The dance was at an end.  Barbarina came forward and bowed low; and now something happened so unheard of, so contrary to court etiquette, that the master of ceremonies was filled with surprise and disapprobation.  The king applauded, not as gracious kings applaud generally, by laying his hands lightly together, but like a wild enthusiast who wishes to confess to the world that he is bewildered, enraptured.  He then rose from his chair, and turning to the princesses and generals behind him, he said, “Gentlemen, why do you not applaud?” and as if these magical words had released the hands from bondage and given life to the wild rapture of applause which had before but trembled on the lip, the wide hall rang with the plaudits and enthusiastic bravos of the spectators.  Barbarina bowed low and still lower, an expression of happy triumph playing upon her glowing face.

“I have never seen a more beautiful woman,” said the king, as he sank back, seemingly exhausted, in his chair.

Queen Elizabeth pressed her lips together, to suppress a cry of pain.  She had heard the king’s words; for her they had a deeper meaning.  “He will love her, I know it, I feel it!” she said to herself as she returned after this eventful evening to Schonhausen.  “Oh, why has God laid upon me this new trial, this new humiliation?  Until now, no one thought the less of me because I was not loved by the king.  The world said, ’The king loves no woman, he has no heart for love.’  From this day I shall be despised and pitied.  The king has found a heart.  He knows now that he has not outlived his youth; he feels that he is young—­that he is young in heart, young in love!  Oh, my God! and I too am young, and love; and I must shroud my heart in resignation and gloom.”

While the queen was pouring out her complaints and prayers to God, the Swedish ambassador was confiding his wrath to his king.  He wrote to his sovereign, and repeated to him the angry and abusive words of the little Princess Amelia, who was known at the court as the little April Fee.  She was more changeable than April, and more stormy and imperious than Frederick himself.  He painted skilfully the gentle and attractive bearing of the Princess Ulrica, and asked for permission to demand the hand of this gracious and noble princess for Adolph Frederick.  After the ambassador had written his dispatches, and sent them by a courier to the Swedish ship lying in the sound, he said to himself, with a triumphant smile:  “Ah, my little Princess Amelia, this is a royal punishment for royal impertinence.  You were pleased to treat me with contempt, but you did not know that I could avenge myself by depriving you of a kingdom.  Ah, if you had guessed my mission, how smilingly you would have greeted the Count Tessin!”

The gentlemen diplomatists are sometimes outwitted.

CHAPTER X.

Eckhof.