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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Prince Otto, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Prince Otto
+       a Romance
+
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 3, 2010  [eBook #372]
+First Posted: November 25, 1995
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE OTTO***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1905 edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                          PRINCE OTTO--A ROMANCE
+
+
+                                A ROMANCE
+
+                                    BY
+
+                          ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                              A NEW EDITION
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  LONDON
+                             CHATTO & WINDUS
+                                   1905
+
+
+
+
+TO NELLY VAN DE GRIFT
+(MRS. ADULFO SANCHEZ, OF MONTEREY)
+
+
+At last, after so many years, I have the pleasure of re-introducing you
+to 'Prince Otto,' whom you will remember a very little fellow, no bigger
+in fact than a few sheets of memoranda written for me by your kind hand.
+The sight of his name will carry you back to an old wooden house
+embowered in creepers; a house that was far gone in the respectable
+stages of antiquity and seemed indissoluble from the green garden in
+which it stood, and that yet was a sea-traveller in its younger days, and
+had come round the Horn piecemeal in the belly of a ship, and might have
+heard the seamen stamping and shouting and the note of the boatswain's
+whistle.  It will recall to you the nondescript inhabitants now so widely
+scattered:--the two horses, the dog, and the four cats, some of them
+still looking in your face as you read these lines;--the poor lady, so
+unfortunately married to an author;--the China boy, by this time,
+perhaps, baiting his line by the banks of a river in the Flowery
+Land;--and in particular the Scot who was then sick apparently unto
+death, and whom you did so much to cheer and keep in good behaviour.
+
+You may remember that he was full of ambitions and designs: so soon as he
+had his health again completely, you may remember the fortune he was to
+earn, the journeys he was to go upon, the delights he was to enjoy and
+confer, and (among other matters) the masterpiece he was to make of
+'Prince Otto'!
+
+Well, we will not give in that we are finally beaten.  We read together
+in those days the story of Braddock, and how, as he was carried dying
+from the scene of his defeat, he promised himself to do better another
+time: a story that will always touch a brave heart, and a dying speech
+worthy of a more fortunate commander.  I try to be of Braddock's mind.  I
+still mean to get my health again; I still purpose, by hook or crook,
+this book or the next, to launch a masterpiece; and I still
+intend--somehow, some time or other--to see your face and to hold your
+hand.
+
+Meanwhile, this little paper traveller goes forth instead, crosses the
+great seas and the long plains and the dark mountains, and comes at last
+to your door in Monterey, charged with tender greetings.  Pray you, take
+him in.  He comes from a house where (even as in your own) there are
+gathered together some of the waifs of our company at Oakland: a
+house--for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant station--where you
+are well-beloved.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+_Skerryvore_,
+      Bournemouth.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I--PRINCE ERRANT
+
+
+CHAPTER I--IN WHICH THE PRINCE DEPARTS ON AN ADVENTURE
+
+
+You shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygone state of
+Grunewald.  An independent principality, an infinitesimal member of the
+German Empire, she played, for several centuries, her part in the discord
+of Europe; and, at last, in the ripeness of time and at the spiriting of
+several bald diplomatists, vanished like a morning ghost.  Less fortunate
+than Poland, she left not a regret behind her; and the very memory of her
+boundaries has faded.
+
+It was a patch of hilly country covered with thick wood.  Many streams
+took their beginning in the glens of Grunewald, turning mills for the
+inhabitants.  There was one town, Mittwalden, and many brown, wooden
+hamlets, climbing roof above roof, along the steep bottom of dells, and
+communicating by covered bridges over the larger of the torrents.  The
+hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odour of pine
+sawdust, the sound and smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable
+army of the mountain pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull
+stroke of the wood-axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the
+clean bare chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the
+village-bells--these were the recollections of the Grunewald tourist.
+
+North and east the foothills of Grunewald sank with varying profile into
+a vast plain.  On these sides many small states bordered with the
+principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the number.  On
+the south it marched with the comparatively powerful kingdom of Seaboard
+Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain bears, and inhabited by
+a people of singular simplicity and tenderness of heart.  Several
+intermarriages had, in the course of centuries, united the crowned
+families of Grunewald and Maritime Bohemia; and the last Prince of
+Grunewald, whose history I purpose to relate, drew his descent through
+Perdita, the only daughter of King Florizel the First of Bohemia.  That
+these intermarriages had in some degree mitigated the rough, manly stock
+of the first Grunewalds, was an opinion widely held within the borders of
+the principality.  The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the wielder
+of the broad axe among the congregated pines of Grunewald, proud of their
+hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage lore,
+looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and manners of
+the sovereign race.
+
+The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to the
+conjecture of the reader.  But for the season of the year (which, in such
+a story, is the more important of the two) it was already so far forward
+in the spring, that when mountain people heard horns echoing all day
+about the north-west corner of the principality, they told themselves
+that Prince Otto and his hunt were up and out for the last time till the
+return of autumn.
+
+At this point the borders of Grunewald descend somewhat steeply, here and
+there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless country stands
+in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below.  It was traversed at
+that period by two roads alone; one, the imperial highway, bound to
+Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope obliquely and by the easiest
+gradients.  The other ran like a fillet across the very forehead of the
+hills, dipping into savage gorges, and wetted by the spray of tiny
+waterfalls.  Once it passed beside a certain tower or castle, built sheer
+upon the margin of a formidable cliff, and commanding a vast prospect of
+the skirts of Grunewald and the busy plains of Gerolstein.  The
+Felsenburg (so this tower was called) served now as a prison, now as a
+hunting-seat; and for all it stood so lonesome to the naked eye, with the
+aid of a good glass the burghers of Brandenau could count its windows
+from the lime-tree terrace where they walked at night.
+
+In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the horns
+continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as the sun began
+to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing triumph announced the
+slaughter of the quarry.  The first and second huntsman had drawn
+somewhat aside, and from the summit of a knoll gazed down before them on
+the drooping shoulders of the hill and across the expanse of plain.  They
+covered their eyes, for the sun was in their faces.  The glory of its
+going down was somewhat pale.  Through the confused tracery of many
+thousands of naked poplars, the smoke of so many houses, and the evening
+steam ascending from the fields, the sails of a windmill on a gentle
+eminence moved very conspicuously, like a donkey's ears.  And hard by,
+like an open gash, the imperial high-road ran straight sun-ward, an
+artery of travel.
+
+There is one of nature's spiritual ditties, that has not yet been set to
+words or human music: 'The Invitation to the Road'; an air continually
+sounding in the ears of gipsies, and to whose inspiration our nomadic
+fathers journeyed all their days.  The hour, the season, and the scene,
+all were in delicate accordance.  The air was full of birds of passage,
+steering westward and northward over Grunewald, an army of specks to the
+up-looking eye.  And below, the great practicable road was bound for the
+same quarter.
+
+But to the two horsemen on the knoll this spiritual ditty was unheard.
+They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every fold of the
+subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and dismay in their impatient
+gestures.
+
+'I do not see him, Kuno,' said the first huntsman, 'nowhere--not a trace,
+not a hair of the mare's tail!  No, sir, he's off; broke cover and got
+away.  Why, for twopence I would hunt him with the dogs!'
+
+'Mayhap, he's gone home,' said Kuno, but without conviction.
+
+'Home!' sneered the other.  'I give him twelve days to get home.  No,
+it's begun again; it's as it was three years ago, before he married; a
+disgrace!  Hereditary prince, hereditary fool!  There goes the government
+over the borders on a grey mare.  What's that?  No, nothing--no, I tell
+you, on my word, I set more store by a good gelding or an English dog.
+That for your Otto!'
+
+'He's not my Otto,' growled Kuno.
+
+'Then I don't know whose he is,' was the retort.
