Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846

Then again rose the shouts, as Maria Theresa attempted to thank her faithful subjects. She could no longer speak; but she waved her hand to them, with a graceful gesture, and a look of gratitude which betrayed the depth of her feelings. Otmar's heart again beat tumultuously. He closed his eyes, as if to shut out from his very heart the dangerous sight of her who held over it so powerful a fascination. When he again looked up, she had descended from the throne. She was gone.

Overpowered by the various conflicting feelings which had so powerfully assailed him in the last short hour, the young noble followed instinctively the crowd as it streamed out of the great hall; and it was only when he found himself in a large ante-room, somewhat severed from the general mass, that he stopped and threw himself down upon a bench near a doorway, to collect his confused and scattered thoughts. He remained for a time lost in a reverie, from which he was aroused by a tap upon his shoulder.

Before him stood a boy, in a military dress, whose mien bore all the boldness and pertness of a page.

"Servus, domine!" said the youth, with an impudent air.

"What want you with me?" asked Otmar sharply. "I do not know you, sir. This is some mistake."

"It is none at all, if I read right your person," answered the boy pertly, mustering Otmar from top to toe. "Are you not he who was last night in the primate's garden? The description answers that of him I was bid to seek."

"I was in the primate's garden last night, of a truth," said the young noble: "but" —

"Then follow me," continued the boy, with a nod of the head.

"Whither?"

"Where a lady calls you," laughed the page, with an impudent swagger. "A young fellow of our age and blood needs no other bidding, methinks."

"What lady?" once more asked Otmar. But the boy only winked him to follow, as a reply; and turning into a side-door, beckoned to him once more; and then, seeing that the summons was obeyed, proceeded on, through several passages and corridors, until, reaching a door, he pushed it open. Within stood a female; and Otmar's heart, which had beat high with vague expectations of what he himself scarce dared to divine, was suddenly chilled, when he saw before him an elderly lady, altogether unknown to him. But as she came forward to ask the boy whether it was the person he was charged to seek, he became aware that it was not she into whose presence he was to be introduced. The lady, in turn, signed to him to follow; and after tapping gently upon an inner-door, and waiting for a reply, opened it, and bade him enter.

The apartment into which the young noble had been thus ushered, seemed to have been hastily fitted up with such resources of a lady's chamber as the cumbrous and incommodious fashion of the day offered. At the upper end, in a large high-backed chair, sat a female figure, behind whom a tirewoman appeared in waiting.

Those hopes and expectations which, once or twice, Otmar had permitted to float over his mind, as he had followed the page through the passages of the castle, and had then dismissed from it as fantastic and improbable, and yet again, in spite of his better reasonings, indulged, were now confirmed, and still, to his dazzled sight, appeared impossible.

It was indeed Maria Theresa who sat before him.

The mantle had been disengaged from the shoulders, the cimeter ungirded from her side, and the crown removed from her head: but she still wore the rich dark dress, incrusted with gems, that proclaimed her royalty, but which she needed not to stamp her "every inch" a queen. Her hair had been, apparently, loosened by the removal of the diadem from her brow; and powdered as it was, it fell in luxuriant ringlets over her neck and shoulders. The glow of her recent emotion still remained upon her face, and added to the natural grace of her beauty: and her lustrous dark-grey eyes were still moist with her late tears.

No wonder that Otmar stood before her, doubly dazzled with her beauty as a woman, and her majesty as a queen – bewildered that she, whom he had presumed to love, and for whom, in spite of himself, his heart yet beat wildly, should be his sovereign, and that he should stand thus in her presence.

"Ah! is it you, sir – you, doubly my rescuer from evil!" said Maria Theresa, rising from her chair, and advancing a few steps towards him. "Welcome, to accept your Monarch's inmost thanks!" And she stretched out her hand, which, although totally unpractised in the etiquette of courts, Otmar, by an instinctive impulse, knelt down to kiss.

"Rise, sir!" she continued. "Were my gratitude alone to speak, it were for me, your Queen, to kneel and kiss the hand that a second time has, through God's providence, been the instrument of my deliverance from peril."

Otmar rose from his knees, a deep blush overspreading his handsome countenance. The young Queen seemed to gaze upon him for a moment with satisfaction; and then, waving her hand to her female attendant to retire, she again addressed him.

"What can I do to serve you, sir?" she said – "you, who have thus twice served me at the peril of your life. I am but a poor and a powerless Queen," she continued, with a faint smile: "but a grateful heart may still find means to recompense" —

"To live and die in your majesty's defence, is all your poor servant, who has but done his duty to his Queen, although unknowingly, has to desire," was the young noble's reply.

"Nay, sir, we have too many obligations towards you," said the Queen, "to allow ourselves to be quit thus. Can I do naught to serve you in return?" she pursued, with a less dignified and more familiar tone. "You must not allow so great a weight of thanks to lie upon my heart. Take pity on me!"

Otmar could with difficulty find words to speak. The tumult of his feelings almost overpowered him, as he began to forget the queen in the beautiful and loved woman before him. But he struggled with the impetuous dictates of his heart.

"Madam!" he said, commanding himself, "I am a poor noble, left alone in this wide world, almost without a friend, since my poor father's death, which left me with involved fortunes, and without a prospect for the future; and I was careless of life, until – until I had seen – your majesty," he continued with emotion, whilst the blush upon the cheek of the young Queen showed her perception that the homage paid was as much to the woman as the monarch. "And now my only wish, as I have said, is to die in your service and defence."

