"I am heart-broken," wrote Friederika, "but my fidelity to my
Chateaudoux has not faltered, nor will not, whatever I may be called
upon to endure. I cannot, however, be so undutiful as to accept my
Chateaudoux's addresses without my father's consent; and my mother, who
is of the same mind with me, insists that even with that consent a
runaway marriage is not to be thought of unless my Chateaudoux can
provide me with a suitable woman for an attendant."
These conditions fulfilled, Friederika was willing to follow her
Chateaudoux to the world's end. The comfortable citizen in the
snuff-coloured suit sat for some while over that letter with a strange
light upon his face and a smile of great happiness. The comfortable
citizen was Charles Wogan, and he could dissociate the obstructions of
the mother from the willingness of the girl.
The October evening wove its veils from the mountain crests across the
valleys; the sun and the daylight had gone from the room before Wogan
tore that letter up and wrote another to the Chevalier at Bologna,
telling him that the Princess Clementina would venture herself gladly if
he could secure the consent of Prince Sobieski, her father. And the next
morning he drove out in a carriage towards Ohlau in Silesia.
It was as the Chevalier Warner that he had first journeyed thither to
solicit for his King the Princess Clementina's hand. Consequently he
used the name again. Winter came upon him as he went; the snow gathered
thick upon the hills and crept down into the valleys, encumbering his
path. The cold nipped his bones; he drove beneath great clouds and
through a stinging air, but of these discomforts he was not sensible.
For the mission he was set upon filled his thoughts and ran like a fever
in his blood. He lay awake at nights inventing schemes of evasion, and
each morning showed a flaw, and the schemes crumbled. Not that his faith
faltered. At some one moment he felt sure the perfect plan, swift and
secret, would be revealed to him, and he lived to seize the moment. The
people with whom he spoke became as shadows; the inns where he rested
were confused into a common semblance. He was like a man in a trance,
seeing ever before his eyes the guarded villa at Innspruck, and behind
the walls, patient and watchful, the face of the chosen woman; so that
it was almost with surprise that he looked down one afternoon from the
brim of a pass in the hills and saw beneath him, hooded with snow, the
roofs and towers of Ohlau.