"The manner in which you speak of this matter, madame, makes me shudder," replied Consuelo, growing pale. "Eight days ago I heard it whispered around me, that the king, our master, entertained a serious passion for me, his sad and trembling subject. Up to that time I had never conceived anything possible between him and me, but a pleasant conversation, benevolent on his side, and respectful on mine, he exhibits a friendship and gratitude which was too great for the simple part I had played at Roswald. There is a gulf, though, between that and love, which I hope he will never pass."
"I think differently. He is impetuous, talkative and familiar with you; he talks to you as to a boy, and passes your hand to his brow and to his lips. He effects in the presence of his friends--and for some days this has been the case--to be less in love with you than he is. This all proves that he is likely to become so. I know it, and warn you, that ere long you will be called on to decide. What will you do? If you resist, you are lost; if you yield that will still be the case. If this be so, what will you do?"
"Neither, madame. Like his recruits, I will desert."
"That is not easy, and I do not wish you to do so, having become very fond of you; and I think I would put the recruiters on your tracks rather than you should escape. Well, we will find a way. The case is grave, and demands consideration. Tell me all that has passed since Albert's death."
"Some strange and inexplicable things amid a monotonous and moody life. I will tell you what they are, and your highness perhaps will aid me in understanding them."
"I will try, on condition that you will call me Amelia, as you did just now. It is not yet midnight, and I do not wish to be _highnessed_ until day."
"I have already told to Madame Von Kleist, when she first did me the honor of coming to my house, that I was separated from Porpora on the frontier of Prussia, as I was coming from Bohemia. Even now, I am ignorant, whether his passport was not regular, or if the king had caused us to be preceded by one of those orders, the rapidity of which is a prodigy, to exclude Porpora from his territories. This idea, perhaps wrong, at first suggested itself to me, for I remembered the brusque lightness and scowling sincerity with which the maestro defended Trenck, and blamed the king, when Frederick, at supper at Count Hoditz's, where he had represented himself as the Baron Von Kreutz, and told us himself of Trenck's _treason_ and confinement at Glatz."