Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/413

 away-knock, given by some drunken or mischievous person who delighted in giving servants unnecessary trouble.

This report gave fresh courage to the gallant couple, who no sooner began to indulge themselves in new acts of dalliance, than they were a second time alarmed by the most thundering raps, which continued with redoubled force.

In less than a second after, the chambermaid ran into the apartment almost out of breath to inform her mistress, that she believed, the person who knocked last, was the duke himself in the disguise of a peasant. Meanwhile the gate was opened to him. Nobody can conceive the unspeakable embarrassment which the loving pair felt on this occasion. An escape was impracticable, and had the dutchess even been able to hide the count, it was not less certain, that her spouse, had he had the smallest suspicion, would have searched every corner, and a discovery might probably have cost the life of both. They resolved therefore to urge the same excuse, which the duke's ingenuity had already suggested to himself in