The secret spring

Was Sophie-Dorothea Königsmark's mistress? I still doubt it, even after reading their correspondence in the archives of La Gardie. But I must freely confess that it must have been quite impossible to doubt it in so corrupt a Court as Hanover, where it was common knowledge that Duke George's wife received the handsome Swedish adventurer every evening in her apartments.

The vindictive Countess von Platen was the last to know that she was the laughing-stock of the whole palace, but that day the doom of both Count and Duchess was sealed.

On the evening of Saturday, July 1st, 1694, Königsmark, returning to his room, found on his table a note with a few words scribbled in pencil:

Princess Sophie-Dorothea will expect Count Königsmark this evening, after ten.

This note, a forgery imitating Sophie-Dorothea's handwriting, was the work of Countess von Platen. Königsmark, unsuspecting and brave as a lion, kept the appointment. He left the Princess at two in the morning.

Next morning Sophie-Dorothea saw from her balcony two men furtively wandering in the park as if they had lost something. They were Count Philip's servants searching for their master. He was never to be seen again, by them or any one else.

There you have the tragedy, my friend. There remains the dénouement, the divorce of Sophie-Dorothea. That unhappy young woman of twenty-eight lived in a world of enemies. She wished to leave her husband, who was a nightmare to her, but was prevented by the wishes of her father, who had forced a marriage on her for political reasons. A love-sick girl could not be allowed to upset the pretty scheme which had the throne of England as its possible goal. The unhappy creature refused to lend herself to it. She was dangerous for other reasons. The Swedish Count had relations. And so she was duly divorced after a trial in which she suffered every outrage and humiliation. Her children were taken out of her care, and ultimately the wife of the King of England, once more plain Duchess, died a prisoner in her Castle at Ahlden in 1726. Then only did the parental fury relent. The vaults of the castle in which she was born were opened to her corpse. There, in the obscurest corner of the crypt of the keep of Celle, is a humble coffin, bearing no inscription. It contains the mortal remains of Sophie-Dorothea, wife of the Elector George-Lonis of Hanover, King of England under the name of George I.

I have outlined, as briefly as I could, the story of Philip von Königsmark and Sophie-Dorothea. I need hardly say that many points in the tragedy have never yet been cleared up. The assassination of the Count is undoubtedly the most obscure incident in the whole affair. Witnesses agree that it was Countess von Platen who set the trap in which he perished. Ten hired assassins pierced him with their swords and the horrible Countess herself dealt him the final blow. But what was done with the corpse? This is where the mystery begins.

Opinions are divided. Was the Count, as some say, buried in a grave in the park? Or, according to another version which I have reasons to believe the true one, was his corpse covered with quick-lime and thrown under the stone floor of the room known as the "Knights' Hall"? Or was it simply cast into the latrines which communicated with the Lüne flowing at the foot of the castle, as the author of the "Secret History"[2] would have us believe? Was his the corpse, as Horace Walpole asserts, which was discovered twenty years later under the floor of a retiring-room in the Herrenhausen? I only put these problems to explain to you, though to me it still remains inexplicable, my feverish resolution to solve them. You may well imagine that the mystery was more vivid and intriguing to me than to any other man, partly because of the situation at the palace, with its many points of resemblance to that in which the tragedy took place, and partly because of the priceless material at my disposal in the ducal library.

The most valuable authority till then available was the correspondence of Königsmark and Sophie-Dorothea, to be found in the archives of the La Gardie Library at Loeberod in Sweden. This correspondence was discovered by Professor Palmblad, who published extracts from it at Upsala in 1851. When Professor Thierry in taking leave of me had referred me to Palmblad's work, he hoped that at Lautenburg I should be able to discover a portion of the correspondence, which wandered all over Germany before finding a definite home at Loeberod. I was, however, unable to find anything, though I had compensation for my disappointment in another and most fruitful discovery.