+
+'You would put your hand in the fire for him to-morrow,' said Kuno,
+facing round.
+
+'Me!' cried the huntsman.  'I would see him hanged!  I'm a Grunewald
+patriot--enrolled, and have my medal, too; and I would help a prince!
+I'm for liberty and Gondremark.'
+
+'Well, it's all one,' said Kuno.  'If anybody said what you said, you
+would have his blood, and you know it.'
+
+'You have him on the brain,' retorted his companion.  'There he goes!' he
+cried, the next moment.
+
+And sure enough, about a mile down the mountain, a rider on a white horse
+was seen to flit rapidly across a heathy open and vanish among the trees
+on the farther side.
+
+'In ten minutes he'll be over the border into Gerolstein,' said Kuno.
+'It's past cure.'
+
+'Well, if he founders that mare, I'll never forgive him,' added the
+other, gathering his reins.
+
+And as they turned down from the knoll to rejoin their comrades, the sun
+dipped and disappeared, and the woods fell instantly into the gravity and
+greyness of the early night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--IN WHICH THE PRINCE PLAYS HAROUN-AL-RASCHID
+
+
+The night fell upon the Prince while he was threading green tracks in the
+lower valleys of the wood; and though the stars came out overhead and
+displayed the interminable order of the pine-tree pyramids, regular and
+dark like cypresses, their light was of small service to a traveller in
+such lonely paths, and from thenceforth he rode at random.  The austere
+face of nature, the uncertain issue of his course, the open sky and the
+free air, delighted him like wine; and the hoarse chafing of a river on
+his left sounded in his ears agreeably.
+
+It was past eight at night before his toil was rewarded and he issued at
+last out of the forest on the firm white high-road.  It lay downhill
+before him, with a sweeping eastward trend, faintly bright between the
+thickets; and Otto paused and gazed upon it.  So it ran, league after
+league, still joining others, to the farthest ends of Europe, there
+skirting the sea-surge, here gleaming in the lights of cities; and the
+innumerable army of tramps and travellers moved upon it in all lands as
+by a common impulse, and were now in all places drawing near to the inn
+door and the night's rest.  The pictures swarmed and vanished in his
+brain; a surge of temptation, a beat of all his blood, went over him, to
+set spur to the mare and to go on into the unknown for ever.  And then it
+passed away; hunger and fatigue, and that habit of middling actions which
+we call common sense, resumed their empire; and in that changed mood his
+eye lighted upon two bright windows on his left hand, between the road
+and river.
+
+He turned off by a by-road, and in a few minutes he was knocking with his
+whip on the door of a large farmhouse, and a chorus of dogs from the
+farmyard were making angry answer.  A very tall, old, white-headed man
+came, shading a candle, at the summons.  He had been of great strength in
+his time, and of a handsome countenance; but now he was fallen away, his
+teeth were quite gone, and his voice when he spoke was broken and
+falsetto.
+
+'You will pardon me,' said Otto.  'I am a traveller and have entirely
+lost my way.'
+
+'Sir,' said the old man, in a very stately, shaky manner, 'you are at the
+River Farm, and I am Killian Gottesheim, at your disposal.  We are here,
+sir, at about an equal distance from Mittwalden in Grunewald and
+Brandenau in Gerolstein: six leagues to either, and the road excellent;
+but there is not a wine bush, not a carter's alehouse, anywhere between.
+You will have to accept my hospitality for the night; rough hospitality,
+to which I make you freely welcome; for, sir,' he added with a bow, 'it
+is God who sends the guest.'
+
+'Amen.  And I most heartily thank you,' replied Otto, bowing in his turn.
+
+'Fritz,' said the old man, turning towards the interior, 'lead round this
+gentleman's horse; and you, sir, condescend to enter.'
+
+Otto entered a chamber occupying the greater part of the ground-floor of
+the building.  It had probably once been divided; for the farther end was
+raised by a long step above the nearer, and the blazing fire and the
+white supper-table seemed to stand upon a dais.  All around were dark,
+brass-mounted cabinets and cupboards; dark shelves carrying ancient
+country crockery; guns and antlers and broadside ballads on the wall; a
+tall old clock with roses on the dial; and down in one corner the
+comfortable promise of a wine barrel.  It was homely, elegant, and
+quaint.
+
+A powerful youth hurried out to attend on the grey mare; and when Mr.
+Killian Gottesheim had presented him to his daughter Ottilia, Otto
+followed to the stable as became, not perhaps the Prince, but the good
+horseman.  When he returned, a smoking omelette and some slices of
+home-cured ham were waiting him; these were followed by a ragout and a
+cheese; and it was not until his guest had entirely satisfied his hunger,
+and the whole party drew about the fire over the wine jug, that Killian
+Gottesheim's elaborate courtesy permitted him to address a question to
+the Prince.
+
+'You have perhaps ridden far, sir?' he inquired.
+
+'I have, as you say, ridden far,' replied Otto; 'and, as you have seen, I
+was prepared to do justice to your daughters cookery.'
+
+'Possibly, sir, from the direction of Brandenau?' continued Killian.
+
+'Precisely: and I should have slept to-night, had I not wandered, in
+Mittwalden,' answered the Prince, weaving in a patch of truth, according
+to the habit of all liars.
+
+'Business leads you to Mittwalden?' was the next question.
+
+'Mere curiosity,' said Otto.  'I have never yet visited the principality
+of Grunewald.'
+
+'A pleasant state, sir,' piped the old man, nodding, 'a very pleasant
+state, and a fine race, both pines and people.  We reckon ourselves part
+Grunewalders here, lying so near the borders; and the river there is all
+good Grunewald water, every drop of it.  Yes, sir, a fine state.  A man
+of Grunewald now will swing me an axe over his head that many a man of
+Gerolstein could hardly lift; and the pines, why, deary me, there must be
+more pines in that little state, sir, than people in this whole big
+world.  'Tis twenty years now since I crossed the marshes, for we grow
+home-keepers in old age; but I mind it as if it was yesterday.  Up and
+down, the road keeps right on from here to Mittwalden; and nothing all
+the way but the good green pine-trees, big and little, and water-power!
+water-power at every step, sir.  We once sold a bit of forest, up there
+beside the high-road; and the sight of minted money that we got for it
+has set me ciphering ever since what all the pines in Grunewald would
+amount to.'
+
+'I suppose you see nothing of the Prince?' inquired Otto.
+
+'No,' said the young man, speaking for the first time, 'nor want to.'
+
+'Why so? is he so much disliked?' asked Otto.
+
+'Not what you might call disliked,' replied the old gentleman, 'but
+despised, sir.'
+
+'Indeed,' said the Prince, somewhat faintly.
+
+'Yes, sir, despised,' nodded Killian, filling a long pipe, 'and, to my
+way of thinking, justly despised.  Here is a man with great
+opportunities, and what does he do with them?  He hunts, and he dresses
+very prettily--which is a thing to be ashamed of in a man--and he acts
+plays; and if he does aught else, the news of it has not come here.'
+
+'Yet these are all innocent,' said Otto.  'What would you have him
+do--make war?'
+
+'No, sir,' replied the old man.  'But here it is; I have been fifty years
+upon this River Farm, and wrought in it, day in, day out; I have ploughed
+and sowed and reaped, and risen early, and waked late; and this is the
+upshot: that all these years it has supported me and my family; and been
+the best friend that ever I had, set aside my wife; and now, when my time
+comes, I leave it a better farm than when I found it.  So it is, if a man
+works hearty in the order of nature, he gets bread and he receives
+comfort, and whatever he touches breeds.  And it humbly appears to me, if
+that Prince was to labour on his throne, as I have laboured and wrought
+in my farm, he would find both an increase and a blessing.'
+
+'I believe with you, sir,' Otto said; 'and yet the parallel is inexact.
