The Luck of Barry Lyndon, William Makepeace Thackeray [best ereader under 100 .txt] 📗

you all, as gentlemen of honour, to carry these letters to my relatives, and say from whom you had them!’ and with this the unhappy lady began scattering letters about among the astonished crowd.

“ ‘Let no man stoop!’ cried the Prince, in a voice of thunder. ‘Madame de Gleim, you should have watched your patient better. Call the Princess’s physicians: her Highness’s brain is affected. Gentlemen, have the goodness to retire.’ And the Prince stood on the landing as the gentlemen went down the stairs, saying fiercely to the guard, ‘Soldier, if she moves, strike with your halbert!’ on which the man brought the point of his weapon to the Princess’s breast; and the lady, frightened, shrank back and re-entered her apartments. ‘Now, Monsieur de Weissenborn,’ said the Prince, ‘pick up all those papers;’ and the Prince went into his own apartments, preceded by his pages, and never quitted them until he had seen every one of the papers burnt.

“The next day the Court Gazette contained a bulletin signed by the three physicians, stating that ‘her Highness the Hereditary Princess laboured under inflammation of the brain, and had passed a restless and disturbed night.’ Similar notices were issued day after day. The services of all her ladies, except two, were dispensed with. Guards were placed within and without her doors; her windows were secured, so that escape from them was impossible: and you know what took place ten days after. The church-bells were ringing all night, and the prayers of the faithful asked for a person in extremis. A Gazette appeared in the morning, edged with black, and stating that the high and mighty Princess Olivia Maria Ferdinanda, consort of His Serene Highness Victor Louis Emanuel, Hereditary Prince of X⁠⸺, had died in the evening of the 24th of January 1769.

“But do you know how she died, sir? That, too, is a mystery. Weissenborn, the page, was concerned in this dark tragedy; and the secret was so dreadful, that never, believe me, till Prince Victor’s death, did I reveal it.

“After the fatal esclandre which the Princess had made, the Prince sent for Weissenborn, and binding him by the most solemn adjuration to secrecy (he only broke it to his wife many years after: indeed, there is no secret in the world that women cannot know if they will), despatched him on the following mysterious commission.

“ ‘There lives,’ said his Highness, ‘on the Kehl side of the river, opposite to Strasbourg, a man whose residence you will easily find out from his name, which is Monsieur de Strasbourg. You will make your inquiries concerning him quietly, and without occasioning any remark; perhaps you had better go into Strasbourg for the purpose, where the person is quite well known. You will take with you any comrade on whom you can perfectly rely: the lives of both, remember, depend on your secrecy. You will find out some period when Monsieur de Strasbourg is alone, or only in company of the domestic who lives with him (I myself visited the man by accident on my return from Paris five years since, and hence am induced to send for him now, in my present emergency). You will have your carriage waiting at his door at night; and you and your comrade will enter his house masked; and present him with a purse of a hundred louis; promising him double that sum on his return from his expedition. If he refuse, you must use force and bring him; menacing him with instant death should he decline to follow you. You will place him in the carriage with the blinds drawn, one or other of you never losing sight of him the whole way, and threatening him with death if he discover himself or cry out. You will lodge him in the old Tower here, where a room shall be prepared for him; and his work being done, you will restore him to his home with the same speed and secrecy with which you brought him from it.’

“Such were the mysterious orders Prince Victor gave his page; and Weissenborn, selecting for his comrade in the expedition Lieutenant Bartenstein, set out on his strange journey.

“All this while the palace was hushed, as if in mourning, the bulletins in the Court Gazette appeared, announcing the continuance of the Princess’s malady; and though she had but few attendants, strange and circumstantial stories were told regarding the progress of her complaint. She was quite wild. She had tried to kill herself. She had fancied herself to be I don’t know how many different characters. Expresses were sent to her family informing them of her state, and couriers despatched publicly to Vienna and Paris to procure the attendance of physicians skilled in treating diseases of the brain. That pretended anxiety was all a feint: it was never intended that the Princess should recover.

“The day on which Weissenborn and Bartenstein returned from their expedition, it was announced that her Highness the Princess was much worse; that night the report through the town was that she was at the agony: and that night the unfortunate creature was endeavouring to make her escape.

“She had unlimited confidence in the French chamber-woman who attended her, and between her and this woman the plan of escape was arranged. The Princess took her jewels in a casket; a private door, opening from one of her rooms and leading into the outer gate, it was said, of the palace, was discovered for her: and a letter was brought to her, purporting to be from the Duke, her father-in-law, and stating that a carriage and horses had been provided, and would take her to B⁠⸺: the territory where she might communicate with her family and be safe.

“The unhappy lady, confiding in her guardian, set out on the expedition. The passages wound through the walls of the modern part of the palace and abutted in effect at the old Owl Tower, as it was called, on the