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Updated: June 24, 2025
He was an intelligent and deductive servant. The traveler was some noted English lord who had come to Bleiberg to shoot the famed golden pheasant, and had secured a second-class compartment in order to demonstrate his incognito.
Now, if I were he, an army could not keep me away from Bleiberg. Either he is no judge of beauty, or the peasant girls hereabout are something extraordinary. Pshaw! a man always makes an ass of himself on his wedding eve; the crown prince is simply starting in early. I believe I'll hang on here till the wedding day; a royal marriage is one of those things which I have yet to see.
How many such romances lay beneath the banter and jest of those bald bachelor diplomat friends of his? Had fate reserved him for one of these? It was noon when he entered the city of Bleiberg. He went directly to his hotel, where a bath and a change of clothes took the stiffness from his limbs. He was in no great hurry to go to the Grand Hotel; there was plenty of time.
But again Madame had forsaken the beaten paths. More than three weeks had passed since the duchy's representative in Bleiberg had been discredited and given his passports. At once the duchess had retaliated by discrediting the king's representative in Brunnstadt. Ordinarily this would have been understood as a mutual declaration of war.
"Does the lord visit Bleiberg often, then, that you prepare this sort of a reception? And the Baronet Fitzgerald?" "They are the same and the one person." "And who the deuce is he; a spy, a smuggler, a villain, or what?" "As to that, Monsieur," with a wonder why this man laughed, "I know no more than you.
At this dramatic entrance there rose from the archbishop, the Marshal, the princess, the Carnavian ambassador, from all the court dignitaries, a cry of wonder and astonishment. "His Highness!" "Aye!" cried the prince, brokenly, for his joy at seeing the princess nigh overcame him. "I have been a prisoner of Madame's, who at this moment is marching on Bleiberg with an army four thousand strong!"
One fine September morning in a year the date of which is of no particular importance, a man stepped out of a second-class carriage on to the canopied platform of the railway terminus in the ancient and picturesque city of Bleiberg. He yawned, shook himself, and stretched his arms and legs, relieved to find that the tedious journey from Vienna had not cramped those appendages beyond recovery.
In all Bleiberg I haven't a soul to talk to, excepting the hotel waiters, and they are uninteresting. Grant me the privilege of conversing with you for a moment. We shall never meet again; and I should not know you if we did. Whether you are old or young, plain or beautiful, it matters not. My only wish is to talk to a woman, to hear a woman's voice."
Not a sentry was in sight. He followed the path, and swung off into the forest. He was free. Here he took a breathing spell. When he started onward he held the revolver ready. Woe to the sentry who blundered on him! For he was determined to cross the frontier if there was a breath of life in him. Moreover, he must be in Bleiberg within twenty hours.
On the northwest corner stood the Continental Hotel, with terrace and parapet at the water's edge, and a delightful open-air cafe facing the Platz. September and October were prosperous months in Bleiberg. Fashionable people who desired quiet made Bleiberg an objective point.
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