+For the farmer's life is natural and simple; but the prince's is both
+artificial and complicated.  It is easy to do right in the one, and
+exceedingly difficult not to do wrong in the other.  If your crop is
+blighted, you can take off your bonnet and say, "God's will be done"; but
+if the prince meets with a reverse, he may have to blame himself for the
+attempt.  And perhaps, if all the kings in Europe were to confine
+themselves to innocent amusement, the subjects would be the better off.'
+
+'Ay,' said the young man Fritz, 'you are in the right of it there.  That
+was a true word spoken.  And I see you are like me, a good patriot and an
+enemy to princes.'
+
+Otto was somewhat abashed at this deduction, and he made haste to change
+his ground.  'But,' said he, 'you surprise me by what you say of this
+Prince Otto.  I have heard him, I must own, more favourably painted.  I
+was told he was, in his heart, a good fellow, and the enemy of no one but
+himself.'
+
+'And so he is, sir,' said the girl, 'a very handsome, pleasant prince;
+and we know some who would shed their blood for him.'
+
+'O! Kuno!' said Fritz.  'An ignoramus!'
+
+'Ay, Kuno, to be sure,' quavered the old farmer.  'Well, since this
+gentleman is a stranger to these parts, and curious about the Prince, I
+do believe that story might divert him.  This Kuno, you must know, sir,
+is one of the hunt servants, and a most ignorant, intemperate man: a
+right Grunewalder, as we say in Gerolstein.  We know him well, in this
+house; for he has come as far as here after his stray dogs; and I make
+all welcome, sir, without account of state or nation.  And, indeed,
+between Gerolstein and Grunewald the peace has held so long that the
+roads stand open like my door; and a man will make no more of the
+frontier than the very birds themselves.'
+
+'Ay,' said Otto, 'it has been a long peace--a peace of centuries.'
+
+'Centuries, as you say,' returned Killian; 'the more the pity that it
+should not be for ever.  Well, sir, this Kuno was one day in fault, and
+Otto, who has a quick temper, up with his whip and thrashed him, they do
+say, soundly.  Kuno took it as best he could, but at last he broke out,
+and dared the Prince to throw his whip away and wrestle like a man; for
+we are all great at wrestling in these parts, and it's so that we
+generally settle our disputes.  Well, sir, the Prince did so; and, being
+a weakly creature, found the tables turned; for the man whom he had just
+been thrashing like a negro slave, lifted him with a back grip and threw
+him heels overhead.'
+
+'He broke his bridle-arm,' cried Fritz--'and some say his nose.  Serve
+him right, say I!  Man to man, which is the better at that?'
+
+'And then?' asked Otto.
+
+'O, then Kuno carried him home; and they were the best of friends from
+that day forth.  I don't say it's a discreditable story, you observe,'
+continued Mr. Gottesheim; 'but it's droll, and that's the fact.  A man
+should think before he strikes; for, as my nephew says, man to man was
+the old valuation.'
+
+'Now, if you were to ask me,' said Otto, 'I should perhaps surprise you.
+I think it was the Prince that conquered.'
+
+'And, sir, you would be right,' replied Killian seriously.  'In the eyes
+of God, I do not question but you would be right; but men, sir, look at
+these things differently, and they laugh.'
+
+'They made a song of it,' observed Fritz.  'How does it go?  Ta-tum-ta-ra
+. . .'
+
+'Well,' interrupted Otto, who had no great anxiety to hear the song, 'the
+Prince is young; he may yet mend.'
+
+'Not so young, by your leave,' cried Fritz.  'A man of forty.'
+
+'Thirty-six,' corrected Mr. Gottesheim.
+
+'O,' cried Ottilia, in obvious disillusion, 'a man of middle age!  And
+they said he was so handsome when he was young!'
+
+'And bald, too,' added Fritz.
+
+Otto passed his hand among his locks.  At that moment he was far from
+happy, and even the tedious evenings at Mittwalden Palace began to smile
+upon him by comparison.
+
+'O, six-and-thirty!' he protested.  'A man is not yet old at
+six-and-thirty.  I am that age myself.'
+
+'I should have taken you for more, sir,' piped the old farmer.  'But if
+that be so, you are of an age with Master Ottekin, as people call him;
+and, I would wager a crown, have done more service in your time.  Though
+it seems young by comparison with men of a great age like me, yet it's
+some way through life for all that; and the mere fools and fiddlers are
+beginning to grow weary and to look old.  Yes, sir, by six-and-thirty, if
+a man be a follower of God's laws, he should have made himself a home and
+a good name to live by; he should have got a wife and a blessing on his
+marriage; and his works, as the Word says, should begin to follow him.'
+
+'Ah, well, the Prince is married,' cried Fritz, with a coarse burst of
+laughter.
+
+'That seems to entertain you, sir,' said Otto.
+
+'Ay,' said the young boor.  'Did you not know that?  I thought all Europe
+knew it!'  And he added a pantomime of a nature to explain his accusation
+to the dullest.
+
+'Ah, sir,' said Mr. Gottesheim, 'it is very plain that you are not from
+hereabouts!  But the truth is, that the whole princely family and Court
+are rips and rascals, not one to mend another.  They live, sir, in
+idleness and--what most commonly follows it--corruption.  The Princess
+has a lover--a Baron, as he calls himself, from East Prussia; and the
+Prince is so little of a man, sir, that he holds the candle.  Nor is that
+the worst of it, for this foreigner and his paramour are suffered to
+transact the State affairs, while the Prince takes the salary and leaves
+all things to go to wrack.  There will follow upon this some manifest
+judgment which, though I am old, I may survive to see.'
+
+'Good man, you are in the wrong about Gondremark,' said Fritz, showing a
+greatly increased animation; 'but for all the rest, you speak the God's
+truth like a good patriot.  As for the Prince, if he would take and
+strangle his wife, I would forgive him yet.'
+
+'Nay, Fritz,' said the old man, 'that would be to add iniquity to evil.
+For you perceive, sir,' he continued, once more addressing himself to the
+unfortunate Prince, 'this Otto has himself to thank for these disorders.
+He has his young wife and his principality, and he has sworn to cherish
+both.'
+
+'Sworn at the altar!' echoed Fritz.  'But put your faith in princes!'
+
+'Well, sir, he leaves them both to an adventurer from East Prussia,'
+pursued the farmer: 'leaves the girl to be seduced and to go on from bad
+to worse, till her name's become a tap-room by-word, and she not yet
+twenty; leaves the country to be overtaxed, and bullied with armaments,
+and jockied into war--'
+
+'War!' cried Otto.
+
+'So they say, sir; those that watch their ongoings, say to war,'
+asseverated Killian.  'Well, sir, that is very sad; it is a sad thing for
+this poor, wicked girl to go down to hell with people's curses; it's a
+sad thing for a tight little happy country to be misconducted; but
+whoever may complain, I humbly conceive, sir, that this Otto cannot.
+What he has worked for, that he has got; and may God have pity on his
+soul, for a great and a silly sinner's!'
+
+'He has broke his oath; then he is a perjurer.  He takes the money and
+leaves the work; why, then plainly he's a thief.  A cuckold he was
+before, and a fool by birth.  Better me that!' cried Fritz, and snapped
+his fingers.
+
+'And now, sir, you will see a little,' continued the farmer, 'why we
+think so poorly of this Prince Otto.  There's such a thing as a man being
+pious and honest in the private way; and there is such a thing, sir, as a
+public virtue; but when a man has neither, the Lord lighten him!  Even
+this Gondremark, that Fritz here thinks so much of--'
+
+'Ay,' interrupted Fritz, 'Gondremark's the man for me.  I would we had
+his like in Gerolstein.'