You remember I spoke of Sophie-Dorothea's daughter a short time ago. She married the Crown Prince of Prussia, the future "Drill-Sergeant King," Frederick I. "A harsh and tyrannical husband," as Blaze de Bury writes, "his first act, on mounting the throne, was to forbid his wife formally to hold any sort of communication with the prisoner of Ahlden. It was only when Sophie-Dorothea had inherited from her mother a revenue of twenty thousand crowns, a very considerable sum in those days, that the royal miser began to soften towards her, though his sudden concern was purely mercenary, being based solely on his wife's possible interest in the inheritance, an interest which the celebrated jurisconsult, Thomasius, had laboured to establish."[3]

The Queen of Prussia was the meekest of women, but, urged on secretly by her confessor, she had never ceased to reproach herself for not having boldly taken her captive mother's part, convinced as she was of her innocence. She began to take advantage of her forbidding husband's better moments to collect the material on which to base proceedings to clear her character. Unfortunately Sophie-Dorothea died in 1726. This did not deter her royal daughter from pursuing her labour of love. Thanks to her resolution and the learned assistance of the jurisconsult Thomasius already mentioned, an enormous dossier, comprising some twelve hundred documents, was prepared. It established beyond doubt Sophie-Dorothea's innocence and Countess von Platen's ignominy. This monument of filial devotion was never to serve any practical purpose. An anonymous note at the top of the file records that on the representations of George II., King of England, communicated to his brother-in-law, Frederick I. of Prussia through the British Minister, the rehabilitation suit was never begun. The English King observed to his sister, not without truth, that every piece of evidence disproving their mother's guilt only established their father's.

The submissive Prussian Queen yielded to the force of this political argument. The file, a monument of futile industry, after various wanderings recorded in the note I have mentioned, ended by falling in 1783 into the hands of the Grand Duchess Charlotte-Augusta of Lautenburg, niece of the reigning sovereign. It was this very file that I had the good fortune to discover among the uncatalogued manuscripts in the ducal library at the end of January, 1914. From the original notes of the cross-examination of Fräulein von Knesebeck, Sophie-Dorothea's confidante, to the record of Countess von Platen's confession,[4] had before me everything required to reconstruct the story of the mysterious Herrenhausen drama. In the casual manner of historians in dealing with uncatalogued manuscripts I carried off to the privacy of my room the six packets containing the whole melancholy story.

What a pageant of love and chivalry, crime and passion, grandeur, life and death, was unrolled for me in its musty pages and clerkly script in divers tongues! At night, when the castle was asleep, I pulled my table up to my glowing log fire and worked in a kind of burning frenzy. Here I touched history, live history, not the poor second or third hand imitation which was doled out to us, according to syllabus, from the Sorbonne Library. I will admit, I must admit, that the fumes of romance mingled with the soulless passion for knowledge that seized my very being. The Court of Hanover danced before my eyes, fantastic and brutal—Ernest-Augustus, the Silenus of politics; George-Louis, the narrow-minded profligate; Countess von Platen, the fearsome Messalina, beautiful and winning notwithstanding; Königsmark, the swarthy adventurer in his blood-stained doublet of pink and gold; pure-souled Sophie-Dorothea, fair and slender in her wedding gown of silver brocade.

Silver, did I say? There spoke the historian, the maker of books. But oh! how much fairer, how much nearer, I imagined her in another gown, a gown fresh in my mind! A gown of green velvet!

Winter was almost over, already yielding to the spring. I had opened my window to help my fire to draw, and through it the air wafted in with the magic touch of living breath. Through the darkness I felt the presence of the black trees, their bare branches quivering with the promise of life.

Several times, my friend, my dear friend—when death hovers overhead why should I not confess those follies which are the price and glory of life for men like ourselves?—under the spell of that old story of a gallant, murdered lover and a fair dead Queen, and impelled by an instinct the sureness of which Fate was in due course to reveal, I pushed open the door of my room with a beating heart. The corridor was dark. The old staircase creaked beneath my steps. Often in the great hall I had seen the lantern of the sleeping watchman. What on earth should I have said, had I been challenged?

The open postern exposed a great steel blue vault in the middle of which mysterious Cassiopeia seemed to shiver. I went out, crossing the moon-bathed lawns, hiding in the shadows of the yews. A light shone in the centre wing of the palace. The Grand Duke Frederick-Augustus must be a late worker! All was dark in the left wing, but when I reached the end of the building and pressed myself against the wall I knew that here, too, there were some who kept late hours.

Spring was not yet with us, but one felt that the song of the nightingale would soon be heard. Bright and spearlike, a ray of light spanned the gravel path, emanating from another window dark with heavy hangings and curtains.

The nightingale was not yet singing in the French park, embedded in the heart of that Germany whither Fate had led me. But behind that window a poignant long-drawn wail, interrupted at intervals by maddening silences that made my nerves quiver with apprehension, came slowly and softly from the silent palace straight to my heart. For Fräulein von Graffenfried was playing Schumann's most plaintive berceuses to her mistress on her violin.

