Page:Maria Felicia.pdf/232

 The Emperor turned pale; only by a great effort was he able to control himself.

“Miss Felsenburk, in speaking to her Emperor, bravely takes advantage of her privilege,” he replied, with the dignity of a monarch, “I advise her, though, not to repeat elsewhere what she has said here, and to conceal her whims carefully when she comes to the court, lest they may not meet the forbearance there with which they have been treated here. By the way, I shall remind her of the fate of Count Vrtba, who dared to talk about the same subject and in the same way to my mother, recklessly speaking of Bohemia’s past and demanding for her an impossible future. The Empress wanted to excuse him as a lunatic, but when he acted obstinately and tried to get accomplices for his schemes, she was obliged to confiscate his estates and banish him from the country. He fled to Střelin, in Prussia, where a hundred years previously a settlement had been made by the Brethren who were exiled from Bohemia. As schoolmaster Vrtba, he has been