Similarly, on his birthday he had received the rare Paris and Priamus butterflies from the charming hands of Mistress Evans’s angelic daughter.
As the prince entered this more than humble room, he saw at once the circumstances in which this family he so treasured found itself. In an instant he determined to remedy the family’s difficult situation.
He had left the family in quite prosperous conditions before his last absence from New Orleans, half a year earlier, and he had left with the certainty that they would profit from his own experiences and his well-meant advice in America.
When the prince returned again after half a year, he had tried at once to find the count’s family to be sure that they had been able to thrive in their new environs.
Since it was likely that they still lived in the house they had been renting the year before, he had gone there at once. But he’d learned, to his amazement, that the count’s family had left several weeks earlier, and someone mentioned that they might have left New Orleans entirely for some reason or other. His zealous research among the neighbors and those acquainted with the family were to no avail, and he was forced to rely on chance.
Chance brought the prince success this time.
That elderly man on the omnibus today who could not take his eyes off Gertrude as she rode on the back step, that man was none other than Prince Paul.
When he first looked out and saw the little blonde head, he had no doubt whatsoever that it was the young Countess Gertrude. But when he looked at her little companion, who also had a basket on her arm and who obscured Gertrude’s body from behind, he thought he had made a great mistake. Yet, after repeating his inspection with care, he became convinced that he had not been wrong. She had to be the count’s daughter Gertrude—this mobile dove-neck, this beautiful blond hair plaited into two long braids in the manner of Queen Louisa, the assured bearing despite her poor clothing. The family must have fallen on evil days—but in such a brief period of time? And yet—it could not be any other—this beautiful child is and remains forever Countess Gertrude!
This is how the prince cogitated until he finally fell into that astounding conflict with the man who had been enthralled by Gertrude’s charm and attractiveness. As the fight began, Gertrude managed to escape to another omnibus.
We already know the rest of what happened.
We will soon determine who the young, or rather younger, man was, and from the mouth of the prince himself.
When the prince brought Gertrude to her parents, he felt toward the child as if she had been his own daughter.
Indeed, to look at them casually, there was in fact a certain similarity between them when their eyes met, a similarity that no one would dare to mention if they knew the loving and loyal attachment between Melanie and her husband.
Guiltless misery, significant material want in private life and the life of a family embarrass us only in the presence of those who have seen and envied us in our time of prosperity and honor. Such persons come under our groaning roof only to gloat over our misfortune and maliciously play on the contrast between their present happiness and our misery. We never have to be ashamed in the presence of balanced and truly educated persons, even if our misery is in the starkest contrast to their prosperity.
The old count and his wife Melanie had barely received the prince and Gertrude into their humble room before they proceeded to tell him the reason for their unfortunate situation, so far as was possible and decent, without any hesitation or unnecessary excuses. Even more, since they knew this man of the world would be delicate and perceptive, they believed their openness would help open the way to placing their eldest daughter in service to the lady mentioned.
So they sought to fulfill their obligations and pay the proper tribute of thanks to the saving genius of the treasures of this earth.
With such a perception in mind, it was necessary for the first approach to be in a joking tone, which could only be changed over to seriousness once earnestness and smiles had won out.
“Your Royal Highness …” Melanie began.
“But Countess …” the prince interrupted.
“But Citizen Paul, you seem to forget.”
“Your Grace, we are competing even before we take the time to be happy about seeing one another again—please, above everything, say Citizen Paul, or, if this is too hard to say, say simply prince.”
“Prince—please, could you call me Mistress Clifford?”
“A prize makes you more contentious, if that’s possible, my dear countess; Mistress Clifford will have a hard time contending with such spirit.” Then the prince bowed to Melanie, seating himself between her and the count. “You know well how to win a turn. Clifford! Clifford is a pretty name, and you are now exchanging that High Tory for their noble German name …”
“My wife has managed to revenge herself against you, Prince!” the count remarked, looking at Melanie in the most lovable manner in the world.
“Mister Clifford,” she said to her husband in a half-smiling, half-serious manner, “if you believe that I have ever conceived the slightest idea of revenging myself against Citizen Paul, I am ready to receive any response from him or from you with the greatest thanks.”
“Now listen, my Melanie, I must decline ‘Mister Clifford’—Mister Ernst would work if you are horrified by my aristocratic name, and your own,” the count remarked with half-veiled irony.
“Beloved, you win!” the prince conceded. Then he turned to Hugo, who sat on a mattress next to Constanze, plucking moss out of an open seam.
“New Orleans air seems to agree with you, Hugo. You look stronger and healthier than when I saw you last—but you’re wearing your arm in a sling?”
“This arm would have made me a citizen,” Hugo intoned in a powerful voice, “if I had been able to blame this on the Mexicans. Uncle Sam is a splendid shepherd of the purses of wounded soldiers—but he doesn’t concern himself at all with how many deck hands or sailors scald an arm or a foot in a year.”