+
+'He is a bad man,' said the old farmer, shaking his head; 'and there was
+never good begun by the breach of God's commandments.  But so far I will
+go with you; he is a man that works for what he has.'
+
+'I tell you he's the hope of Grunewald,' cried Fritz.  'He doesn't suit
+some of your high-and-dry, old, ancient ideas; but he's a downright
+modern man--a man of the new lights and the progress of the age.  He does
+some things wrong; so they all do; but he has the people's interests next
+his heart; and you mark me--you, sir, who are a Liberal, and the enemy of
+all their governments, you please to mark my words--the day will come in
+Grunewald, when they take out that yellow-headed skulk of a Prince and
+that dough-faced Messalina of a Princess, march 'em back foremost over
+the borders, and proclaim the Baron Gondremark first President.  I've
+heard them say it in a speech.  I was at a meeting once at Brandenau, and
+the Mittwalden delegates spoke up for fifteen thousand.  Fifteen
+thousand, all brigaded, and each man with a medal round his neck to rally
+by.  That's all Gondremark.'
+
+'Ay, sir, you see what it leads to; wild talk to-day, and wilder doings
+to-morrow,' said the old man.  'For there is one thing certain: that this
+Gondremark has one foot in the Court backstairs, and the other in the
+Masons' lodges.  He gives himself out, sir, for what nowadays they call a
+patriot: a man from East Prussia!'
+
+'Give himself out!' cried Fritz.  'He is!  He is to lay by his title as
+soon as the Republic is declared; I heard it in a speech.'
+
+'Lay by Baron to take up President?' returned Killian.  'King Log, King
+Stork.  But you'll live longer than I, and you will see the fruits of
+it.'
+
+'Father,' whispered Ottilia, pulling at the speaker's coat, 'surely the
+gentleman is ill.'
+
+'I beg your pardon,' cried the farmer, rewaking to hospitable thoughts;
+'can I offer you anything?'
+
+'I thank you.  I am very weary,' answered Otto.  'I have presumed upon my
+strength.  If you would show me to a bed, I should be grateful.'
+
+'Ottilia, a candle!' said the old man.  'Indeed, sir, you look paley.  A
+little cordial water?  No?  Then follow me, I beseech you, and I will
+bring you to the stranger's bed.  You are not the first by many who has
+slept well below my roof,' continued the old gentleman, mounting the
+stairs before his guest; 'for good food, honest wine, a grateful
+conscience, and a little pleasant chat before a man retires, are worth
+all the possets and apothecary's drugs.  See, sir,' and here he opened a
+door and ushered Otto into a little white-washed sleeping-room, 'here you
+are in port.  It is small, but it is airy, and the sheets are clean and
+kept in lavender.  The window, too, looks out above the river, and
+there's no music like a little river's.  It plays the same tune (and
+that's the favourite) over and over again, and yet does not weary of it
+like men fiddlers.  It takes the mind out of doors: and though we should
+be grateful for good houses, there is, after all, no house like God's
+out-of-doors.  And lastly, sir, it quiets a man down like saying his
+prayers.  So here, sir, I take my kind leave of you until to-morrow; and
+it is my prayerful wish that you may slumber like a prince.'
+
+And the old man, with the twentieth courteous inclination, left his guest
+alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--IN WHICH THE PRINCE COMFORTS AGE AND BEAUTY AND DELIVERS A
+LECTURE ON DISCRETION IN LOVE
+
+
+The Prince was early abroad: in the time of the first chorus of birds, of
+the pure and quiet air, of the slanting sunlight and the mile-long
+shadows.  To one who had passed a miserable night, the freshness of that
+hour was tonic and reviving; to steal a march upon his slumbering
+fellows, to be the Adam of the coming day, composed and fortified his
+spirits; and the Prince, breathing deep and pausing as he went, walked in
+the wet fields beside his shadow, and was glad.
+
+A trellised path led down into the valley of the brook, and he turned to
+follow it.  The stream was a break-neck, boiling Highland river.  Hard by
+the farm, it leaped a little precipice in a thick grey-mare's tail of
+twisted filaments, and then lay and worked and bubbled in a lynn.  Into
+the middle of this quaking pool a rock protruded, shelving to a cape; and
+thither Otto scrambled and sat down to ponder.
+
+Soon the sun struck through the screen of branches and thin early leaves
+that made a hanging bower above the fall; and the golden lights and
+flitting shadows fell upon and marbled the surface of that so seething
+pot; and rays plunged deep among the turning waters; and a spark, as
+bright as a diamond, lit upon the swaying eddy.  It began to grow warm
+where Otto lingered, warm and heady; the lights swam, weaving their maze
+across the shaken pool; on the impending rock, reflections danced like
+butterflies; and the air was fanned by the waterfall as by a swinging
+curtain.
+
+Otto, who was weary with tossing and beset with horrid phantoms of
+remorse and jealousy, instantly fell dead in love with that
+sun-chequered, echoing corner.  Holding his feet, he stared out of a
+drowsy trance, wondering, admiring, musing, losing his way among
+uncertain thoughts.  There is nothing that so apes the external bearing
+of free will as that unconscious bustle, obscurely following liquid laws,
+with which a river contends among obstructions.  It seems the very play
+of man and destiny, and as Otto pored on these recurrent changes, he
+grew, by equal steps, the sleepier and the more profound.  Eddy and
+Prince were alike jostled in their purpose, alike anchored by intangible
+influences in one corner of the world.  Eddy and Prince were alike
+useless, starkly useless, in the cosmology of men.  Eddy and
+Prince--Prince and Eddy.
+
+It is probable he had been some while asleep when a voice recalled him
+from oblivion.  'Sir,' it was saying; and looking round, he saw Mr.
+Killian's daughter, terrified by her boldness and making bashful signals
+from the shore.  She was a plain, honest lass, healthy and happy and
+good, and with that sort of beauty that comes of happiness and health.
+But her confusion lent her for the moment an additional charm.
+
+'Good-morning,' said Otto, rising and moving towards her.  'I arose early
+and was in a dream.'
+
+'O, sir!' she cried, 'I wish to beg of you to spare my father; for I
+assure your Highness, if he had known who you was, he would have bitten
+his tongue out sooner.  And Fritz, too--how he went on!  But I had a
+notion; and this morning I went straight down into the stable, and there
+was your Highness's crown upon the stirrup-irons!  But, O, sir, I made
+certain you would spare them; for they were as innocent as lambs.'
+
+'My dear,' said Otto, both amused and gratified, 'you do not understand.
+It is I who am in the wrong; for I had no business to conceal my name and
+lead on these gentleman to speak of me.  And it is I who have to beg of
+you that you will keep my secret and not betray the discourtesy of which
+I was guilty.  As for any fear of me, your friends are safe in
+Gerolstein; and even in my own territory, you must be well aware I have
+no power.'
+
+'O, sir,' she said, curtsying, 'I would not say that: the huntsmen would
+all die for you.'
+
+'Happy Prince!' said Otto.  'But although you are too courteous to avow
+the knowledge, you have had many opportunities of learning that I am a
+vain show.  Only last night we heard it very clearly stated.  You see the
+shadow flitting on this hard rock?  Prince Otto, I am afraid, is but the
+moving shadow, and the name of the rock is Gondremark.  Ah! if your
+friends had fallen foul of Gondremark!  But happily the younger of the
+two admires him.  And as for the old gentleman your father, he is a wise
+man and an excellent talker, and I would take a long wager he is honest.'
+
+'O, for honest, your Highness, that he is!' exclaimed the girl.  'And
+Fritz is as honest as he.  And as for all they said, it was just talk and
+nonsense.  When countryfolk get gossiping, they go on, I do assure you,
+for the fun; they don't as much as think of what they say.  If you went
+to the next farm, it's my belief you would hear as much against my
+father.'
