"It is our fervent hope that the long voyage with Herman will have done you much good and that your wedding will take place at Altara _as soon as possible_. This glad prospect affords us a pleasant diversion from our difficulties with the army bill, which is encountering such stubborn opposition in the house of deputies, though we hope for all that to succeed in carrying it, as it is essential that our army should be increased. "We cordially embrace you. "OSCAR." CHAPTER V 1 It was after the state banquet in the castle at Sigismundingen, where the imperial families of Liparia and Austria were assembled to celebrate the betrothal of the Duke of Xara and the Archduchess Valérie. It was in September: the day had been sultry and in the evening the oppressive heat still hung brooding in the air. Dinner was just over and the imperial procession returned through a long corridor to the reception-rooms. All the balcony-windows of the brightly-lighted gallery stood open; beneath, as in an abyss of river landscape, flowed the Danube, rolling against the rocks, while above it towered the castle with its innumerable little pointed turrets. The mountain-tops were defined in a sombre, violet amphitheatre against the paler sky, which was incessantly lit with electric flashes, as of noiseless lightning. The wood stood gloomy and black, shadowy, sloping up with the peaked tops of its fir-trees against the mountains; in the distance lay small houses, huddled in the dusk of the evening, like some straggling hamlet, with here and there a yellow light. The Emperor of Liparia gave his arm to the mother of the bride, the Archduchess Eudoxie; then followed the Emperor of Austria with the Empress of Liparia, the Archduke Albrecht with the Empress of Austria, Othomar with Valérie.... Valérie, lightly pressing Othomar's arm, withdrew with him from the procession: "It was so warm in the dining-room; you will excuse me," she said to Othomar's sister, the Archduchess of Carinthia, who was following with one of her Austrian cousins. Valérie's smile requested the archduchess to go on. The others followed: the august guests, the equerries, the ladies-in-waiting; they smiled to the betrothed imperial couple, who stood in one of the open window-recesses to let them pass. They remained alone in the gallery, before the open window: "I need air," said Valérie, with a sigh. He made no reply. They stood together in silence, gazing at the evening landscape. He was wearing the uhlan uniform of the Austrian regiment which he commanded; and a new order glittered amongst the others on his breast: the Golden Fleece of Austria. She seemed to have grown older than she was at Altseeborgen, in her pink-silk evening-dress, with wide, puffed sleeves of very pale-green velvet, a tight-curled border of white ostrich-feathers edging the low-cut bodice and the train.