The prince took a closer look at Hugo, dressed in a red wool shirt with a knife holster, who in fact looked much more like a deck hand than a former officer of light cavalry.
“You were on a boat and scalded your arm? Is that really so?” the prince asked with sympathy. “It’s dreadful for a young, educated man to serve such a hard apprenticeship, to work with a spade when once he commanded. But there was no other job to be had? I thought it would be easy for you to pursue another, less perilous profession.”
Hugo sat silently while his sister Constanze looked first at one parent, then the other.
She thought it was high time to dare to reveal to their benefactor, the prince of Württemberg, the whole series of misfortunes and troubles that had befallen them.
Melanie spoke on behalf of her husband, who was not good with words.
“The fact that you have greeted us as an old friend, finding us here in dreadful circumstances, and that we have been this way for some time, gives me the right to try your patience for a while, Prince. I will retell to you our unfortunate situation, which arose from our failure to observe the wise advice you gave us with such good intentions. But first I would like you to explain your mysterious encounter with Gertrude, and once you have been so good as to fill this gap, I will ask you to lend me your ear.”
The prince turned to the protégée standing next to him, grasped Gertrude’s hand, and brought her to his side. Since he saw that Gertrude had been disturbed by her mother’s words, he turned to the parents and said: “Before I tell you, permit me to come to Gertrude’s defense if she has been somewhat unconventional or has done something not in tune with her obedience as a good daughter.”
“With the greatest pleasure, Prince,” Melanie and the count both responded, turning to their daughter with the purest curiosity.
Gertrude’s whole face turned bright red, so that the ruby of her young blood shone through the snow white of her turtle-dove neck.
“Prince—not everything!” she
whispered, so softly and pleadingly that the prince’s cheeks glowed.
“But Gertrude, your parents will not be upset.”
The prince continued: “This is the third day since our ship reached the wharf here. The journey here from Rio was tiring and exhausting in every sense. Dead tired as I was, I could not neglect to seek out this family so precious to me”—with this he gave a light bow to Melanie and the count. “When I came to your old apartment, I was given an answer that was not just unsatisfactory but also brought me unparalleled distress. Certainty of the most tragic sort is nowhere near as terrifying as such uncertain groping and investigating. The most dreadful images came to mind, tormenting me for two days, until at last an accident or a grace of God—whatever you want to call it—finally took satisfactory form …”
“You are making much more of this than we deserve,” Melanie interrupted.
“Your Grace, if these hyperboles arise from my heart, they are more equal to our friendship than when the truth is clothed in coarse words,” the prince responded in earnest, loving tones.
A light blush, like the rising sun reddening the pale face of Adonis, shone on Melanie’s cheeks.
Her silence told the prince that Melanie would take the rest without protest.
“Today I was once again engaged in the expedition I have taken as my duty. For this purpose I was on my way to Bouligny, where a friend lives—a hearty, faithful soul to whom I entrust everything that distresses or torments me. I wanted to get his advice and ask his help. But as so often is the case, one leaves a friend in the best of health, shakes hands for another day—and tomorrow you come and find him in a coffin.”
The prince spoke the last words in a soft voice. Then he continued.
“I left his family, who had found themselves in an unenviable situation because of his unexpected death, with the promise to visit soon to put their affairs in order.
“In him I bore another hope to the grave.
“Since the real reason I had traveled to Bouligny had been for naught, I started my journey back to the city.
“I had no desire to wait a few minutes for the steam car, so I mounted the old line on Magazine Street and changed to a second omnibus that would bring me directly home.
“Several streets further, two girls climbed on in back and took their places by the step. Each of them had a little basket on their arm.”
Gertrude looked at the prince in confusion.
Hugo said to Constanze, half-aloud, “Pay attention, Sister—that was none other than Gertrude and Lorie.”
“One of the girls drew my attention so intensely that I watched her without interruption. I thought I recognized her, but to see her in this place and in such company caused some doubt to appear. And yet I thought again that it had to be her—it could not be anyone other than …”
“Than Gertrude!” Hugo supplied with unseemly haste.
“With Lorie!” Constanze joined her brother in haste.
Gertrude sat uncomfortably, as if she were on hot coals.
“Pardon me, Prince, if I interrupt you for a moment,” the count said, “Gertrude will make her own confession as to the purpose for this trip around the world.”
Then he bent forward and said to his little daughter, who sat next to the prince on a barrel-top chest: “Gertrude, we have nothing whatsoever against your taking a little walk with your neighbor Lorie, but to go into the city you should first get permission from your parents, whom you deeply upset through your long absence.”
Melanie, who wanted to cut her husband’s untimely pedantry short, freed Gertrude from this painful confession by asking the prince to be judge in her case.
The prince continued: “Since you all know that this blonde child was Countess Gertrude, I will assume that in what follows. As I looked so intensely at Gertrude, recalling to mind what had been such a lively experience a few months before, a man seated across from me in the omnibus began to look at me in the strangest way. He seemed upset that I had given my entire attention to little Gertrude, and he asked me in a malicious tone whether I wanted to invite the blonde child in with me.”