V

PETERMANN'S MITTHEILUNGEN is the most exhaustive. And also it must be confessed the best, geographical work in the world. Our Annales de Géographie is only a feeble reflection of it. The Russians have an excellent geographer, Woïkow. We have Vidal de la Blache, whose preface to Lavisse's Histoire de France is a masterpiece. But these are only fragments and do not cover the whole ground. The astonishing feature of Petermann's Mittheilungen is its universality. My tutors at the Sorbonne—I won't mention names as it would hardly be kind to them at the present moment—have told me hundreds of times that no serious geographical work could be attempted without the assistance of this powerful machine.

I will not exaggerate either the scope or value of the lessons I gave my pupil by having you imagine that I never prepared one without consulting the Mittheilungen. But I can assure you that whenever it was necessary to emphasize some particular point I never failed to fortify myself by reference to the great work.

Accordingly I had recourse to it when occasion arose to instruct Duke Joachim on a question which was indeed a topic of the hour—the question of the Cameroons and the recent German acquisitions in the Congo. It was just two years since the Cambon-Kiderlen-Wächter conversations had resulted in an agreement which gave Germany the famous "Duck's bill" and Togoland. It, therefore, seemed to me a natural proceeding to dwell at some length on the region which had been the cause of the Kaiser's famous bang on the diplomatic table.

I shall never forget that day—Monday, March 2nd—nearly eight months ago now.

I first ran through the Table of Contents of the Mittheilungen in order to look up the references and authorship of the six articles on the Cameroons and the Congo. The second I came across was the work of Professor Heidschütz, of Berlin University, describing the means of access (natural and artificial) to this territory.

I carried the appropriate volume to the library table and began to make some notes. As I was opening the book at the page of the article I wanted, a piece of paper fell out. It was a sheet, folded in four and already yellow with age, and the writing on it was large, thick and free. It was German in Latin characters. No signature. Even without that writing to help me I had immediately guessed what was its subject and who had written it.

It contained the complete plan of a journey in one of the remotest parts of the Congo, along the famous, or, rather, notorious, river Sangha. The routes were carefully drawn up, with the assistance of the information given in Professor Heidschütz's article, which, as I expected, was the very last word on these regions. All practicable tracks, fords, and resources available to the explorer of the country—from the moment he left Libreville to the time of his return there—were noted. Each halt was marked: Ouesso, two days—French post, water, porters: Manna, one day—porters: Gléglé, on the N'Sagha, canoes, etc.

A fierce joy possessed me. Fate had delivered up to me the Grand Duke Rudolph's own plan, in his own hand, for his scientific journey in the very region where he was to meet with his death. Mine was not, I realized, the triumph of the historian at the discovery of a document throwing interesting light on German designs in the Congo, a document in itself proof positive, in view of the rank and personality of the explorer, that the Agadir coup was premeditated. What cared I for dryasdust History at that moment? In a flash I realized that pique had been the motive for all my labours since that famous occasion when the Grand Duchess had insulted me before the whole world!

If you would know the nature of the emotions that convulsed me as I scrutinized the precious document I must tell you how my imagination had been at work since that date. I had tried in vain to hate the Grand Duchess. I could not do so. The effort only had the effect of sharpening my desire to approach her, claim her notice, convince her that my end in life was to devote myself to her service.

Devote myself! Good God, what on earth could have led me to think that this dazzling, distant goddess might need my humble devotion?...

It was here, my friend, that my imagination led me on. To tell the truth it certainly had something to build upon. You don't suppose that during my long, lonely nights I had forgotten the confidences of a man of Professor Thierry's standing? Quite the reverse. What wealth of meaning had I not read into them? In a vague way I felt myself in an atmosphere of mystery. I felt, just as I feel you now at my side in the dark, that some tragedy was at the bottom of the presentiments of evil that flooded my mind from time to time. My work and the nights devoted to the tragic story of Königsmark had only aggravated my apprehension. All moonshine, you will say; the diseased imaginings of a brain excited by work in solitude, and, perhaps, a stronger emotion. You might have some reason for thinking so if events had not abundantly justified my excitement.

