Scarcely, however, had he read her note, when two of his brother-officers came to see him, and asked him, with well-simulated anxiety, whether he were ill.  When he said that he was perfectly well, one of them continued, laughing:  “Then please explain the occurrence that is in everybody’s mouth to-day, in which you play such a comical part.”—­“I, a comical part?” the Count shouted.—­“Well, is it not very comical when you call on a lady like Princess Leonie, whom you do not know, to upbraid her for her cruelty, and most unceremoniously call her thou[6]?”

[Footnote 6:  In Germany, thou du, is only used between near relations, lovers, very intimate friends, to children, servants, &c.—­TRANSLATOR.]

That was too much; Count F. might pardon the Princess for pretending not to know him in society, but that she should make him a common laughing-stock, nearly drove him mad.  “If I call the Princess thou,” he exclaimed, “it is because I have the right to do so, as I will prove.”—­His comrades shrugged their shoulders, but he asked them to come again punctually at seven o’clock, and then he made his preparations.

At eight o’clock his divinity made her appearance, still thickly veiled, but on this occasion wearing a valuable sable cloak.  As usual, Count F. took her into the dark-room and locked the outer door; then he opened that which led into his bedroom, and his two friends came in, each with a candle in his hand.—­The lady in the sable cloak cried out in terror when Count F. pulled off her veil, but then it was his turn to be surprised, for it was not the Princess Leonie who stood before him, but her pretty lady’s-maid, who, now she was discovered, confessed that love had driven her to assume her mistress’s part, in which she had succeeded perfectly, on account of the similarity of their figure, eyes and hair.  She had found the Count’s letter in the Princess’s pocket-handkerchief when they were at Karlsbad and had answered it.  She had made him happy, and had heightened the illusion which her figure gave rise to by borrowing the Princess’s dresses.

Of course the Count was made great fun of, and turned his back on Vienna hastily that same evening, but the pretty lady’s-maid also disappeared soon after the catastrophe, and only by those means escaped from her mistress’s well-merited anger; for it turned out that that gallant little individual had already played the part of her mistress more than once, and had made all those hopeless adorers of the Princess, who had found favor in her own eyes, happy in her stead.

Thus the enigma was solved which Princess Leonie seemed to have proposed to the world.

A DEER PARK IN THE PROVINCES