The other lady obeyed the motion of her friend's hand, and set the solitary candle on a stand near them. In the full light, Louis recognized the face of the Electress of Bavaria, in the person he had carried from the flames. He had no thought in the recognition, but satisfaction at having rescued female helplessness from so direful a death; and his reply was in unison with his feelings. It was not the Princess he saw before him, nor the enemy of himself and his father; but a woman, agitated from past terror, and grateful to him for having averted its horrid consummation.
She explained the dreadful state of despair, in which he had found her. For, hastening with her only attendant, Madame de Altenstein, through the box to the inner passage door, while attempting to open it, in the confusion of alarm she turned the key wrong, and having strained the lock by the violence of her first application, no effort could move it. She had then no resource, but cries for help, but they passed unnoticed. And when the terrible crash, at the outcry of the fallen roof, assailed her ear, in aimless phrenzy she would have rushed back into the box, and leaped over into the flames, had not her friend prevented her, by clinging to her knees. Again she flew to the door;--again she rent the air with her unavailing shrieks,--"till you came," continued she, "like a good angel, to my rescue!"
How different did the Electress appear now in the eyes of Louis, from what she had seemed in the two former times of his seeing her. In the boudoir of Countess Altheim, she looked, and expressed herself, with the proud acknowledgement of a superior, to the vassals who had done her service. At the fête in _la Favorita_, she gazed around in haughty carelessness, and remarked with contemptuous sarcasm, on every object. But now, she leaned on the sofa, conversing with him, with the frankness of one who felt that danger and obligation had rendered them equal; and her fine black eyes, large and luminous, as those of the wild gazel, shone on him with eloquent gratitude. In all she said, the force of her character appeared, in the strength of her understanding, and the energy of her feelings.
She explained the nature of the whisper which her confidential attendant had made in her ear, while she lay on her arm. It told her the Marquis de Montemar was her preserver; and it asked permission to dismiss him without farther discovery, "But," continued the Electress, "would I not trust with my fortune, he who has preserved my life?"