Whatever the cause, my friend, even before I discovered the Grand Duke's plan I had pieced together a story which satisfied my notions. I imagined the Grand Duke Frederick-Augustus, correct and kind as he always was towards me, as the executioner of his wife, that adorable Grand Duchess. You see beauty made me fundamentally unjust. It made me attribute imaginary wickedness to the man who, obviously, had many virtues and was, in any case, the author of my present prosperity, while I raised a monument in my mind to the woman who had once held me up to public scorn and subsequently seemed to ignore my existence whenever I had been thrown in her way. In my lucid moments I would reflect that there was little of the martyr about the cold, haughty creature who spent her nights listening to her Melusine's violin and her days on horseback, hunting with her miserable red Hussar! That Hagen.... Wasn't it plain as a pikestaff that it was the Grand Duke who deserved pity and affection!... I should never have had his patience!

Useless sedatives. Vain strivings to forget. A moment later, back among my fantastic imaginings I pictured Aurora of Lautenburg turning to her fiery mount, hunting, music—anything to assuage her grief at the loss of her first husband, that handsome, gallant husband who had loved her, whom she still loved, no doubt.... And the jealousy born of these reveries made me cherish them all the more.

Many conversations had failed to convince me of heir lack of substance. It was useless for Frau von Wendel, with her sullen hatred of the Grand Duchess, to sigh out tales of poor, dear Grand Duke Rudolph, who had been so unhappy. I ruthlessly cleared everything from my path that seemed to threaten the integrity of my fantastic fabrications.

You can call me a lunatic. But assuming I was one, you can imagine the frenzy with which I put back the volume of the Mittheilungen, thrust my precious sheet into my case and went up to my room.

Open, Sesame! I had now in my possession the mysterious key which would open the way to the Grand Duchess's presence, and enable me to compel her regard. "When she sees these lines," I thought, "in the handwriting of a beloved husband, she will know that he who brings them to light and gives them to her does not deserve the unworthy indifference she shows him. Perhaps she will ask my pardon. Then I shall have compelling words to stay the flow of regrets on those fair lips. She will only wonder the more at her own past behaviour."

Twice I attempted to write a letter to accompany the document, and twice I threw it into the fire. The first did not seem respectful enough. The second was too full of the importance of my discovery. Eventually I hit upon the simplest possible form of words:

I had thought of entrusting my missive, with a couple of words of explanation, to Fräulein von Graffenfried, who had never ceased to show me a marked regard which was very flattering. But I was doomed to disappointment, as Melusine had just gone out into Lautenburg, so I had to be content with an old half-witted Russian waiting-woman. The ancient dame took it, not without suspicion, and went off mumbling something unintelligible.

I went back to my room at once and there my excitement oozed away. In fact, I was soon practically taking myself to task for my action. What purpose would it serve? Why was I mixing myself up in the affair? I think I almost wished the old Russian even sillier than she seemed so that she might lose my letter.

A step sounded in the corridor and there was a knock at the door. Ludwig entered.

"Excuse me, Herr Professor. The Herr Professor has been sent for."

Stepping aside he ushered in a lackey. I thought I should collapse when I saw the blue and gold livery of the Grand Duchess.

"Will the Herr Professor kindly come with me?" said the man.

Stunned by the almost immediate effect of my action, I followed him, even forgetting my hat. We cut across the park. Where was he taking me? We reached and descended the slopes of the English garden. Soon we were among the willows by the Melna, flushed with the ruddy glow of dying day.

A shot rang out from a clump of chestnut trees, and I thought I heard a rustle in the branches as if a bird were falling.

"Will the Herr Professor please step this way?"

I was now in a kind of arbour. The Grand Duchess was standing with her gun still smoking in her hand.

"Excuse me, monsieur. I am having a little thrush shooting," was all she said.

And she nodded to her lackey to leave us.

I was alone with the queen of my dreams. I had known that this moment would come, but never imagined that it would find us in this leafy tunnel, which I had passed many a time in my walks, without suspecting its existence.

For a few seconds she gazed at me in silence. My embarrassment was absolutely indescribable. It was only later, much later, that I learned how well it had served my cause. So nervous a visitor could hardly be an enemy.

At length she spoke, and her voice was soft, so soft that I did not recognize it.

"I am grateful, Monsieur Vignerte, for your communication. You were right in thinking that any relic of the late Grand Duke Rudolph could not be a matter of indifference to me. Will you tell me," she added, "how this paper came into your possession?"

I told her the whole story of my discovery. There must have been a wealth of emotion and candour in my words, for I felt she was touched.

