ost 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.
A DEER PARK IN THE PROVINCES
It is not very long ago that an Hungarian Prince, who was in an Austrian
cavalry regiment, was quartered in a wealthy Austrian garrison town. The
ladies of the local aristocracy naturally did everything they could to
allure the new comer, who was young, good-looking, animated and amusing,
into
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