Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 1.djvu/89

Rh and with a loud voice proclaimed Libussa Duchess of Bohemia, calling upon all who thought as he did, to draw their swords and justify the choice. In a moment hundreds of swords were gleaming through the field; a loud huzza announced the new Regent, and on all sides arose the joyful shout: “Libussa be our Duchess!” A commission was appointed, with Wladomir and the stout sword-drawer at its head, to acquaint the Fräulein with her exaltation to the princely rank. With that modest blush, which gives the highest grace to female charms, she accepted the sovereignty over the people; and the magic of her enrapturing look made all hearts subject to her. The nation celebrated the event with vast rejoicings: and although her two sisters envied her, and employed their secret arts to obtain revenge on her and their country for the slight which had been put upon them, and endeavoured by the leaven of criticism, by censuring all the measures and transactions of their sister, to produce a hurtful fermentation in the state, yet Libussa was enabled wisely to encounter this unsisterly procedure, and to ruin all the hostile projects, magical or other, of these ungentle persons; till at last, weary of assailing her in vain, they ceased to employ their ineffectual arts against her.

The sighing Wladomir awaited, in the mean time, with wistful longing, the unfolding of his fate. More than once he had tried to read the final issue of it in the fair eyes of his Princess; but Libussa had enjoined them strict silence respecting the feelings of her heart; and for a lover, without prior treaty with the eyes and their significant glances, to demand an oral explanation, is at all times an unhappy undertaking. The only favourable sign, which still sustained his hopes, was the unfaded rose; for after a year had passed away, it still bloomed as fresh as on the night when he received it from her fair hand. A flower from a lady’s hand, a nosegay, a ribbon, or a lock of hair, is certainly in all cases better than an empty nut; yet all these pretty things are but ambiguous pledges of love, if they have not borrowed meaning from some more trustworthy revelation. Wladomir had nothing for it but to play in silence the part of a sighing shepherd, and to watch what Time and Chance might in the long-run do to help him. The unquiet Mizisla pursued his courtship with far more vivacity: he pressed forward on every occasion where he could obtain her notice. At the coro- Rh