"Pardon me, Prince," said Herbert, with a smile, "I pity them infinitely, and wish that they might exchange with the Landgraves and Margraves, with all my heart. I have no doubt that the change would often be advantageous to both, for I have seen many a prince of the empire who would make a capital ploughman, while he made but a very clumsy prince; and I have, at this moment, three prodigiously high personages commanding three troops in my regiment, whom nature palpably intended to clean their own horses' heels, and who, I charitably believe, might, by dint of drilling and half-a-dozen years' practice, make three decent dragoons."
"Just as you please, Colonel," said the Prince, "but beware of letting your private opinion go forth. Leopold is one of the new light, I allow, and loves a philosopher; but he is an Emperor still, and expects all his philosophers to be of his own opinion.--But here comes Collini."
Collini was his Italian valet, who came to inform his Highness, that it was time for him to pay his respects to the Princess of Marosin. This Italian's principal office was, to serve his master in place of a memory--to recognise his acquaintance for him as he drove through the streets--and to tell him when to see and when to be blind. The Prince looked at his diamond watch, started from the sofa, gave himself a congratulatory glance in a mirror, and, turning to Collini, asked, "When am I to be married to the Princess?"
"Poh, Prince," interrupted the Colonel, with something of disdain, "this is too absurd. Send this grimacing fellow about his business, and make love on your own account, if you will; or if not, choose some woman whose beauty and virtue, or whose want of them both, will not be dishonoured by such trifling."
"You then actually think _her_ worth the attentions of a Prince of the Empire?" said the handsome coxcomb, as, with one finger curling his mustaches, he again, and more deliberately, surveyed himself in the mirror.
"I think the Princess of Marosin worthy of the attentions of any King on earth," said the Baron, emphatically; "she is worthy of a throne, if beauty, intelligence, and dignity of mind, can make her worthy of one."
The Prince stared. "My dear Colonel!" he exclaimed, "may I half presume you have been speculating on the lady yourself? But I can assure you it is in vain. The Princess is a woman; and allowing, as I do,"--and this he said with a Parisian bow, that bow which is the very language of superiority,--"the infinite pre-eminence of the Baron von Herbert in everything, the circumstance of her being a woman, and my being a Prince, is prodigiously in my favour."