"Monsieur," she said, and her words were gentleness itself, "if, as I hope, we are to know each other better, you will, I feel sure, cease to bear me any ill-will for what may have seemed unmannerly in my behaviour towards you. No, don't protest. That behaviour was deliberate, monsieur. Indifference in a woman is always feigned. You must believe that, to understand me, certain factors are required which are far from being in your possession."

Where was the pretty speech I had promised myself in reply to these words, long foreseen?

"Are you always working, Monsieur Vignerte?" asked Aurora, with a smile tinged with delicate irony.

"Madam!" I murmured, overcome.

"Oh! I have no intention of taking you from your exalted pupil, but I cannot help remembering that when the Grand Duke brought you here, it was with a kindly idea of lending you to me occasionally. I have only myself to blame for not taking advantage of his forethought before."

My doubts as to whether she was serious or not nailed me, dumb, to the spot.

"Do you play bridge?" she asked.

"Yes—a little," I stammered, blessing Kessel and old Colonel von Wendel, to whom I owed this latest accomplishment.

"We—that is, Fräulein von Graffenfried, Lieutenant von Hagen and I—play bridge every evening. You shall make a fourth. You will do us a much greater service than you imagine," she added, smiling. "I need hardly add that you must come when you like."

"I understand, too," she continued, "that you have some most interesting French books. I do a certain amount of reading, and should be very glad to become acquainted with them, providing I'm not robbing that good Frau von Wendel."

I blushed atrociously.

"Very well, then," she said, noticing nothing. "You will come when you like, Monsieur Vignerte; but if you will let me give you further proof of my gratitude by making a request, may I say that I shall be happy to see you in my boudoir this evening, about half-past nine."

I bowed and was about to withdraw when she beckoned me back.

"Monsieur," she said in low, grave tones, "of course, it is understood that everything touching this is strictly between ourselves."

She indicated my letter, which she had just drawn from one pocket of her black, full-skirted jacket.

I bowed again.

"This evening, then, Monsieur Vignerte, and if you would do me a last kindness, please go out as quietly as you possibly can, so as not to scare away the thrushes."

I returned to the palace by a circuitous route, along the Melna. A kingfisher skimmed backwards and forwards over the darkening water. It was of the same colour as the emerald I had just noticed on the white finger of Aurora of Lautenburg-Detmold.

The Grand Duchess's bridge-table was set in a curious little Louis Quinze salon on the first floor. Two Bouchers, a Largillière and an excellent Watteau were its best features. Flowers, masses of flowers, everywhere.

Remembering that Hagen would be there, I had made a special point of not arriving first. Indeed, it was a quarter to ten when I knocked at the door of Aurora of Lautenburg.

It was Melusine who opened it.

"I'm very pleased to see you!" the charming creature murmured as she took my hand. The Grand Duchess gave me a smile of welcome and beckoned me to the table, at which she was already sitting with Hagen. I had an impression that the red Hussar was in a thoroughly bad temper, and this pleased me so much, that I lavished the most delicate attentions upon him all the evening.

Aurora of Lautenburg was wearing a kind of black silk tunic, very décolleté, with masses of gold braid and edged with chinchilla at the neck and sleeves. A net of gold filigree confined her cloud of tawny hair.

She played with careless assurance, nearly always winning, and never missing a lead, and Melusine, too, played well. I made appalling mistakes, but as luck would have it, calmly trumped my partner's tricks and ended by winning. The thought that Hagen would several times have thrown his cards in my face if it had not been for the Grand Duchess's presence made me almost delirious with joy.

The first rubber came to an end as the clock struck eleven. The Grand Duchess rose.

"Cards will ruin you, little man!" she said familiarly to Hagen. "I haven't forgotten that you have General Hildenstein's inspection tomorrow, and must be down by six in the morning. You needn't hesitate to leave Melusine and myself alone," she added, "as Monsieur Vignerte has kindly consented to keep us company. So you'd better go to bed."

With maternal solicitude she offered him his sword. He took it with a fiendish glance at me, which I pretended not to see.

Melusine von Graffenfried smiled her eternal sphinx smile.

"Let us go to my room," said Aurora. "Monsieur Vignerte, don't forget the books you have brought me."

In accordance with the principles set forth in Edgar Allan Poe's "Psychology of Furnishing," the Grand Duchess's room was elliptical. A large mauve globe, set in the ceiling, shed a misty, shadowless light.

On the walls were prints of Burne-Jones, Constable and Gustave Moreau.

