Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/252

 parties, and fine dresses, and amusements, and herein she fully gratified her utmost desires, outvying in splendour, as in beauty, all her youthful companions, who, though of course they hated her most cordially, were fain to keep their envy and malice to themselves, and to profess the utmost fondness for “dear Lady Lucretia;” “dear Lady Lucretia” happening to continue very high in the Empress’s favour. The young knights and nobles were, to a man, equally loud in their expressions of admiration; and they were perfectly sincere.

For a girl, in the first instance the least vain in the world, under such circumstances not to become intoxicated by the incense constantly offered up to her, were still more extraordinary than for a hen to lay golden eggs. Her appetite for flattery soon became insatiate, and the nature of the adulation she received, in its due course generated in her mind ideas of the most accomplished coquetry. She conceived the design of annexing to her train every noble and noblet of the Court; nay, she would willingly have had the whole German nation prostrate at her feet. She concealed these projects of universal conquest under an appearance of the greatest modesty, which the more effectually enabled her to attain her object. She set at pleasure every heart in flames, which incendiary disposition, by the way, was all she inherited from her father. Once secure of her