"Die! God forbid!" said Maria Theresa, with a woman's ready tear starting to her eye. "Live, sir! and, if you will, to fight in our cause. Enter the army. Rank shall be granted you. Your advancement shall be cared for. Live to be again the friend and champion of the poor persecuted Queen, who needs friends indeed, when all are set against her."

"Say not so, madam," interrupted Otmar, with fervour. "Have we not, one and all, sworn to give our life and life's blood in your cause?"

"Yes," said the Queen, her tears now fully flowing, at the recollection of the late scene of wild enthusiasm. "I have found friends among my faithful, and my true – my gallant, noble Hungarians. Think you I did not mark you, sir – you, who were the first to shout, 'For Maria Theresa we will die!' Think you that my heart did not feel that you were, perhaps, a third time, my friend in need? But I have enemies still. Calumny, I am aware, miscolours my simplest actions. My very feelings may be misinterpreted, my very tears, at this moment, in your presence, misconstrued. Who can know what is the worth of friends better than those who suffer from such odious attacks of enemies as I have suffered?" And Maria Theresa clasped her hands before her eyes.

Otmar once more sank down at her feet deeply affected.

"But I must away with this weakness!" said the Queen, struggling to recover from her agitation, and dashing away her tears with her fingers.

As she saw Otmar kneeling before her, his fine features fixed upon her with the liveliest expression of pity and admiration, his handsome figure bent to do homage to her loveliness and worth, her woman's feelings had the mastery of her feelings as a queen, and, smiling upon him with a smile, which shone all the more brightly through her tears – that smile, with the power and fascination of which none knew better how to fetter hearts than Maria Theresa – she hastily detached from her shoulders a string of diamonds, and passed them over the young man's neck.

"This is no recompense, to reward your services with matters of sordid value, sir," she said. "This is no gift to enable you to retrieve, however slightly, your fallen fortunes. This is the chain of honour which I bestow upon my champion and knight; for such you shall be in the eyes of the world. Here, in Maria Theresa's chamber, you are to her the deliverer and friend."

"Madam! my life, my heart, and soul are yours!" stammered the young man, no longer able to control his feelings, under circumstances which made him forget for a moment that distance which the sovereign herself seemed to have overleapt.

Again Maria Theresa blushed slightly. In spite of her strong understanding, her virtue, and her worth, she was not above those feelings of coquetry which, joined to her admiration of beauty, often, especially at an after period of her life, gave handle to the many unjust calumnies of her traducers.

"Rise once more, my noble knight!" said the young Queen, with another smile; "for we have dubbed you such. We will attach you to our especial service, since such is your desire, and find a place for you in our suite; although it be but badly paid in our state of disastrous fortune. But I know you heed not that. I see it in that look, that would reproach me for such a thought. You shall remain with us until you join our army," she added with a sigh, "to fight in our cause."

"This honour, madam" – stammered Otmar, rising.

"Is not without its perils and its pains, good youth," continued Maria Theresa. "You will have to combat envy, jealousy, ill-will within; for such is the life of courts. Alas! I know it but too well. Without, you may have often wearisome and dangerous services."

"None can be felt as such when it is you – your Majesty I serve," said the young man with enthusiasm.

"I will – I do believe you, sir," replied the Queen. "I have said it once, and I repeat it. Yours is the true nobility of heart. Ah! were they all so – they who serve me and call themselves my friends! But enough of this! Let your first service be to direct the search of our agents to the discovery of the disguised enemies who made that bold attempt last night to secure my person during my evening stroll – my poor moments of liberty! Ah! France, I recognise there your treacherous designs! You did not know who were your adversaries?"

"Madam," answered the young man, "I should recognise again the voice of him who was my principal assailant; and who, if I mistake not, has already crossed his sword with mine. But I know him not."

"I would not punish when I can forgive," said Maria Theresa, with a sigh. "But the discovery of these complotters on my liberty, perhaps my life, is necessary for the safety of my realm."

"If my zeal avail aught," said Otmar warmly, "their life shall pay their treachery."

"No bloodshed, no bloodshed, as you love me, good youth!" said the Queen, shuddering. "Blood enough is shed upon the battle-field for me and mine. And who knows how far such blood should lie upon the conscience of a miserable queen? – how far the Almighty will write it to her dread account at the last great day of reckoning?" And, with that nobility of feeling peculiar to Maria Theresa, she sank her head downwards in gloomy thought. For a time she thus remained, as if forgetful of the presence of the young noble; at length she again raised her head, cleared away the gloom upon her features with a faint smile, and once more extending her hand, said – "Now leave us, sir, but to return shortly hither. Already they may cry scandal that I should have talked to one of such good mien so long. But go not," she continued, as Otmar moved towards the door, "until I have told you how my heart was pained, that the search of those who sought to discover you, after the skirmish of last evening, was useless – how anxiously I prayed, in the darkness of the night, that no ill might have befallen my young, champion – how my very soul was gratified to see him in the crowd before me, to know that he was safe! You must not think your Queen heartless and ungrateful, sir. Now, go!"

With a wave of the hand, Maria Theresa dismissed from her presence the young noble, who staggered from the chamber in a tempest of tumultuous emotions.

Chapter IV

"Stand back, thou manifest conspirator:
Thou that contrivedst to murder!"

    Shakspeare.

"Farewell, my lord! Good wishes, praise, and prayers,
Shall Suffolk ever have of Margaret.
Farewell, sweet madam!"

    Idem.