The room was full of the three things I love most—flowers, rugs and precious stones. Flowers invaded every corner, and it was quite five minutes before I got used to their overpowering scent. Then the soothing fragrance possessed me, and I was almost able to distinguish between them. Roses and lilies, of course, predominated, though merely as a glorious framework in which the riches of the Tcherna and the Caucasus were exhibited in bewildering profusion. Against the walls were massed the mullein of Mongolia, with their great spikes of flowers nearly a yard long. The musky pink centaury swarmed on every table. Purple passion-flowers, the spring marvel of Aral's desolate shores, tuberoses from Erivan, crimson scabious, monster carnations of every hue, linaria and love-lies-bleeding, balsam and nigella, primroses of Kasbeck, huge red moonflowers from the defiles of Daried, the everlasting-flower of Colchis, once the refuge of the mythical green bird—all these flowers, known or unknown among us, turned that cool room into the haunt of eternal spring.

The sweet-smelling irises, of a deep violet hue approaching black, almost held me spellbound. The Grand Duchess noticed this and smiled.

"Those are what I love best. They are brothers to those I used to gather in my childhood by the banks of the Volga."

She sat down on the great, low bed, with its two polar-bear skins for a cover, and took off the net which confined her hair. Her tawny mane fell out over the white rugs. At her feet Melusine, stretched on a tiger-skin, with her arm on the great beast's head, toyed with a kind of guzla from which she drew wavering, plaintive sounds.

The Grand Duchess took off her jewels, one by one, and put them on little side-tables about the bed. On a chest, with a top of green onyx and painted like a Persian cabinet, I noticed the barbaric tiara she had worn at the fête of the 7th Hussars. By it was another, even heavier one, in sapphires.

The floor was strewn with rugs on which little red and green roses from Armenia swarmed like scarabs and ladybirds. A long necklace of amber and turquoise, strung chaplet-wise, hung from the head of the bed, and above it was a dark little niche where a burning lamp showed up a blue and gold ikon.

Two large silver bowls, gloriously chased, stood near the Grand Duchess. One was full of petals, the other of uncut jewels. In this she plunged her hand, and as fine sand slips through the fingers, she let fall a smooth bright rain of pearls and corundum, chalcedonies and beryls, sardonyx and peridots.

O Margravine of Lautenburg, as you reclined there before me, you were once more the Tartar princess, the fay of the East, the peri of the Volga's mystic waters.

She asked me to tell her the circumstances which had brought me to Lautenburg, She had heard some of the details from Marçais, but from the smile with which she told me this I had no difficulty in guessing her opinion of that diplomatist's perspicacity.

It was plain that she wanted to know my story, and I met her wishes with straightforward simplicity. Towards the end, as I felt her interested and friendly, I could not help giving her a moving picture of the distress our first meeting had caused me, I who had no sooner set eyes on her than my sole idea in life had been to gain her regard.

Melusine von Graffenfried nodded approval, closing her eyes as she blew rings from her cigarette to the ceiling.

"Please let us forget all that, Monsieur Vignerte," said the Grand Duchess. "Give me your hand." Then, turning to Melusine, she spoke in Russian, not knowing that I had a smattering of her native tongue.

"It's no good relying on him for my admission to the Kirchhaus."

Fräulein von Graffenfried replied with a shake of the head, which might be interpreted as "Didn't I say so?"

"Melusine," said the Grand Duchess, "light the samovar."

While the girl arranged the teacups round the heavy, humming tower of burnished copper, Aurora rose from the bed and opened a small secretaire. She beckoned me to her.

"Do you know that writing?" she asked, holding out a letter.

I examined the paper. I had never seen the writing in question.

"It is the hand of the late Grand Duke Rudolph," she said simply.

My surprise grew to amazement. She could not restrain a smile.

"But, excuse me, madame. I don't understand. Then whose is the document I sent you, to which I owe ..."

"Don't get excited; keep calm, Monsieur Vignerte. The paper to which you owe my regard—nay, my friendship—was not written by my husband, the late Grand Duke. But it is not without its value for me. It may even have a greater value."

As she spoke she unfolded the document "I see there a name," she said. "Sangha. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," I answered. "I found out this morning. It is a miserable village in the Cameroons—the last German post, ten leagues from Fort Flatters, the first French post."

