But he had nothing to say against a little drawing; and it was during the drawing-lessons of the summer Priscilla was twenty-one that the Countess Disthal slept so peacefully.  The summer was hot, and the vast room cool and quiet.  The time was three o’clock—­immediately, that is, after luncheon.  Through the narrow open windows sweet airs and scents came in from the bright world outside.  Sometimes a bee would wander up from the fruit-gardens below, and lazily drone round shady corners.  Sometimes a flock of pigeons rose swiftly in front of the windows, with a flash of shining wings.  Every quarter of an hour the cathedral clock down in the town sent up its slow chime.  Voices of people boating on the river floated up too, softened to melodiousness.  Down at the foot of the hill the red roofs of the town glistened in the sun.  Beyond them lay the sweltering cornfields.  Beyond them forests and villages.  Beyond them a blue line of hills.  Beyond them, said Priscilla to herself, freedom.  She sat in her white dress at a table in one of the deep windows, her head on its long slender neck, where the little rings of red-gold hair curled so prettily, bent over the drawing-board, her voice murmuring ceaselessly, for time was short and she had a great many things to say.  At her side sat Fritzing, listening and answering.  Far away in the coolest, shadiest corner of the room slumbered the Countess.  She was lulled by the murmured talk as sweetly as by the drone of the bee.

“Your Grand Ducal Highness receives many criticisms and much advice on the subject of drawing from the Herr Geheimrath?” she said one day, after a lesson during which she had been drowsily aware of much talk.

“The Herr Geheimrath is most conscientious,” said Priscilla in the stately, it-has-nothing-to-do-with-you sort of tone she found most effectual with the Countess; but she added a request under her breath that the lieber Gott might forgive her, for she knew she had told a fib.

Indeed, the last thing that Fritzing was at this convulsed period of his life was what his master would have called conscientious.  Was he not encouraging the strangest, wickedest, wildest ideas in the Princess?  Strange and wicked and wild that is from the grand ducal point of view, for to Priscilla they seemed all sweetness and light.  Fritzing had a perfect horror of the Grand Duke.  He was everything that Fritzing, lean man of learning, most detested.  The pleasantest fashion of describing the Grand Duke will be simply to say that he was in all things, both of mind and body, the exact opposite of Fritzing.  Fritzing was a man who spent his time ignoring his body and digging away at his mind.  You know the bony aspect of such men.  Hardly ever is there much flesh on them; and though they are often ugly enough, their spirit blazes at you out of wonderful eyes.  I call him old Fritzing, for he was sixty.  To me he seemed old; to Priscilla at twenty he seemed coeval with pyramids and kindred hoarinesses; while