The Princess Priscillas Fortnight | Page 3

Grand Duke indeed had proposed to ennoble him after he had
successfully taught Priscilla English grammar, but Fritzing, whose
spirit dwelt among the Greeks, could not be brought to see any
desirability in such a step. Priscilla called him Fritzi when her
lady-in-waiting dozed; dearest Fritzi sometimes even, in the heat of
protest or persuasion. But afterwards, leaving the room as solemnly as
she had come in, followed by her wide-awake attendant, she would nod
a formally gracious "Good afternoon, Herr Geheimrath," for all the
world as though she had been talking that way the whole time. The
Countess (her lady-in-waiting was the Countess Irmgard von Disthal,

an ample slow lady, the unmarried daughter of a noble house, about
fifty at this time, and luckily--or unluckily--for Priscilla, a great lover
of much food and its resultant deep slumbers) would bow in her turn in
as stately a manner as her bulk permitted, and with a frigidity so
pronounced that in any one less skilled in shades of deportment it
would have resembled with a singular completeness a sniff of scorn.
Her frigidity was perfectly justified. Was she not a hochgeboren, a
member of an ancient house, of luminous pedigree as far back as one
could possibly see? And was he not the son of an obscure Westphalian
farmer, a person who in his youth had sat barefoot watching pigs? It is
true he had learning, and culture, and a big head with plenty of brains
in it, and the Countess Disthal had a small head, hardly any brains, no
soul to speak of, and no education. This, I say, is true; but it is also
neither here nor there. The Countess was the Countess, and Fritzing
was a nobody, and the condescension she showed him was far more
grand ducal than anything in that way that Priscilla could or ever did
produce.
Fritzing, unusually gifted, and enterprising from the first--which
explains the gulf between pig-watching and _Hofbibliothekar_--had
spent ten years in Paris and twenty in England in various capacities, but
always climbing higher in the world of intellect, and had come during
this climbing to speak English quite as well as most Englishmen, if in a
statelier, Johnsonian manner. At fifty he began his career in Kunitz, and
being a lover of children took over the English education of the three
princesses; and now that they had long since learned all they cared to
know, and in Priscilla's case all of grammar at least that he had to teach,
he invented a talent for drawing in Priscilla, who could not draw a
straight line, much less a curved one, so that she should still be able to
come to the library as often as she chose on the pretext of taking a
drawing-lesson. The Grand Duke's idea about his daughters was that
they should know a little of everything and nothing too well; and if
Priscilla had said she wanted to study Shakespeare with the librarian he
would have angrily forbidden it. Had she not had ten years for studying
Shakespeare? To go on longer than that would mean that she was eager,
and the Grand Duke loathed an eager woman.

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