This whimsical volunteer with the voice of an angel, who is so tenderly treated by rough Appenzelder, is a woman, not a refractory choir boy.

How you are blushing! You have proved a very inapt pupil in the art of dissimulation and disguise in my royal sister's service.

Really and truly, I am right!" Here another bow from Wolf confirmed the Emperor's conjecture; but the latter, highly pleased with his own penetration, laughed softly, exclaiming to the baron: "Where were our ears?
This masquerade is surely the work of the Queen, who so dearly loves the chase.

And she forbade you too, Malfalconnet, to give me your confidence ?" Again a silent bow assented.
The Emperor bent his eyes on the ground a short time, and then said, half in soliloquy: "It was not possible otherwise.

Whence could a boy learn the ardent, yearning longing of which that 'Quia amore langueo' was so full?
And the second, less powerful voice, which accompanied her, was that a girl's too?
No?
Yet that also, I remember, had a suggestion of feminine tenderness.