第7章

Francis had not been mistaken. It really was the Empress Ludovica, the third consort of the emperor, who had married her only a few months ago. She wore a handsome dishabille of embroidered white muslin, closely surrounding her delicate and slender form, and trimmed with beautiful laces. The white dress reached up to the neck, where a rose-colored tie fastened it. Her beautiful black hair, which fell down in heavy ringlets on both sides of her face, was adorned with a costly lace cap, from which wide ribbons of rose-colored satin flowed down on her shoulders. But the countenance of the empress did not correspond to this coquettish and youthful dress. She was young and beautiful, but an expression of profound melancholy overspread her features. Her cheeks were transparently white, and a sad, touching smile quivered round her finely-chiselled, narrow lips; her high, expansive forehead was shaded, as it were, by a cloud of sadness; and her large black eyes shot, from time to time, gloomy flashes which seemed to issue from a gulf of fiery torture. But whatever passions might animate her delicate, ethereal form, the empress had learned to cover her heart with a veil, and her lips never gave utterance to the sufferings of her soul. Only her confidantes were allowed to divine them; they alone knew that, twofold tortures were racking Ludovica's fiery soul, those of hatred and wounded pride. Napoleon! it was he whom the empress hated with indescribable bitterness; and the neglect with which her consort, the Emperor Francis, treated her cut her proud heart to the quick. Thanks to the intrigues and immense riches of her mother, Beatrix of Este, Duchess of Modena, she had become the wife of an emperor, and herself an empress; but she had thereby obtained only an august position, not a husband and partner. She was an empress in name only, but not in reality. Francis had given her his hand, but not his heart and his love. He disdained his beautiful, lovely wife; he avoided any familiar intercourse with her with anxious timidity; only in the presence of the court and the public did he treat the empress as his consort, and tolerate her near his person. At first Ludovica had submitted to this strange conduct on the part of her husband with proud indifference, and not the slightest murmur, not the mildest reproach, had escaped her lips. For it was not from love that she had chosen this husband, but from ambition and pride. She had told herself that it would be better for her to be Empress of Austria than Princess of Modena and Este; and even the prospect of being the third wife of Francis of Austria, and the stepmother of the ten children whom his second wife had borne to him, had not deterred her. She meant to marry the emperor, and not the man; she wished to play a prominent part, and exert a powerful influence on the destinies of the world. But these hopes were soon to prove utterly futile. The emperor granted her publicly all the privileges of her exalted position by his side; but in the privacy of her apartments he never made her his confidante;he refused to let her have any influence over his decisions; he never consulted her as to the measures of his administration: nay, he avoided alluding to such topics in her presence.

Such was the grief that was gnawing at the heart of the young empress--the wound from which her proud and lofty soul was bleeding.

But for a few weeks past she had overcome her silent grief, and the presence of her mother, the shrewd and intriguing Duchess of Modena, seemed to have imparted fresh strength to the empress, and confirmed her in her determination to conquer the heart and confidence of her husband. Whereas she had hitherto met his indifference by proud reticence, and feigned not to notice it, she was kind and even affectionate toward him; and it often happened that, availing herself of the privilege of her position, she traversed the private corridor separating her rooms from those of her husband, and, without being summoned to him, entered his cabinet to talk politics with him in spite of his undisguised aversion to doing so. The emperor hated these interviews from the bottom of his heart; a shudder pervaded his soul, and a cloud covered his brow, whenever he heard the low rap of the empress at his private door. To-day, too, the dark cloud covered his forehead even after the empress had entered his cabinet. Ludovica noticed it, and a mournful smile overspread her pale face for a moment.

"As your majesty did not come to me to bid me good-morning, I have come to you," she said, in a gentle, kind voice, holding out her beautiful white hand to the emperor.

Francis took it and pressed it to his lips. "It is true," he said, evidently embarrassed, "I did not come this morning to pay my respects to you, but time was wanting to me. I had to go at once to my cabinet and work; I am very busy.""I see," said Ludovica; "your majesty's dress still bears the traces of your occupation."The emperor hastened to brush away with his hands the small particles of the peach-stone that had remained on his shirt-bosom and his sleeve; but while he was doing this his brow darkened still more, and he cast a gloomy and defiant glance on the empress.