At which point, the Princess of Pfaffenstein drew breath, gave vent to a volley of Serbo-Croatian oaths learned from her father’s groom, swallowed a large quantity of water — and sank.

As might be expected, the incident was wholly to the liking of the villagers, few of whom went sober to their beds. In throwing their beloved princess fully clothed into the waters of the lake and calming (in English) a savage bear, Herr Farne had shown himself a fitting successor to the seventh prince who had decapitated a card-sharp in the Turkish bath at Vilna, and the fifth prince who had been inseparable from his camel.

That the Swan Princess, the following morning, should view the matter in the same light was not to be expected.

‘You realize that there are only four days left?’ she said, whacking at the wolfhound who was dribbling on her shoe. Though seated most pleasantly between a fig tree and a statue of Aphrodite and facing, from the terrace, one of the loveliest views in Austria, her expression as always was grim. ‘It really is quite amazing, Maxi, how inept and ineffectual you can be.’

She was growing desperate. It was not just the money or Putzerl’s lineage, it was the succession. She had been old when she had Maxi, and Maxi was the only son. There had to be babies, there had to be! It was unthinkable that the seed of Barbarossa should run into the ground. At the thought of the nursery block full of tumbling babies, the beady eye of the Swan Princess softened for a moment. Whether Maxi’s mother did or did not have a single redeeming feature was a point which had been much argued among the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire. If she did, it was probably her genuine and deep-seated love of babies. Even those who looked like uncooked buns or emerged from lace shawls like hirsute marmosets peering through balls of oakum, could bring a smile to that testy and cantankerous old face.

‘I went over this morning,’ said Maxi, conscious of deep injustice, for Casanova himself could not have proposed to Putzerl as she emerged shivering and spitting like a kitten from the lake. ‘As soon as I’d let out the dogs, but the theatre was shut with notices all over it saying ‘Silence’ and ‘Keep Out’ and what-have-you. Anyway, it wouldn’t have been any good digging her out; she’s absolutely besotted about this opera.’

The Swan Princess scowled. ‘I don’t know what Tilda and Augustine are doing, letting her carry on like that. Associating with those people! Running errands.’

Maxi shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose they could stop her. You know what Putzerl’s like. Say a sharp word to her or show her a bird that’s fallen out of a nest and she just shrivels. But when she’s decided to do something she thinks is right…’

‘All the Pfaffensteins are pig-headed,’ said the Swan Princess gloomily. ‘It’s the blood of Charlemagne.’

‘I’ll try again tonight,’ promised Maxi. ‘There’s a lieder recital after dinner,’ he added, a look of misery passing over his kind, long face. ‘I’ll go to that.’ It was the ultimate sacrifice, but he would make it.

‘Well, make sure you do, Maximilian. Just make sure you do,’ said the Swan Princess, and she stabbed her cane at the fig tree, which unaccountably continued to be covered in fruit.

‘Ah, the nature, how she is beautiful!’ cried Raisa, crashing barefoot across a flower-studded alm behind the castle. Attired in a Central European sack massively embroidered in cross-stitch, her piggy eyes glowed with well-being and her vast, freckled arms, thrown out in Rumanian ecstacy, narrowly missed Pino Mastrini’s butterfly-net as the little tenor, his thighs bulging like delicious Parma hams beneath his linen shorts, pursued a Camberwell Beauty.

Never had Witzler’s troupe been so happy, so cared-for and so well-fed, as in these last few days at Pfaffenstein. The beauty of the castle, the sunshine, the endless supply of delicious food brought forth a steady chorus of praise. Some of the lower-paid members of the company still experienced, in Vienna, real poverty and hardship. Now there was a surfeit and release. With The Mother growing sleek and fat on a window-sill in the dairy, Boris, his longevity assured, was taking yodelling lessons from one of the grooms. Bubi, who now slept in the room next to Tessa with her old nurse, paid monseigneurial visits to his parents and could be seen, his blond curls just clearing the feathered grass-heads, being taught the names of the flowers by the country-bred Rhinemaiden. And on the battlements, leaning against the railings on which thirty of his countrymen had been impaled, Klasky composed his opera.

It was as well that the company was in such a state of contentment because Jacob, in rehearsals, was really going a little mad. The discovery that Tessa was safe, her dramatic return, had seemed to Witzler yet another sign from heaven. There was nothing now to prevent this from being the performance of a lifetime. Again and again he hounded the principals back into the theatre to go over parts they believed note perfect; again and again he repeated scene changes, altered little bits of business; again and again he demanded another ounce, another effort.

‘You want to eat?’ he could be heard yelling at the unfortunate coloratura, the sheep-like hausfrau he had kidnapped from Dresden. ‘Sleep? What do you want to sleep for?’ he demanded, at two in the morning, of the venerable bass who sang Sarastro. And in a voice of outrage to a member of the chorus, ‘The lavatory! In the middle of Isis and Osiris you want to go to the lavatory!’

But they were nearly there. All of them were artists to their finger-tips — the money-grubbing Raisa, ridiculous Pino with his eggs — and they knew it. That indefinable something was in the air, like electricity, like the beating of wings. Barring an unexpected disaster, it would come.

‘I thought you would like to know, Your Highness,’ said Maxi’s valet, easing the skin-tight trousers of the Hussar uniform over his master’s calves. ‘Eight-thirty in the village hall.’

Maxi, standing passive in his corset, turned mournful eyes on his servant. ‘Yes, you did quite right to tell me, Franz. All the same, it’s a devilish business. I have to go to this concert.’

