The Archduchess Clotilde was usually an open-hearted person, but she was nevertheless endowed with certain straight-laced characteristics, and she frowned severely. It was no use to beg or to implore. The prince forbade the sledge drive. They metaphorically relegated me to a dark cupboard with dry bread to eat; they kept me under such close observation that I could not go out at all, either on foot, on horseback, or in a sledge. The archduke arrived on the scene. I was still furious.... Oh! certainly, it is evident that I did not look on the bright side of things; my character has always been one which resented foolishness and wickedness. The archduke questioned me. I told him the whole story. "Louise," he cried, "you are right a hundred times; first of all because at your age and when one is pretty, as you are, one is always right. We will go out at once for a drive in the snow." He rang, and ordered two Hungarian horses to be harnessed to a large sledge fit for the chariot of Apollo, in which he seated me, wrapped in my furs. He took the reins and we drove off at great speed, accompanied by a confidential servant. I felt myself akin to the angels. My puritanical sister-in-law and my puritanical husband dared not say a word. Society at Budapest was less submissive to Court ceremonial than that of Vienna, and it was in consequence natural and more audacious. I remember a certain ball on the Ile Marguerite, the pearl of the casket of the Danube, when the prince was angry and did not wish me to waltz. I was inundated with invitations, to which my husband replied by saying that at the Court of Brussels I had only learned to dance the quadrille and the minuet! The quadrille! The minuet! People were quite worried. They understood what it means to waltz in Hungary, and a waltz on the banks of the Danube to the strains of gipsy violins is a thing which cannot be surpassed. And now--now--they import from America dreary stuff, dull and epileptic in movement, and they call it by all sorts of names after trotting or galloping animals out of Noah's Ark. The waltz will always remain as the incomparable queen of dances to those who know how to dance. One of those who asked me to dance was bolder than the rest, and, taking no notice of the prince's excuse, he said: "But surely Her Highness knows how to waltz," and at these words I was swept away from the domain of authority by my audacious partner, a Magyar, who thus hurled me into the whirlpool of the dance. I confess I never stopped dancing for the remainder of the night. The prince was furious, but as he was overwhelmed with compliments on my beauty and my success, he was obliged, _nolens volens_, to smile!