"I’ve met some of his unconventional intimates, and I didn’t take to ’em a bit. If she’s one of his—"
"She is not one of anyone’s! I mention Bismarck only because when I first met the Princess she brought me a friendly message from him. C’est vrai, absolument! Can you guess what it was? That he bears me no ill will for my activities at the Congress of Berlin!" He shook his head, chuckling. "Can you believe it, eh?"
"No—and neither will you if you’ve any sense. That bastard never forgave or forgot in his life. Very well, ne’er mind him—what more about this Princess? Is she married?" It’s always best to know beforehand.
"There is a husband." He shrugged. "But he does not figure." "Uh-huh … so, what does she want with me?"
He gave a little snort of laughter. "What do women ever want with you? Ah, but there is something else also." He leaned forward to whisper, looking droll. "She wishes to know a secret … a secret that she believes only you can tell her."
He sat back as the food arrived, with a cautioning gesture in case I made some indiscreet outcry, I suppose. Since I knew the little blighter’s delight in mysterious hints I just waded into the grub.
"You do not ask what it is?" he grumbled. "Ah, but of course—le flegme Britannique! Never mind, you will raise a brow when you hear, I promise!"
And I did, for I never heard an unlikelier tale in my life—all of it true, for I saw it confirmed in the little blighter’s memoirs a few years ago, and why should he lie to posterity? But even at the time I believed it because, being a crook myself, I can spot a straight tongue, and Blowitz had one.
He’d met the Princess Kralta at a diplomatic dinner, and plainly fallen head over heels—as he often did, in his harmless romantic way—and she had equally plainly given him every encouragement. "You have seen her likeness, but believe me, it tells you nothing! How to describe her … her magnetisme, the light of charm in those great blue eyes, the little toss of her silky blonde hair as she smiles, revealing the brilliancy of her small teeth—you found her portrait forbidding, non? My friend, when you see those queenly features melt into the tenderest of expressions, the animation of her darting glances, the melodious quality of her voice … ah, mais ravissante—"
"Whoa, steady lad, mind the cutlery. Liked her, did you?"
"My friend, I was enchanted!" He sighed like a ruptured poodle. "I confess it, I who have encountered the charms of the loveliest women in Europe, that the Princess Kralta wove a spell about me. And it is not only her person that allures, her exquisite elegance, her divinity of shape and movement—"
"Aye, she’s well titted out, I noticed."
"—but the beauty of her nature, her frank friendliness and ease of deportment, the candour of her confidences …"
He babbled through the next two courses, but don’t suppose that I despised his raptures—there are women like that, and as often as not they’re not the ones of perfect feature. Angie Burdett-Coutts was no radiant looker, but she’d have caused a riot in the College of Cardinals simply by walking by, whereas the Empress of Austria, of whom more presently, was perfection of face and figure and quite as exciting as a plate of mashed turnip. I’d seen enough of la Kralta in her picture to believe that she might well have the magic, February face or no.
She’d gone out of her way to captivate Blowitz over a period of months, doing him little kindnesses, making friends with his wife, and trusting him with her most intimate confidences—which is the surest way a woman has of getting a man under her dainty thumb. Once or twice she spoke of the Berlin Congress, and Bismarck’s curiosity as to how Blowitz had got his "scoop"—it had irritated Otto that he couldn’t fathom that, and he’d told her he was determined to find out some day.
"Indeed, my friend," says Blowitz to me as he plunged into his dessert, "she confessed to me that she had promised the Prince she would use all her womanly wiles to wring the secret from me. I admired her honesty in admitting as much, but assured her that I never, under any persuasion, betray my sources. She laughed, and told me playfully that she would continue to try to beguile the truth from me."
"And did she succeed?"
"No—but I was content that she should try. One does nothing to discourage the attention of a lady of such fascination. I am not vain of my attractions," sighs he, glancing ruefully at the balding little tub with ghastly whiskers reflected in the long glass on Voisin’s wall, "and I know when I am being … how would you say? … worked upon. I enjoy it, and my affection and regard for the lady are not diminished, Rather they increase as she continues to confide in me with a candour which suggests that her friendship and interest in me are true, and not merely assumed. Listen, and judge for yourself."
And he launched into a piece of scandal which I’d have said no woman in her right mind would have confided to a journalist—not if she valued her reputation, as presumably this Kralta female did. Yet she’d confessed it, says Blowitz, to convince him how deeply she trusted him.
This was her story: she’d been staying at some fashionable spa where the German Emperor, an amiable dotard with whom, as Blowitz had said, she was on friendly terms, had sent for her in great agitation. Would she do him a favour—a service to the state and to the peace of the world? At your service, Majesty, says loyal Kralta. The Emperor had then confessed that he was damnably worried about Bismarck: the Chancellor was in a distracted state, nervous, irritable, complaining about everyone, suspicious that the Great Powers were plotting mischief against Germany, moody, obstinate, and off his oats entirely. Even now he was alone on his estate, sunk in the brooding dumps, and unless something was done he’d go to pieces altogether; international complications, possibly even war, would follow.
What Otto needed to set him to rights, said the Emperor, was an amusement, something to divert him from vexatious affairs of state—and Princess Kralta was just the girl to provide it. She must visit Bismarck’s estate in perfect secrecy, taking only her maid and enough clothing for a week’s stay; anonymous agents would drive her to the station, put her in a reserved compartment, meet her, arrange delivery of her luggage, and take care of all expenses. Her husband would have been got out of the way before her departure: the Emperor would send him to Berlin on a mission which would keep him there until after Kralta had returned to the spa. No word of her visit must be spoken; the Emperor’s part must never be mentioned.
Blowitz paused. "She agreed, without hesitation."
"Hold on there!" says I. "Are you telling me that the German Emperor, the All-Highest Kaiser of the Fatherland, pimped for Otto Bismarck? Get away with you!"
"I am telling you," says Blowitz primly, "precisely what the Princess told me. No more, no less, c’est tout."
"Well, dammit, what she’s saying is that she was sent—where, Schonhausen?—to grind Otto into a good humour!"
"I do not know `grind'. And she did not mention Schonhausen. May I continue?"
"Oh, pray do ! I’m all attention ! "
"She goes to Bismarck. He asks `Did the Emperor send you?' She says he did not, and that she has come to see how such a great man will receive `a giddy little person who ventures into the lion’s solitude'—those were her very words to me. The Chancellor laughs, hopes it will not be a short visit, and then," says Blowitz, poker-faced, "assists her to unpack her `frills and furbelows'—her own words again—expressing gay amusement as he does so." Ile shrugged and sat back, helping himself to brandy.
"Well, come on, man! What else did she tell you?"