"That's the place," she added, "and you don't seem to know that it was in that very village that the Grand Duke Rudolph died of sunstroke on the 10th of May, 1911. He is buried there. Now you will realize my feelings on seeing in the list of projected stages of his journey the name of the place where he was to stay for ever."

"But whose is this list, then? Who drew it up?"

"A friend," replied the Grand Duchess, "the Grand Duke's faithful companion. The same man who saved his life twice in the Congo. The same who stayed with him to the end, and rendered him the last services, though he was unable to save him from the fell malady."

"What was his name?" I asked.

"Baron Ulrich von Boose."

"Boose!" I cried. "So it was Boose!"

The Grand Duchess turned rather pale and drew herself up to her full height. Melusine, at her feet, had stopped playing the guitar, which was lying on the floor.

"What do you mean, monsieur?" said Aurora of Lautenburg. "Please explain yourself."

I had already recovered myself somewhat, and was vaguely conscious of my stupidity. I wanted to turn the conversation, but the Grand Duchess was not to be put off.

"Do you know Baron von Boose?"

"Excuse me, madame," I stammered. "I don't really know whether I ought, whether I can ..."

"What oughtn't you to say? What can't you say?"

I cursed my clumsy and premature exclamation, which looked like compromising in one second two months of patient approach. Thoroughly alarmed, and grasping at a straw, my eyes fastened on Melusine.

The Grand Duchess seemed to doubt the meaning of that look.

"Monsieur," she said, "Fräulein von Graffenfried is my friend, and you must know that I have no secrets from those I have once called by that name. You can speak freely before her. Indeed, I ask you to."

There was only one way out of the impasse. Stammering in the approved manner of those with nothing definite to say, I told her as well as I could about my conversation with Professor Thierry in the course of which I had first heard the name of Baron von Boose.

Aurora of Lautenburg's forehead showed a wrinkle.

"I understand," she murmured at length, "or, rather, I think I understand, in spite of the intentional reservations in your story."

She reflected a moment, then recovered her wonted calm and said:

"This proves, monsieur, how much one should distrust hasty conclusions. I do not know where your Professor Thierry went for the story with which he has stuffed your head. If, as you say, he is a conscientious historian, I think he would have acted less precipitately if he had been in possession of this—and this."

She handed me the letter I had just seen and with it another.

"These," she explained, "are two of the last letters written to me from the Congo by the Grand Duke Rudolph. In the first he tells me how he was saved by Ulrich von Boose from a buffalo which had killed his horse; in the second, how this same Boose rescued him from five or six natives who would have given him a bad time."

She looked at me with a smile while I read the passages she indicated.

I bowed, feeling somewhat sheepish.

Melusine had just filled the cups and we drank some very strong tea, in which pieces of citron-peel floated. Then I kissed the Grand Duchess's hand and clasped Melusine's.

"Au revoir till tomorrow, ami," said Aurora.

I went back through the park to my room, not without noticing, as I went out, a shadow which had more than a suggestion of Lieutenant von Hagen about it.

A shot, then another, rang out through the clear, empty night. We listened. Nothing followed.

Vignerte shrugged his shoulders.

"Some sentry with the creeps."

"Lend me your torch," he said.

He turned on the light and held out two pieces of paper.

"What are they?" I asked.

"The first," he replied, "is a letter addressed to Aurora of Lautenburg by the Grand Duke Rudolph. This other is the document drawn up by Boose, which, as I have told you, secured my restoration to the Grand Duchess's favour. It is as well," he added, "that you should not think you are dreaming as you listen to my story. Try a little contact with reality."

I scanned the two documents eagerly, one covered with Boose's strong, vigorous writing, the other adorned with those long feminine characters which indicate a temperament more prone to reflection than action. I was deeply moved by this letter of the German Grand Duke, who now rested beyond the seas in the hot clay of the Congo, between the glowing boundaries of the tropics. Mere contact with it conjured up a startlingly clear vision of her to whom it was written. Aurora of Lautenburg stood before us. I felt as if I had known her for ages.

Vignerte turned off the light and the rectangle of night sky reappeared. I handed back the papers. He continued.

Brunetière, speaking of the Lettres de Dupuis et de Colonet, says that they show less actual wit than a striving after wit. And that is more or less true of all Musset's work. Reverse that saying, and you have the best possible description of the Grand Duchess's conversation. That proud woman was always aptness itself. She was an exceptional being, and consequently what she said had always a quality of its own. Her judgments were severe, perhaps, but never pretentious or bookish.

