Rebel Princess Read Free Page A

the tarnished looking-glass stared back at her with large thoughtful blue eyes; it was an arresting face of brilliant complexion and gifted with a high broad brow, the nose was very straight and her jaw a little square; but when she smiled the reflection showed perfect teeth set in a soft mouth.
    Augusta turned from the glass, her question answered.
    The Grand Duke would find her pleasing, and he would find her loving also, for she would owe him much.
    Two days later Johanna departed alone on her journey to Berlin in obedience to the summons of her King.
    Frederick received her graciously, bade her be seated, and passed a few minutes in formal inquiries as to her health and her family’s well-being, while he examined her with a look that held none of the amiability of his words.
    Despite herself Johanna averted her eyes from that penetrating stare; Frederick of Prussia was a thin, dry man, whose presence filled his subjects with an awe out of all proportion to the mere physical aspect of their sovereign.
    His voice and manner bore unmistakable traces of the restraint imposed upon him in boyhood by the maniacal hatred of his father, and his cold blue eyes regarded Johanna of Anhalt with an unblinking, hostile stare which weighed her character and intelligence and found small merit in either.
    He judged her vain and hasty, of a jealous and overbearing temperament, without the personality powerful enough to inspire either confidence or fear, and even as she spoke he mentally regretted the necessity which forced him to employ a tool at once so garrulous and so conceited.
    The purport of Frederick’s summons, and indeed of many things, was made clear to her during the audience, while she fidgeted upon a straight-backed chair, and Frederick’s dry voice explained that the House of Anhalt owed its change of fortune to his offices. He had recommended Augusta to the Empress, having noted her evident intelligence and pleasing looks during their last stay at court.
    He wished to impress upon Johanna, he remarked at length, that she owed first allegiance to him, and as proof of that allegiance she would send secret reports to him from Moscow and undertake to influence the Empress Elizabeth against her Vice-Chancellor Bestujev, who was, the King added, a bitter opponent of her daughter’s coming marriage and of Prussian interests. The future Emperor was his young friend and disciple, it only needed an Empress of similar sympathies to ensure that peace and security which was the natural outcome of Prussian domination. He felt sure that Princess Augusta Fredericka would remain loyal to the land of her birth.…
    Fortified by promises of rich rewards should her espionage prove successful, Johanna returned to Stettin. To her husband’s questions she answered nothing, and he decided that for his part it was safer not to know.
    The person least consulted in these momentous days was the Princess Augusta. No one had bothered to tell her anything beyond her mother’s outline of the Empress’s message, so she had to fall back upon her imagination to fill in the gaps.
    This was not difficult, but sometimes, especially at night, her day-dreams faded and she felt afraid. Russia was a strange land where terrible, violent things happened every day. Gossip painted a terrifying picture of the Czars and their courtiers. Elizabeth was a Russian, daughter of Peter the Great, the Emperor who had flogged his own son to death.… Augusta shuddered when she remembered it. But people said that she had never executed anyone. One would have to be wary, no doubt, not to displease the Empress, but as long as she obeyed, Elizabeth would favor her.
    And the Grand Duke whom she was to marry, he was German like herself, a nephew of the Empress, adopted only because she had no heir. He was not even a foreigner, she reassured herself over and over again. He was a young man, and gossip declared him very fond of soldiering and an admirer of