Whilst all Vienna felt the most restless, feverish excitement; whilst everyone wished that time had wings to hasten the events of the future, Madame Antonia Balzer lay on her luxurious couch in her quiet boudoir. The curtains were closed, notwithstanding the great heat; a soft twilight prevailed, and a mysterious and varied perfume pervaded the room, that perfume which fills the immediate neighbourhood of an elegant and beautiful woman; one cannot tell of what it consists, but it gives the invisible air a magnetic, sympathetic charm. The young lady lay there as if she courted sleep, and on her features neither the passionate _abandon_ appeared with which she had welcomed Herr von Stielow, nor the icy coldness which she had shown to her husband. Her large eyes gazed gloomily into space, and her face expressed anxious, mournful weariness. A number of sealed letters and telegrams lay on a small table near her. Her pearly hand played carelessly with a small poodle dog which lay curled up in her lap. "I thought I was strong," she whispered to herself; "and yet I cannot forget him!" She sprang up, placed the little dog upon the pillow, and walked slowly up and down the room. "What a wonderful organization is our human nature!" she cried scornfully. "I thought I was strong. I had set it before me as a means to rule, to rise on the aspiring ladder of life, without permitting myself to be kept back by the emotions and motives of the common herd; and now, when my feet touch the very first step of the ladder I look back, my heart weeps; I am sick with love and regret, like any milliner's girl," she added, with an angry look, as she stamped her small foot upon the carpet. She gazed before her. "And why," she asked thoughtfully, "why cannot my heart forget one who so scornfully turned from me, who so contemptuously gave me up? This Count Rivero--he offers me what I long for; he is a man who occupies a high place in the world, and guides with powerful hand the threads that weave the fate of men; why do I not love him? I might be happy. And he," she continued, while a soft mist came over her eyes, and her arms were slightly raised, "he, for whom every pulse in my heart beats, he whom I call back in the still hours of the night, whom my arms seek in empty space, who is he? A boy,--in intellect far beneath me; yet oh! he is so beautiful, so pure!" she cried, stretching out her hands to the picture her mind had called up; "I love him, and I am the slave of my love!" She sank wearily into a luxurious chair, and covered her face with her hands. She sat for a long time motionless, and only the panting breath of her heaving bosom interrupted the silence of the darkened room. Then again she sprang up, and with trembling lips and vehement voice she cried,--