"Are you rich?"
"In fancy, in dreams"--humorously.
"Oh! I thought they were all rich."
"Only one or two of us."
"Is it very large, this America?"
"France, Spain, Prussia would be lonesome if set down in America. Only Russia has anything to boast of."
"Did you fight in the war?"
"Yes. Do you like music?"
"Were you ever wounded?"
"A scratch or two, nothing to speak of. But do you like music?"
"Very, very much. When they play Beethoven, Bach, or Meyerbeer, ach, I seem to live in another country. I hear music in everything, in the leaves, the rain, the wind, the stream."
It seemed strange to him that he had not noticed it at first, the almost Hanoverian purity of her speech and the freedom with which she spoke. The average peasant is diffident, with a vocabulary of few words, ignorant of art or music or where the world lay.
"What is your name?"
"Gretchen."
"It is a good name; it is famous, too."
"Goethe used it."
"So he did." Carmichael ably concealed his surprise: "You have some one who reads to you?"
"No, Herr. I can read and write and do sums in addition."
He was willing to swear that she was making fun of him. Was she a simple goose-girl? Was she not something more, something deeper? War-clouds were forming in the skies; they might gather and strike at any time. And who but the French could produce such a woman spy? Ehrenstein was not Prussia, it was true; but the duchy with its twenty thousand troops was one of the many pulses that beat in unison with this man Bismarck's plans. Carmichael addressed her quickly in French, aiming to catch her off her guard.
"I do not speak French, Herr,"--honestly.
He was certainly puzzled, but a glance at her hands dissolved his doubts. These hands were used to toil, they were in no way disguised. No Frenchwoman would sacrifice her hands for her country; at least, not to this extent. Yet the two things in his mind would not readily cohese: a goose-girl who was familiar with the poets and composers.
"You have been to school?"
"After a manner. My teacher was a kind priest. But he never knew that, with knowledge, he was to open the gates of discontent."
"Then you are not happy with your lot?"
"Is any one, Herr?"--quietly. "And who might you be, and what might you be doing here in Dreiberg, riding with the grand duke?"
"I am the American consul."
Gretchen took a step back.
"Oh, it is nothing that will bite you," he added.