+
+'Nay, nay,' said Otto, 'there you go too fast.  For all that was said
+against Prince Otto--'
+
+'O, it was shameful!' cried the girl.
+
+'Not shameful--true,' returned Otto.  'O, yes--true.  I am all they said
+of me--all that and worse.'
+
+'I never!' cried 'Ottilia.  'Is that how you do?  Well, you would never
+be a soldier.  Now if any one accuses me, I get up and give it them.  O,
+I defend myself.  I wouldn't take a fault at another person's hands, no,
+not if I had it on my forehead.  And that's what you must do, if you mean
+to live it out.  But, indeed, I never heard such nonsense.  I should
+think you was ashamed of yourself!  You're bald, then, I suppose?'
+
+'O no,' said Otto, fairly laughing.  'There I acquit myself: not bald!'
+
+'Well, and good?' pursued the girl.  'Come now, you know you are good,
+and I'll make you say so . . . Your Highness, I beg your humble pardon.
+But there's no disrespect intended.  And anyhow, you know you are.'
+
+'Why, now, what am I to say?' replied Otto.  'You are a cook, and
+excellently well you do it; I embrace the chance of thanking you for the
+ragout.  Well now, have you not seen good food so bedevilled by unskilful
+cookery that no one could be brought to eat the pudding?  That is me, my
+dear.  I am full of good ingredients, but the dish is worthless.  I am--I
+give it you in one word--sugar in the salad.'
+
+'Well, I don't care, you're good,' reiterated Ottilia, a little flushed
+by having failed to understand.
+
+'I will tell you one thing,' replied Otto: 'You are!'
+
+'Ah, well, that's what they all said of you,' moralised the girl; 'such a
+tongue to come round--such a flattering tongue!'
+
+'O, you forget, I am a man of middle age,' the Prince chuckled.
+
+'Well, to speak to you, I should think you was a boy; and Prince or no
+Prince, if you came worrying where I was cooking, I would pin a napkin to
+your tails. . . . And, O Lord, I declare I hope your Highness will
+forgive me,' the girl added.  'I can't keep it in my mind.'
+
+'No more can I,' cried Otto.  'That is just what they complain of!'
+
+They made a loverly-looking couple; only the heavy pouring of that
+horse-tail of water made them raise their voices above lovers' pitch.
+But to a jealous onlooker from above, their mirth and close proximity
+might easily give umbrage; and a rough voice out of a tuft of brambles
+began calling on Ottilia by name.  She changed colour at that.  'It is
+Fritz,' she said.  'I must go.'
+
+'Go, my dear, and I need not bid you go in peace, for I think you have
+discovered that I am not formidable at close quarters,' said the Prince,
+and made her a fine gesture of dismissal.
+
+So Ottilia skipped up the bank, and disappeared into the thicket,
+stopping once for a single blushing bob--blushing, because she had in the
+interval once more forgotten and remembered the stranger's quality.
+
+Otto returned to his rock promontory; but his humour had in the meantime
+changed.  The sun now shone more fairly on the pool; and over its brown,
+welling surface, the blue of heaven and the golden green of the spring
+foliage danced in fleeting arabesque.  The eddies laughed and brightened
+with essential colour.  And the beauty of the dell began to rankle in the
+Prince's mind; it was so near to his own borders, yet without.  He had
+never had much of the joy of possessorship in any of the thousand and one
+beautiful and curious things that were his; and now he was conscious of
+envy for what was another's.  It was, indeed, a smiling, dilettante sort
+of envy; but yet there it was: the passion of Ahab for the vineyard, done
+in little; and he was relieved when Mr. Killian appeared upon the scene.
+
+'I hope, sir, that you have slept well under my plain roof,' said the old
+farmer.
+
+'I am admiring this sweet spot that you are privileged to dwell in,'
+replied Otto, evading the inquiry.
+
+'It is rustic,' returned Mr. Gottesheim, looking around him with
+complacency, 'a very rustic corner; and some of the land to the west is
+most excellent fat land, excellent deep soil.  You should see my wheat in
+the ten-acre field.  There is not a farm in Grunewald, no, nor many in
+Gerolstein, to match the River Farm.  Some sixty--I keep thinking when I
+sow--some sixty, and some seventy, and some an hundredfold; and my own
+place, six score!  But that, sir, is partly the farming.'
+
+'And the stream has fish?' asked Otto.
+
+'A fish-pond,' said the farmer.  'Ay, it is a pleasant bit.  It is
+pleasant even here, if one had time, with the brook drumming in that
+black pool, and the green things hanging all about the rocks, and, dear
+heart, to see the very pebbles! all turned to gold and precious stones!
+But you have come to that time of life, sir, when, if you will excuse me,
+you must look to have the rheumatism set in.  Thirty to forty is, as one
+may say, their seed-time.  And this is a damp cold corner for the early
+morning and an empty stomach.  If I might humbly advise you, sir, I would
+be moving.'
+
+'With all my heart,' said Otto gravely.  'And so you have lived your life
+here?' he added, as they turned to go.
+
+'Here I was born,' replied the farmer, 'and here I wish I could say I was
+to die.  But fortune, sir, fortune turns the wheel.  They say she is
+blind, but we will hope she only sees a little farther on.  My
+grandfather and my father and I, we have all tilled these acres, my
+furrow following theirs.  All the three names are on the garden bench,
+two Killians and one Johann.  Yes, sir, good men have prepared themselves
+for the great change in my old garden.  Well do I mind my father, in a
+woollen night-cap, the good soul, going round and round to see the last
+of it.  'Killian,' said he, 'do you see the smoke of my tobacco?  Why,'
+said he, 'that is man's life.'  It was his last pipe, and I believe he
+knew it; and it was a strange thing, without doubt, to leave the trees
+that he had planted, and the son that he had begotten, ay, sir, and even
+the old pipe with the Turk's head that he had smoked since he was a lad
+and went a-courting.  But here we have no continuing city; and as for the
+eternal, it's a comfortable thought that we have other merits than our
+own.  And yet you would hardly think how sore it goes against the grain
+with me, to die in a strange bed.'
+
+'And must you do so?  For what reason?' Otto asked.
+
+'The reason?  The place is to be sold; three thousand crowns,' replied
+Mr. Gottesheim.  'Had it been a third of that, I may say without boasting
+that, what with my credit and my savings, I could have met the sum.  But
+at three thousand, unless I have singular good fortune and the new
+proprietor continues me in office, there is nothing left me but to
+budge.'
+
+Otto's fancy for the place redoubled at the news, and became joined with
+other feelings.  If all he heard were true, Grunewald was growing very
+hot for a sovereign Prince; it might be well to have a refuge; and if so,
+what more delightful hermitage could man imagine?  Mr. Gottesheim,
+besides, had touched his sympathies.  Every man loves in his soul to play
+the part of the stage deity.  And to step down to the aid of the old
+farmer, who had so roughly handled him in talk, was the ideal of a Fair
+Revenge.  Otto's thoughts brightened at the prospect, and he began to
+regard himself with a renewed respect.
+
+'I can find you, I believe, a purchaser,' he said, 'and one who would
+continue to avail himself of your skill.'
+
+'Can you, sir, indeed?' said the old man.  'Well, I shall be heartily
+obliged; for I begin to find a man may practise resignation all his days,
+as he takes physic, and not come to like it in the end.'
+
+'If you will have the papers drawn, you may even burthen the purchase
+with your interest,' said Otto.  'Let it be assured to you through life.'
+
+'Your friend, sir,' insinuated Killian, 'would not, perhaps, care to make
+the interest reversible?  Fritz is a good lad.'
+
+'Fritz is young,' said the Prince dryly; 'he must earn consideration, not
+inherit.'
