The hours flew past. The equipage drove up to the Wildenau palace, but she was scarcely conscious of it. All sorts of plans and resolutions were whirling through her brain. She was assisted from the carriage and ascended the carpeted marble stairs. Two letters were lying on the table in her boudoir. The prince had been there and left one, a note, which contained only the words: "You will perceive that at the present time you _dare_ not refuse this position.
The other letter, in a large envelope, was an official document. Countess Wildenau had been appointed mistress of ceremonies!
The countess was "herself" again, as she called it. "Thank God!"
The Ammergau episode--with all its tragic consequences--belonged to the past. To-day, under the emotional impressions and external circumstances at that luckless castle, where everything conspired against her, she had thought seriously of breaking with her traditions and the necessities of life, faced the thought of poverty and shame so boldly that this appointment to the highest position at court saved her from the gulf of ruin. Stopped at the last moment, tottering, giddy, the startled woman sought to find a firm footing once more. She felt like a suicide, who is not really in earnest, and rejoices when some one prevents his design.
She stood holding the document in her hand. This was truth, reality, the necessity for self-destruction was imagination. The disgrace whose brand she already felt upon her brow could no longer approach her!
She set her foot upon the shaggy skin of a lion--the earth did not yet reel beneath her. She pressed her burning brow against a slender marble column--this, too, was still firm! She passed her slender fingers over the silk plush of the divan on which she reclined and rejoiced that it was still hers. Her eye, intoxicated with beauty, wandered over the hundreds of art-treasures, pictures and statues from every land with which she had adorned her rooms--nothing was lacking. Upon a pedestal stood the Apollo Belvedere, whose pure marble glowed warmly in a sunbeam shining through red curtains, as if real blood were circulating in the stone. The wondrous face smiled in divine repose upon the motley array, which the art and industry of centuries had garnered here.
