to some foreign convent because of her hopeless love for the Emperor. Both his and her servants had overheard their loud conversation at the time of their meeting in his castle, and later had suspected that it was a love quarrel on account of which the young lady had retired from the world. But Joseph II. knew better; for a long time he did not believe that she had gone never to return; for many months he hoped that she would come back when tired of opposing him. “It is impossible that she will not return,” he thought. Well she knew his feelings; well she knew what she was to him, and that to her was tendered the first place by his side. But in vain he waited for the only woman whose mind and nature he admired, the only heart in which he had confidence, and which he intended to reward with a kingly gift for its true devotion. Perhaps it was because of this loss which the Brethren had caused that he banished them from his empire.
Clearly, yes, very clearly, Joseph II. still recalled the beautiful, intellectual Countess