+
+'He has long worked upon the place, sir,' insisted Mr. Gottesheim; 'and
+at my great age, for I am seventy-eight come harvest, it would be a
+troublesome thought to the proprietor how to fill my shoes.  It would be
+a care spared to assure yourself of Fritz.  And I believe he might be
+tempted by a permanency.'
+
+'The young man has unsettled views,' returned Otto.
+
+'Possibly the purchaser--' began Killian.
+
+A little spot of anger burned in Otto's cheek.  'I am the purchaser,' he
+said.
+
+'It was what I might have guessed,' replied the farmer, bowing with an
+aged, obsequious dignity.  'You have made an old man very happy; and I
+may say, indeed, that I have entertained an angel unawares.  Sir, the
+great people of this world--and by that I mean those who are great in
+station--if they had only hearts like yours, how they would make the
+fires burn and the poor sing!'
+
+'I would not judge them hardly, sir,' said Otto.  'We all have our
+frailties.'
+
+'Truly, sir,' said Mr. Gottesheim, with unction.  'And by what name, sir,
+am I to address my generous landlord?'
+
+The double recollection of an English traveller, whom he had received the
+week before at court, and of an old English rogue called Transome, whom
+he had known in youth, came pertinently to the Prince's help.
+'Transome,' he answered, 'is my name.  I am an English traveller.  It is,
+to-day, Tuesday.  On Thursday, before noon, the money shall be ready.
+Let us meet, if you please, in Mittwalden, at the "Morning Star."'
+
+'I am, in all things lawful, your servant to command,' replied the
+farmer.  'An Englishman!  You are a great race of travellers.  And has
+your lordship some experience of land?'
+
+'I have had some interest of the kind before,' returned the Prince; 'not
+in Gerolstein, indeed.  But fortune, as you say, turns the wheel, and I
+desire to be beforehand with her revolutions.'
+
+'Very right, sir, I am sure,' said Mr. Killian.
+
+They had been strolling with deliberation; but they were now drawing near
+to the farmhouse, mounting by the trellised pathway to the level of the
+meadow.  A little before them, the sound of voices had been some while
+audible, and now grew louder and more distinct with every step of their
+advance.  Presently, when they emerged upon the top of the bank, they
+beheld Fritz and Ottilia some way off; he, very black and bloodshot,
+emphasising his hoarse speech with the smacking of his fist against his
+palm; she, standing a little way off in blowsy, voluble distress.
+
+'Dear me!' said Mr. Gottesheim, and made as if he would turn aside.
+
+But Otto went straight towards the lovers, in whose dissension he
+believed himself to have a share.  And, indeed, as soon as he had seen
+the Prince, Fritz had stood tragic, as if awaiting and defying his
+approach.
+
+'O, here you are!' he cried, as soon as they were near enough for easy
+speech.  'You are a man at least, and must reply.  What were you after?
+Why were you two skulking in the bush?  God!' he broke out, turning again
+upon Ottilia, 'to think that I should waste my heart on you!'
+
+'I beg your pardon,' Otto cut in.  'You were addressing me.  In virtue of
+what circumstance am I to render you an account of this young lady's
+conduct?  Are you her father? her brother? her husband?'
+
+'O, sir, you know as well as I,' returned the peasant.  'We keep company,
+she and I.  I love her, and she is by way of loving me; but all shall be
+above-board, I would have her to know.  I have a good pride of my own.'
+
+'Why, I perceive I must explain to you what love is,' said Otto.  'Its
+measure is kindness.  It is very possible that you are proud; but she,
+too, may have some self-esteem; I do not speak for myself.  And perhaps,
+if your own doings were so curiously examined, you might find it
+inconvenient to reply.'
+
+'These are all set-offs,' said the young man.  'You know very well that a
+man is a man, and a woman only a woman.  That holds good all over, up and
+down.  I ask you a question, I ask it again, and here I stand.'  He drew
+a mark and toed it.
+
+'When you have studied liberal doctrines somewhat deeper,' said the
+Prince, 'you will perhaps change your note.  You are a man of false
+weights and measures, my young friend.  You have one scale for women,
+another for men; one for princes, and one for farmer-folk.  On the prince
+who neglects his wife you can be most severe.  But what of the lover who
+insults his mistress?  You use the name of love.  I should think this
+lady might very fairly ask to be delivered from love of such a nature.
+For if I, a stranger, had been one-tenth part so gross and so
+discourteous, you would most righteously have broke my head.  It would
+have been in your part, as lover, to protect her from such insolence.
+Protect her first, then, from yourself.'
+
+'Ay,' quoth Mr. Gottesheim, who had been looking on with his hands behind
+his tall old back, 'ay, that's Scripture truth.'
+
+Fritz was staggered, not only by the Prince's imperturbable superiority
+of manner, but by a glimmering consciousness that he himself was in the
+wrong.  The appeal to liberal doctrines had, besides, unmanned him.
+
+'Well,' said he, 'if I was rude, I'll own to it.  I meant no ill, and did
+nothing out of my just rights; but I am above all these old vulgar
+notions too; and if I spoke sharp, I'll ask her pardon.'
+
+'Freely granted, Fritz,' said Ottilia.
+
+'But all this doesn't answer me,' cried Fritz.  'I ask what you two spoke
+about.  She says she promised not to tell; well, then, I mean to know.
+Civility is civility, but I'll be no man's gull.  I have a right to
+common justice, if I _do_ keep company!'
+
+'If you will ask Mr. Gottesheim,' replied Otto, 'you will find I have not
+spent my hours in idleness.  I have, since I arose this morning, agreed
+to buy the farm.  So far I will go to satisfy a curiosity which I
+condemn.'
+
+'O, well, if there was business, that's another matter,' returned Fritz.
+'Though it beats me why you could not tell.  But, of course, if the
+gentleman is to buy the farm, I suppose there would naturally be an end.'
+
+'To be sure,' said Mr. Gottesheim, with a strong accent of conviction.
+
+But Ottilia was much braver.  'There now!' she cried in triumph.  'What
+did I tell you?  I told you I was fighting your battles.  Now you see!
+Think shame of your suspicious temper!  You should go down upon your
+bended knees both to that gentleman and me.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--IN WHICH THE PRINCE COLLECTS OPINIONS BY THE WAY
+
+
+A little before noon Otto, by a triumph of manoeuvring, effected his
+escape.  He was quit in this way of the ponderous gratitude of Mr.
+Killian, and of the confidential gratitude of poor Ottilia; but of Fritz
+he was not quit so readily.  That young politician, brimming with
+mysterious glances, offered to lend his convoy as far as to the
+high-road; and Otto, in fear of some residuary jealousy and for the
+girl's sake, had not the courage to gainsay him; but he regarded his
+companion with uneasy glances, and devoutly wished the business at an
+end.  For some time Fritz walked by the mare in silence; and they had
+already traversed more than half the proposed distance when, with
+something of a blush, he looked up and opened fire.
+
+'Are you not,' he asked, 'what they call a socialist?'
+
+'Why, no,' returned Otto, 'not precisely what they call so.  Why do you
+ask?'
+
+'I will tell you why,' said the young man.  'I saw from the first that
+you were a red progressional, and nothing but the fear of old Killian
+kept you back.  And there, sir, you were right: old men are always
+cowards.  But nowadays, you see, there are so many groups: you can never
+tell how far the likeliest kind of man may be prepared to go; and I was
+never sure you were one of the strong thinkers, till you hinted about
+women and free love.'
+
+'Indeed,' cried Otto, 'I never said a word of such a thing.'
