“That is already done,” the General replied.  “You are free.”

“How is it possible?  How can I thank your Excellency!”

“You owe me no thanks,” he replied; “Frau von Kubinyi bought you out.”

The poor poet’s heart seemed to stop; he could not speak, nor even stammer a word; but with a low bow, he rushed out and tore wildly through the streets, until he reached the mansion of the woman whom he had so misunderstood, quite out of breath; he must see her again, and throw himself at her feet.

“Where are you going to?” the porter asked him.

“To Frau von Kubinyi’s.”

“She is not here.”

“Not here?”

“She has gone away.”

“Gone away?  Where to?”

“She started for Paris two hours ago.”

DELILA

In a former reminiscence,[6] we made the acquaintance of a lady, who had done the police many services in former years, and whom we called Wanda von Chabert.  It is no exaggeration, if we say that she was at the same time the cleverest, the most charming and the most selfish woman whom one could possibly meet.  She was certainly not exactly what is called beautiful, for neither her face nor her figure were symmetrical enough for that, but if her head was not beautiful in the style of the antique, neither like the Venus of Milo nor Ludoirsi’s Juno, it was, on the other hand, in the highest sense delightful like the ladies whom Wateau and Mignard painted.  Everything in her little face, and in its frame of soft brown hair was attractive and seductive, her low, Grecian forehead, her bright, almond shaped eyes, her small nose, and her full, voluptuous lips, her middling height and her small waist with its, perhaps, almost too full bust, and above all her walk, that half indolent, half coquettish swaying of her broad hips, were all maddeningly alluring.

[Footnote 6:  An Exotic Prince.]

And this woman, who was born for love, was as eager for pleasure and as amorous as few other women have even been, but for that very reason she never ran any danger of allowing her victims to escape her from pity; on the contrary, she soon grew tired of each of her favorites, and her connection with the police was then extremely useful to her, in order to get rid of an inconvenient, or jealous lover.

Before the war between Austria and Italy in 1859, Frau von Chabert was in London, where she lived alone in a small, one-storied house with her servants, and was in constant communication with emigrants from all countries.