Gertrude happened to hit her elbow on the prince’s right thigh, but with a purpose.
“Fräulein Gertrude,” he said, “you will certainly be unhappy with me that I let you stand outside and did not have the decency to invite you in with your little friend. When I think of that now, it is inconceivable even to me. As so often happens, one neglects obligations of decency or simple charity through having too many interests. But my charming rival is to be criticized because he blamed me without giving youth and beauty its due.”
Gertrude thanked him with her forget-me-not eyes and looked playfully at Constanze, who put her hand on her bosom to suppress a giggle.
“You are making Gertrude too proud, Prince,” Melanie said.
“Soon she will be called ‘The Rose of New Orleans,’ Constanze,” Hugo whispered.
“If it weren’t me,” Constanze responded, flashing him the fine rose of her cheeks. Then she fluffed the skirt of her dress so that her little feet were visible, to make her brother aware of these beautiful gifts of nature.
He looked upon his beloved sister with flaming eyes.
“My neighbor,” the prince continued, “must have just stepped out of a barbershop, and if one recalls how rejuvenated one feels when he leaves such a place, then you cannot blame someone if he believes himself to be young and handsome. I will not call him young, but at least he was younger than his rival, despite graying hair.”
“Gray hair and a receptive spirit often serve as a better guarantee of continued interest than the full hair of a young man, who uses vanity and fancy to play on our very soul,” Melanie declared, dividing her charm between the prince and the count.
“My rival would have been saved by that, my dear!”
“That has not yet been said, Prince.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“A comic scene followed, which I can hardly keep a straight face while describing,” the prince continued. “When I got out in order to make a closer acquaintance with my blonde mystery, my rival followed on my heels and threatened—for what reason is a riddle to me to the present moment—to beat me up.”
“Prince, you’re joking!”
“I saw it myself,” Gertrude remarked.
“You were whisked away from me by the other omnibus, so you never did see this marvelous event to its conclusion.”
“How easily a person can innocently fall into such a distressing situation!” Melanie said with regret.
“‘Do you know who I am?’ my rival asked me in a proud tone, closing one eye and looking sternly with the other over his eyeglasses. ‘How am I to know?’ I responded, filled with astonishment. ‘Do you know with whom you are dealing and that I am not to be trifled with?’—I, naturally, was in great suspense and could not do justice to his pretensions, since I had never seen him before. ‘You have no idea, then,’ he continued. ‘I am no greenhorn anymore. I will tell you so that you will be able to regulate your conduct toward me in the future—I am—’”
All of them listened with close attention.
“‘I am the Deputy Surveyor of the Second Municipality and certified Plan Inspector!’
“‘What do you have to say to that, sir?’
“‘I was expecting some sort of marvel.’
‘“What sort of comment is that?’
“‘I have never heard of the office!’”
“It is in fact laughable.”
“Prince, are you joking?”
“If only he had said, ‘I am the President of the United States.’”
“Or even better, ‘I am the mysterious husband of Madame de Pontalba.’”8
“Or he should have said, ‘I am the richest planter in Louisiana. My plantations extend for hundreds of miles—I am a man, look at me, am I not richer than a prince? Do I not bear the destiny of the entire South in my hands? Is not Bayou Sarah in my power, and do not all
the cotton bales there bear my arms?’”
“That would have been something!”
“Then one could have kept a straight face.”
“Then he would have found envy rather than ridicule.”
The prince, the count, Melanie, Hugo, and Constanze traded comments for several minutes, until they had exhausted the subject and the prince took up the story again.
“We only separated,” the prince of Württemberg completed his portrayal of this comic episode, “after we had each made a physical test of our strength.”
“Until you won, Prince?” Melanie asked naively.
“There was no question of victory here, my dear—that is obvious—although the plan inspector is probably drumming about all over town, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’”
Now the prince continued the story of his little adventure with his little blonde to its conclusion, including the baskets with the beans, Lorie, the rescue, and the journey hither; nothing was left out.
But Gertrude carried on a secret conversation with her heart in which she confessed to herself that her feelings for her rescuer were more than gratitude.
Despite her youth, Gertrude was already a thinking girl, with more than coffee picking on her mind.
In keeping with their agreement, the narrative now passed to Melanie.
She began in her gentle and endearing manner: “In truth, one cannot be upset at the turn of fate which has ruined our carefully tended resources and threatens to loosen and even tear apart the bonds of our family, in view of the fact that we did not follow to the last point the well-meant advice of our benevolent friend. I can confess to you, Prince, without any hesitation, and my children will make no protests to their mother on that account. The fact that Constanze shows such contrariness that her pride has prevented her from taking service offered for months by Mistress Evans has had a negative effect on all my children. Our poor situation led Hugo to use language against his parents yesterday that he had never dared use in less difficult conditions. What will become of our family in the future will be left at your disposal, my Prince.”
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 30