+
+'Not you!' cried Fritz.  'Never a word to compromise!  You was sowing
+seed: ground-bait, our president calls it.  But it's hard to deceive me,
+for I know all the agitators and their ways, and all the doctrines; and
+between you and me,' lowering his voice, 'I am myself affiliated.  O yes,
+I am a secret society man, and here is my medal.'  And drawing out a
+green ribbon that he wore about his neck, he held up, for Otto's
+inspection, a pewter medal bearing the imprint of a Phoenix and the
+legend _Libertas_.  'And so now you see you may trust me,' added Fritz,
+'I am none of your alehouse talkers; I am a convinced revolutionary.'
+And he looked meltingly upon Otto.
+
+'I see,' replied the Prince; 'that is very gratifying.  Well, sir, the
+great thing for the good of one's country is, first of all, to be a good
+man.  All springs from there.  For my part, although you are right in
+thinking that I have to do with politics, I am unfit by intellect and
+temper for a leading role.  I was intended, I fear, for a subaltern.  Yet
+we have all something to command, Mr. Fritz, if it be only our own
+temper; and a man about to marry must look closely to himself.  The
+husband's, like the prince's, is a very artificial standing; and it is
+hard to be kind in either.  Do you follow that?'
+
+'O yes, I follow that,' replied the young man, sadly chop-fallen over the
+nature of the information he had elicited; and then brightening up: 'Is
+it,' he ventured, 'is it for an arsenal that you have bought the farm?'
+
+'We'll see about that,' the Prince answered, laughing.  'You must not be
+too zealous.  And in the meantime, if I were you, I would say nothing on
+the subject.'
+
+'O, trust me, sir, for that,' cried Fritz, as he pocketed a crown.  'And
+you've let nothing out; for I suspected--I might say I knew it--from the
+first.  And mind you, when a guide is required,' he added, 'I know all
+the forest paths.'
+
+Otto rode away, chuckling.  This talk with Fritz had vastly entertained
+him; nor was he altogether discontented with his bearing at the farm;
+men, he was able to tell himself, had behaved worse under smaller
+provocation.  And, to harmonise all, the road and the April air were both
+delightful to his soul.
+
+Up and down, and to and fro, ever mounting through the wooded foothills,
+the broad white high-road wound onward into Grunewald.  On either hand
+the pines stood coolly rooted--green moss prospering, springs welling
+forth between their knuckled spurs; and though some were broad and
+stalwart, and others spiry and slender, yet all stood firm in the same
+attitude and with the same expression, like a silent army presenting
+arms.
+
+The road lay all the way apart from towns and villages, which it left on
+either hand.  Here and there, indeed, in the bottom of green glens, the
+Prince could spy a few congregated roofs, or perhaps above him, on a
+shoulder, the solitary cabin of a woodman.  But the highway was an
+international undertaking and with its face set for distant cities,
+scorned the little life of Grunewald.  Hence it was exceeding solitary.
+Near the frontier Otto met a detachment of his own troops marching in the
+hot dust; and he was recognised and somewhat feebly cheered as he rode
+by.  But from that time forth and for a long while he was alone with the
+great woods.
+
+Gradually the spell of pleasure relaxed; his own thoughts returned, like
+stinging insects, in a cloud; and the talk of the night before, like a
+shower of buffets, fell upon his memory.  He looked east and west for any
+comforter; and presently he was aware of a cross-road coming steeply down
+hill, and a horseman cautiously descending.  A human voice or presence,
+like a spring in the desert, was now welcome in itself, and Otto drew
+bridle to await the coming of this stranger.  He proved to be a very
+red-faced, thick-lipped countryman, with a pair of fat saddle-bags and a
+stone bottle at his waist; who, as soon as the Prince hailed him,
+jovially, if somewhat thickly, answered.  At the same time he gave a
+beery yaw in the saddle.  It was clear his bottle was no longer full.
+
+'Do you ride towards Mittwalden?' asked the Prince.
+
+'As far as the cross-road to Tannenbrunn,' the man replied.  'Will you
+bear company?'
+
+'With pleasure.  I have even waited for you on the chance,' answered
+Otto.
+
+By this time they were close alongside; and the man, with the countryfolk
+instinct, turned his cloudy vision first of all on his companion's mount.
+'The devil!' he cried.  'You ride a bonny mare, friend!'  And then, his
+curiosity being satisfied about the essential, he turned his attention to
+that merely secondary matter, his companion's face.  He started.  'The
+Prince!' he cried, saluting, with another yaw that came near dismounting
+him.  'I beg your pardon, your Highness, not to have recognised you at
+once.'
+
+The Prince was vexed out of his self-possession.  'Since you know me,' he
+said, 'it is unnecessary we should ride together.  I will precede you, if
+you please.'  And he was about to set spur to the grey mare, when the
+half-drunken fellow, reaching over, laid his hand upon the rein.
+
+'Hark you,' he said, 'prince or no prince, that is not how one man should
+conduct himself with another.  What!  You'll ride with me incog. and set
+me talking!  But if I know you, you'll preshede me, if you please!  Spy!'
+And the fellow, crimson with drink and injured vanity, almost spat the
+word into the Prince's face.
+
+A horrid confusion came over Otto.  He perceived that he had acted
+rudely, grossly presuming on his station.  And perhaps a little shiver of
+physical alarm mingled with his remorse, for the fellow was very powerful
+and not more than half in the possession of his senses.  'Take your hand
+from my rein,' he said, with a sufficient assumption of command; and when
+the man, rather to his wonder, had obeyed: 'You should understand, sir,'
+he added, 'that while I might be glad to ride with you as one person of
+sagacity with another, and so receive your true opinions, it would amuse
+me very little to hear the empty compliments you would address to me as
+Prince.'
+
+'You think I would lie, do you?' cried the man with the bottle, purpling
+deeper.
+
+'I know you would,' returned Otto, entering entirely into his
+self-possession.  'You would not even show me the medal you wear about
+your neck.'  For he had caught a glimpse of a green ribbon at the
+fellow's throat.
+
+The change was instantaneous: the red face became mottled with yellow: a
+thick-fingered, tottering hand made a clutch at the tell-tale ribbon.
+'Medal!' the man cried, wonderfully sobered.  'I have no medal.'
+
+'Pardon me,' said the Prince.  'I will even tell you what that medal
+bears: a Phoenix burning, with the word _Libertas_.'  The medallist
+remaining speechless, 'You are a pretty fellow,' continued Otto, smiling,
+'to complain of incivility from the man whom you conspire to murder.'
+
+'Murder!' protested the man.  'Nay, never that; nothing criminal for me!'
+
+'You are strangely misinformed,' said Otto.  'Conspiracy itself is
+criminal, and ensures the pain of death.  Nay, sir, death it is; I will
+guarantee my accuracy.  Not that you need be so deplorably affected, for
+I am no officer.  But those who mingle with politics should look at both
+sides of the medal.'
+
+'Your Highness . . . ' began the knight of the bottle.
+
+'Nonsense! you are a Republican,' cried Otto; 'what have you to do with
+highnesses?  But let us continue to ride forward.  Since you so much
+desire it, I cannot find it in my heart to deprive you of my company.
+And for that matter, I have a question to address to you.  Why, being so
+great a body of men--for you are a great body--fifteen thousand, I have
+heard, but that will be understated; am I right?'
+
+The man gurgled in his throat.
+
+'Why, then, being so considerable a party,' resumed Otto, 'do you not
+come before me boldly with your wants?--what do I say? with your
+commands?  Have I the name of being passionately devoted to my throne?  I
+can scarce suppose it.  Come, then; show me your majority, and I will
+instantly resign.  Tell this to your friends; assure them from me of my
+docility; assure them that, however they conceive of my deficiencies,
+they cannot suppose me more unfit to be a ruler than I do myself.  I am
+one of the worst princes in Europe; will they improve on that?'
+
+'Far be it from me . . .' the man began.
