always beautiful,
always cheerful, and always the same; no one could
fathom those large, dark, unfathomable eyes, which
hid their secrets under the unvarying brilliancy of
majestic repose, like a mountain lake, whose waters
look black on account of their depth. For everybody
was agreed that the beautiful princess had her secrets,
interesting and precious secrets, like all other ladies
of our fashionable world.
