"The husband of my aunt, the Margravine of Culmbach?" said the princess. "Another love match, Von Kleist. By the by, that is the only honest and prudent thing my aunt ever did in her life. What kind of a man is this Count Hoditz?"
Consuelo was about to give a minute account of the lord of Roswald, but the princess interrupted her by countless questions about Trenck, the dress he wore, and the minutest details. When Consuelo told her how Trenck had hurried to her defence, how he came near being shot, and had put the brigands to flight, and rescued an unfortunate deserter who was borne in the wagon with his hands and feet bound, she had to begin again to repeat the most trifling words and detail the merest circumstances. The joy and emotion of the princess were intense when she heard that Trenck and Count Hoditz, having taken the two travellers into their coach, the baron had taken no notice of Consuelo, but seemed wrapped in the examination of a portrait he concealed in his bosom--that he sighed, and talked to the count of a mysterious love for an exalted person, who was the origin of the happiness and despair of his life.
When Consuelo was permitted to continue, she said that Count Hoditz, having discovered her sex at Passau, sought to presume on the protection he had granted her, and that she had fled with Haydn and resumed her adventurous travels in a boat which went down the Danube.
At last she told how, playing on the pipe, while Haydn played the violin, they paid for their dinners by making music for the peasants to dance, and at length reached a pleasant priory still disguised, and represented herself as a wandering musician, a Zingara, called Bertoni.
"The prior," said she, "was passionately fond of music, and was besides a man of heart and mind. He conceived for us, for myself especially, a great friendship, and wished even to adopt me, promising me an excellent benefice, if I would but take the minor orders. I began to be tired of manhood, and the _tonsure_ was no more to my taste than the drum. A strange adventure forced me to prolong my abode with my excellent host. A woman travelling by post, was seized with the pains of labor, and gave birth to a daughter, which she abandoned and I persuaded the good canon to adopt it in my place. She was called Angela, from her father's name Anzoleto, and the mother, Corilla, went to Vienna to procure an engagement at the Court Theatre. She did so, and with greater success than I had. The Prince Von Kaunitz presented her to the Empress Maria Theresa as a respectable widow, and I was rejected, as being accused and suspected of being the mistress of Joseph Haydn, who received lessons from Porpora, and lived in the same house with us."