Scarcely, however, had he read her note, when two
of his brother-officers came to see him, and asked
him, with well-simulated anxiety, whether he were
ill. When he said that he was perfectly well,
one of them continued, laughing: “Then
please explain the occurrence that is in everybody’s
mouth to-day, in which you play such a comical part.”—“I,
a comical part?” the Count shouted.—“Well,
is it not very comical when you call on a lady like
Princess Leonie, whom you do not know, to upbraid her
for her cruelty, and most unceremoniously call her
thou[6]?”
[Footnote 6: In Germany, thou du, is only
used between near relations, lovers, very intimate
friends, to children, servants, &c.—TRANSLATOR.]
That was too much; Count F. might pardon the Princess
for pretending not to know him in society, but that
she should make him a common laughing-stock, nearly
drove him mad. “If I call the Princess thou,”
he exclaimed, “it is because I have the right
to do so, as I will prove.”—His comrades
shrugged their shoulders, but he asked them to come
again punctually at seven o’clock, and then he
made his preparations.
At eight o’clock his divinity made her appearance,
still thickly veiled, but on this occasion wearing
a valuable sable cloak. As usual, Count F. took
her into the dark-room and locked the outer door; then
he opened that which led into his bedroom, and his
two friends came in, each with a candle in his hand.—The
lady in the sable cloak cried out in terror when Count
F. pulled off her veil, but then it was his turn to
be surprised, for it was not the Princess Leonie who
stood before him, but her pretty lady’s-maid,
who, now she was discovered, confessed that love had
driven her to assume her mistress’s part, in
which she had succeeded perfectly, on account of the
similarity of their figure, eyes and hair. She
had found the Count’s letter in the Princess’s
pocket-handkerchief when they were at Karlsbad and
had answered it. She had made him happy, and had
heightened the illusion which her figure gave rise
to by borrowing the Princess’s dresses.
Of course the Count was made great fun of, and turned
his back on Vienna hastily that same evening, but
the pretty lady’s-maid also disappeared soon
after the catastrophe, and only by those means escaped
from her mistress’s well-merited anger; for
it turned out that that gallant little individual
had already played the part of her mistress more than
once, and had made all those hopeless adorers of the
Princess, who had found favor in her own eyes, happy
in her stead.
Thus the enigma was solved which Princess Leonie seemed
to have proposed to the world.