She avoided the commonplace as the cat avoids water.

I had no idea how much she knew or what she liked, so the three books I took her that evening were Le Voyage du Condotière, Les Eblouissements, Les Evocations.

Next morning she gave me them back.

"I've read them all," she said, "but your selection was not a bad one. I see you like poetry."

Several books lay on a sofa. She picked one up and handed it to me.

"It is the Caucasian Review, which is published at Tiflis, and there is more beauty in these rude pages and simple tales of travel in unforgettable lands than in most of your modern poets. This is the rare spring to which the poets of tomorrow will come to drink."

She continued:

"Shakespeare has been dead three centuries, and the haunts of Macbeth are now treeless and a waste of factories. In Spain Don Quixote has been succeeded by a horde of commercial travellers from here. In Italy Carducci is a kind of half-witted Hugo. Like Switzerland, your romantic countries are now the hunting-grounds of tourists. There are turnstiles at the bottom of all your peaks.

"Suarès, whose book you lent me, felt all this, and surpasses himself when speaking of our Dostoevsky. He ought to come, if only for a short time, to our gorges of Dariel. I am quite sure he would prefer them to those of the Ebro and Douro, of which you see pictures in every station.

"There is no doubt that Madame de Noailles is your greatest poet. But why insist on calling her Greek! She is no more Greek than the Ariadne of the Indian Dionysus or the Circassian Medea. All that is best in her she owes to Armenia and Persia, our countries. Greek indeed! How silly they are! Haven't you ever seen her? I once lunched with her at Evian. I can tell you I took a great fancy to her. She's lovely and malicious, but honestly she is not Greek at all. At home we have a species of bird that you call jackdaw. It is very wild, flies high and has a vicious peck. Its plumage is blue and black, and it is strong, though slight. Your Madame de Noailles is a Tartar jackdaw, not a fat, lazy Greek dove."

"What about this?" I said, holding up Renée Vivian's volume of verse.

She kissed the book. "My words are too clumsy for her," she replied. "I adore her."

I was almost drank with joy to hear the woman whom I admired to the point of idolatry speak of things dearest to my heart in a setting which satisfied my exotic tastes. I told her so in a few simple words—as one always should.

I think she was touched, for she laid her hand on my shoulder and murmured, I have forgotten in what language:

"Thou art kind and I love thee well, my comrade."

Turning to Melusine, she repeated the Russian phrase of the previous evening:

"No, indeed, it's no good my relying on for my admission to the Kirchhaus."

Then, resuming her old sprightly tone:

"I believe I called you 'thou' just now, ami. You mustn't mind that. I mix all my dialects occasionally, and in my country we use 'thou' to practically every one, from our cattle up to the Czar himself."

A long silence followed, broken only at rhythmic intervals by the weird strains Melusine drew from her guzla.

Incense was burning in a bowl.

I began to turn over, without reading, the pages of a book which lay open on a small table beside me.

"Do you like that?" Aurora asked.

"That" was the Reisebilder.

I told her I was a great lover of Heine.

"Now what I value most in a poet," she said, "is a certain quality of soul. That is why I love Shelley and Lamartine, and dislike this Heine. Oh, I know what you'll say, the Nordsee and the rest. No one knows my debt to him better than I; but he's like Deutz, who sold your Duchesse de Berry, and I always feel I want to offer him the tribute of my admiration with a pair of tongs."

She took the book from me and looked through it.

I had no idea what time it was. Suddenly a whiff of air, with that sharp nip in it that heralds the dawn, was wafted in through the open window behind the curtains. The smoke of the incense trembled like a tottering pillar.

Buried in the Reisebilder, the Grand Duchess had forgotten my presence. Melusine put a finger on her smiling lips and took me out without her mistress noticing that we had gone.

It was very cold outside. To the east the blue sky was undergoing a magic change, slowly turning to violet, then green, then orange. I sat down on a seat by the door beneath the Grand Duchess's window, indulging in a kind of mournful ecstasy. For it was the very spot whither I had come so many evenings solely in order to be near her.

Then, languid and monotonous, but pure as the icy waters of a mountain stream, came the sound of a voice. The Grand Duchess was singing to the accompaniment of Melusine's guzla. She was the very incarnation of harmony, and her voice was, indeed, the voice of my dreams.

She was singing Ilse's romance, the best of the Reisebilder. And because we had just been speaking of it together I seemed to be still with her in her room: