The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1885-01-09
THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA.

uneIe VIII always De q Kingdom or 30
homia for story tellers-was travelling
in strict incognito and in humble fash
ion under the mans of the Countess DIES
Sept Chateaux. She was accompanied
by the old Baroness Georgenthal, her
companion, and Gen. Horschowitz, her
equerry. In spite of furs and foot
warmers, it is very cold in the reserved
compartment; and when the Queen,
growing weary of her English novel,
and worried by the Generals knitting
for the General knitted-wanted to
look out on the snow-covered country,
she was obliged to rub the glass of her
carriage window for a minute or two
with her handkerchief, the frost had
covered it so thickly with glittering
tracery and delicate ferns of ice. 1t
was a strange caprice, certainly, and
worthy Of her Majesty's twenty years,
to set out for Paris in midwinter to
join her mother, the Queen Of Moravia,
who was TO have visited her in Prague
the following spring. However, moth
ing would do but she must start on the
journey, with the thermometer sixteen
degrees below freezing point. The baro-
ness had to shake up her old rheuma-
tism, and the General in despair had to
leave behind a magnificent Counterpart
he was knitting for his daughter in-law,
and to content himself with working a
simple pair of worsted stockings by way
Of occupation on the road. 1t was q
rough journey. The whole of Europe
lay covered with snow, and they had
come half way across it, and all sorts
of difficulties and ~hindrances, by rail-
ways hat were disorganized by the
hard weather.
Now they are getting near the end of
their Journey. At nine o'clock they
dined at the buffet at Macon, and al
though this evening the foot warmers
are again hardly lukewarm, and outside
great snowhakes float about In the dark
ness, the baroness and the general
both slumbering in a corner under furs
and railway rugs-are dreaming of their
arrival Iii Paris. The good old lady is
full of the advantages she will find
there for special religious exercises
and the old soldier, of a certain wool
shop In the Rue Saint Honore, to which
he means to pay an early visit, the only
shop at which he can match his green
Berlin wool skeins satisfactorily.
The queen is not asleep. Size sits
there buried in thought, with her eyes
wide open in the shadow, feyerish and
shivering in her blue fox furs, with her
elbow leaning on the window-sill and
one hand clenched in the beautiful ruff
fed golden hair that has fallen loose
from her coquettish little travelling cap,
listening mechanically to the vague,
distant music that the tired ears of the
travellers seem to hear in the iron gallop
of the express. She is looking back
over her whole past life, this poor young
queen, and thinking how miserable she
is.
She saw herself as she used to be,
when she was a little princess with red
hands and an Uniformed figure, playing
with her twin sister, whom they had
married far away in the north-the SIS
ter she was so fond Of and who was SC
like her. that when they were dressed
in the same way they had to put RIB
bons of different color in their hair that
they might not be mistaken n for the
other. That was before the revolution
that overturned her parents's throne
She had loved the calm and sleepy at
mosphere Of the little court of Olmutz
where etiquette was tempered by such
easy going good nature. In those days
her father, good King Louis WHO
since then had died in exile of a broker
heart-used to walk through the park
with her and her sister, In his court
dress every afternoon at 4 o'clock,
TO take cafe au lait in the Chinese pa.
yilion. covered with ivy vines, looking
out on the river and the far off circle OF
hills red tinted in the autumn.
Then came her marriage and thu
presentation ball one beautiful night In
July, when the murmer of the crowds
in the Illuminated gardens had come III
through the open windows. How shs
had trembled when she was left alone
moment IN the conversatory with th'
young king. She loved him already
she had loved him fsom the first mo
ment she Ind seer him, as he came for
ward, with the white plume IN his cap
so graceful and elegant in his blue uni
form and diamonds, with the gold spur
on his small gray boots ringing at ever
| step. After the first waltz Ottokar has
taken her arm, and, stroking his lonl
black moustache the while, had led he
into the conservatory and made her 81
down under q palm tree. Then sittln'