Melancholy gripped him by the throat. If there was one thing that really got him down it was a lieder recital. Those awful, pigeon-chested women in purple satin or green silk with trailing scarves and an idiotic, wispy handkerchief dribbling from their clasped hands. The way they closed their eyes and felt the music… the arch way they translated the stuff if it was in a foreign language. And then, just when one thought it was over, the torture of those interminable encores.

Well, he would endure it for Putzerl’s sake. He would sit beside her until she was softened up and then they would slip away and let the dogs out for their evening run and he would propose. But did God really have to arrange things so that on the very same evening, down in the village, they were showing Broken Blossoms with Lilian Gish?

He stretched out his arm for the frogged tunic whose buttons had kept Franz busy for the best part of the afternoon. ‘You’re going, I suppose?’ he enquired of his valet. ‘Yes, Your Highness.’

Maxi’s brows drew together, indicating thought. There was a quotation that fitted here. Something Latin and classy which the gladiators had said when they were about to go in among the lions and wished to salute those who were going to have a nice time and stay alive. But he could not quite remember how it went, and anyway it was way above Franz’s head. Arranging a strand of his perfectly pomaded hair to frame his duelling scar, Maxi went down to dinner.

Two hours later he sat in the picture gallery, keeping a vacant place beside him for Putzerl. Though the room was crowded, no one attempted to commandeer the chair, for the romance between the Prince of Spittau and the Princess of Pfaffenstein was most dear to everybody’s heart.

‘Ah, keeping a chair for Putzerl, are you?’ said Monteforelli approvingly, hobbling past, and even the Archduchess Frederica deigned to smile at him.

But a hush had fallen and the concert was about to begin. Where on earth was Tessa? The Rumanian diva came in — dressed in purple satin as Maxi had foreseen — and behind her the Magyar, reasonably shaved for once. And then… good God, it was unbelievable! Tessa, carrying a pile of music and seating herself beside the Magyar at the piano. She was going to turn over for him! She was going to be there all evening, miles away, out of reach!

It was too much. There were sacrifices that one made and sacrifices that were just plain silly. The first notes of Strauss’s ‘Morgen’ were just floating over the audience when Maxi reached the door and fled.

Fifteen minutes later, having run down the Narrenweg — which, with its thirteen wayside shrines, wound round the pinnacle of rock on the far side of the drawbridge — and hurried along the road which skirted the lake, Maxi entered the Pfaffenstein village hall.

The place was packed but the white screen at the far end was still mercifully blank. Old women he had known since childhood called greetings, the men saluted — but without servility, for this was a meeting of acolytes in which rank, for a while, was set aside.

Maxi walked down the aisle looking for an empty seat. Near the middle of the hall, he stopped. Could it be? It was! In a rose-pink dirndl with a snowy apron and blouse, sat Heidi Schlumberger.

‘Will you permit me to sit with you, Fräulein?’

Heidi lifted a rapt countenance. The Prince was in his Hussar uniform, the whole image overwhelming.

‘Oh, yes, Your Highness. Please.’

Maxi slipped into his seat.

‘Have you seen it before?’ she enquired shyly. ‘Broken Blossoms, I mean?’

‘Five times,’ said Maxi, waving a careless hand.

Heidi nodded. It was right that a man of such magnificence should have beaten her. ‘I’ve only seen it four times,’ she said meekly. ‘I’ve brought an extra handkerchief. That part where she looks up and sees the Angel of Death…’

‘And where she puts her hand on her heart like this,’ said the Prince, suiting the action to the words.

‘Yes.’ They fell silent, in tribute to the miracle that was Lilian Gish. Then, ‘What about Intolerance, have you seen that, too?’ asked Heidi.

‘Seven times,’ said Maxi proudly. ‘At Spittau I made them show it every night.’

‘Oh! You can do that?’

Maxi nodded. ‘We had Less Than The Dust for two whole weeks,’ he boasted.

‘Ah, Mary Pickford!’ The Littlest Heidi sighed. ‘I’ve seen Pollyanna eight times. I went every afternoon in Vienna, sometimes twice.’

Should he tell her how much she resembled the famous heroine? No, not yet. ‘And The Little Princess?’ Maxi enquired.

‘I like that even better, I think.’

‘Yes, that’s the very best of all.’

Maxi cleared his throat. ‘You don’t… by any chance… like cowboy films?’

‘But I do! I absolutely adore Tom Mix. When he rises in his stirrups like this,’ said the Littlest Heidi, lifting her entrancing bottom marginally from the seat, ‘and then shades his eyes with his hand — so… And in Child of the Prairie, where that Indian crawls out from behind the rock and he doesn’t even look but just whips out his gun!’

Maxi stared at her. A twin soul! It was incredible. But now the lights were going out. The lady at the piano began a stirring march. Not only Broken Blossoms but a Chaplin two-reeler first! He glanced down at Heidi’s hand nestling like a plump, delicious fledgling in the folds of her apron. Could he? Dared he?

Diffidently, flutteringly, in the dusk of the hall, the small hand crept closer. With the questing tentative grace that distinguishes the born cocotte, it raised itself a soupçon. Maxi grasped it. Then the screen flashed to life. The little man in the baggy trousers came marching down the street — and in the village hall of Pfaffenstein they were no longer prince and ballet girl and peasant but only a rapt and adoring audience, welded by laughter into one whole.

Tessa rose very early on the following day. There was a visit she wished to pay before she left, and while the rest of the company still slept she was approaching a small wooden house in a clearing in the forest, a mile or so behind the castle.

She knocked and entered. The room was small but spotless: a stove with a bench round it, a limewood table, a spinning wheel — and in the carved bed in the corner an old lady, as old as time itself. Her filmed eyes seemed almost sightless but she knew her visitor at once.