+
+'See, now, if you will not defend my government!' cried Otto.  'If I were
+you, I would leave conspiracies.  You are as little fit to be a
+conspirator as I to be a king.'
+
+'One thing I will say out,' said the man.  'It is not so much you that we
+complain of, it's your lady.'
+
+'Not a word, sir' said the Prince; and then after a moment's pause, and
+in tones of some anger and contempt: 'I once more advise you to have done
+with politics,' he added; 'and when next I see you, let me see you sober.
+A morning drunkard is the last man to sit in judgment even upon the worst
+of princes.'
+
+'I have had a drop, but I had not been drinking,' the man replied,
+triumphing in a sound distinction.  'And if I had, what then?  Nobody
+hangs by me.  But my mill is standing idle, and I blame it on your wife.
+Am I alone in that?  Go round and ask.  Where are the mills?  Where are
+the young men that should be working?  Where is the currency?  All
+paralysed.  No, sir, it is not equal; for I suffer for your faults--I pay
+for them, by George, out of a poor man's pocket.  And what have you to do
+with mine?  Drunk or sober, I can see my country going to hell, and I can
+see whose fault it is.  And so now, I've said my say, and you may drag me
+to a stinking dungeon; what care I?  I've spoke the truth, and so I'll
+hold hard, and not intrude upon your Highness's society.'
+
+And the miller reined up and, clumsily enough, saluted.
+
+'You will observe, I have not asked your name,' said Otto.  'I wish you a
+good ride,' and he rode on hard.  But let him ride as he pleased, this
+interview with the miller was a chokepear, which he could not swallow.
+He had begun by receiving a reproof in manners, and ended by sustaining a
+defeat in logic, both from a man whom he despised.  All his old thoughts
+returned with fresher venom.  And by three in the afternoon, coming to
+the cross-roads for Beckstein, Otto decided to turn aside and dine there
+leisurely.  Nothing at least could be worse than to go on as he was
+going.
+
+In the inn at Beckstein he remarked, immediately upon his entrance, an
+intelligent young gentleman dining, with a book in front of him.  He had
+his own place laid close to the reader, and with a proper apology, broke
+ground by asking what he read.
+
+'I am perusing,' answered the young gentleman, 'the last work of the Herr
+Doctor Hohenstockwitz, cousin and librarian of your Prince here in
+Grunewald--a man of great erudition and some lambencies of wit.'
+
+'I am acquainted,' said Otto, 'with the Herr Doctor, though not yet with
+his work.'
+
+'Two privileges that I must envy you,' replied the young man politely:
+'an honour in hand, a pleasure in the bush.'
+
+'The Herr Doctor is a man much respected, I believe, for his
+attainments?' asked the Prince.
+
+'He is, sir, a remarkable instance of the force of intellect,' replied
+the reader.  'Who of our young men know anything of his cousin, all
+reigning Prince although he be?  Who but has heard of Doctor Gotthold?
+But intellectual merit, alone of all distinctions, has its base in
+nature.'
+
+'I have the gratification of addressing a student--perhaps an author?'
+Otto suggested.
+
+The young man somewhat flushed.  'I have some claim to both distinctions,
+sir, as you suppose,' said he; 'there is my card.  I am the licentiate
+Roederer, author of several works on the theory and practice of
+politics.'
+
+'You immensely interest me,' said the Prince; 'the more so as I gather
+that here in Grunewald we are on the brink of revolution.  Pray, since
+these have been your special studies, would you augur hopefully of such a
+movement?'
+
+'I perceive,' said the young author, with a certain vinegary twitch,
+'that you are unacquainted with my opuscula.  I am a convinced
+authoritarian.  I share none of those illusory, Utopian fancies with
+which empirics blind themselves and exasperate the ignorant.  The day of
+these ideas is, believe me, past, or at least passing.'
+
+'When I look about me--' began Otto.
+
+'When you look about you,' interrupted the licentiate, 'you behold the
+ignorant.  But in the laboratory of opinion, beside the studious lamp, we
+begin already to discard these figments.  We begin to return to nature's
+order, to what I might call, if I were to borrow from the language of
+therapeutics, the expectant treatment of abuses.  You will not
+misunderstand me,' he continued: 'a country in the condition in which we
+find Grunewald, a prince such as your Prince Otto, we must explicitly
+condemn; they are behind the age.  But I would look for a remedy not to
+brute convulsions, but to the natural supervenience of a more able
+sovereign.  I should amuse you, perhaps,' added the licentiate, with a
+smile, 'I think I should amuse you if I were to explain my notion of a
+prince.  We who have studied in the closet, no longer, in this age,
+propose ourselves for active service.  The paths, we have perceived, are
+incompatible.  I would not have a student on the throne, though I would
+have one near by for an adviser.  I would set forward as prince a man of
+a good, medium understanding, lively rather than deep; a man of courtly
+manner, possessed of the double art to ingratiate and to command;
+receptive, accommodating, seductive.  I have been observing you since
+your first entrance.  Well, sir, were I a subject of Grunewald I should
+pray heaven to set upon the seat of government just such another as
+yourself.'
+
+'The devil you would!' exclaimed the Prince.
+
+The licentiate Roederer laughed most heartily.  'I thought I should
+astonish you,' he said.  'These are not the ideas of the masses.'
+
+'They are not, I can assure you,' Otto said.
+
+'Or rather,' distinguished the licentiate, 'not to-day.  The time will
+come, however, when these ideas shall prevail.'
+
+'You will permit me, sir, to doubt it,' said Otto.
+
+'Modesty is always admirable,' chuckled the theorist.  'But yet I assure
+you, a man like you, with such a man as, say, Doctor Gotthold at your
+elbow, would be, for all practical issues, my ideal ruler.'
+
+At this rate the hours sped pleasantly for Otto.  But the licentiate
+unfortunately slept that night at Beckstein, where he was, being dainty
+in the saddle and given to half stages.  And to find a convoy to
+Mittwalden, and thus mitigate the company of his own thoughts, the Prince
+had to make favour with a certain party of wood-merchants from various
+states of the empire, who had been drinking together somewhat noisily at
+the far end of the apartment.
+
+The night had already fallen when they took the saddle.  The merchants
+were very loud and mirthful; each had a face like a nor'west moon; and
+they played pranks with each others' horses, and mingled songs and
+choruses, and alternately remembered and forgot the companion of their
+ride.  Otto thus combined society and solitude, hearkening now to their
+chattering and empty talk, now to the voices of the encircling forest.
+The starlit dark, the faint wood airs, the clank of the horse-shoes
+making broken music, accorded together and attuned his mind.  And he was
+still in a most equal temper when the party reached the top of that long
+hill that overlooks Mittwalden.
+
+Down in the bottom of a bowl of forest, the lights of the little formal
+town glittered in a pattern, street crossing street; away by itself on
+the right, the palace was glowing like a factory.
+
+Although he knew not Otto, one of the wood-merchants was a native of the
+state.  'There,' said he, pointing to the palace with his whip, 'there is
+Jezebel's inn.'
+
+'What, do you call it that?' cried another, laughing.
+
+'Ay, that's what they call it,' returned the Grunewalder; and he broke
+into a song, which the rest, as people well acquainted with the words and
+air, instantly took up in chorus.  Her Serene Highness Amalia Seraphina,
+Princess of Grunewald, was the heroine, Gondremark the hero of this
+ballad.  Shame hissed in Otto's ears.  He reined up short and sat stunned
+in the saddle; and the singers continued to descend the hill without him.
+
+The song went to a rough, swashing, popular air; and long after the words
+became inaudible the swing of the music, rising and falling, echoed
+insult in the Prince's brain.  He fled the sounds.  Hard by him on his
+right a road struck towards the palace, and he followed it through the
+thick shadows and branching alleys of the park.  It was a busy place on a
+fine summer's afternoon, when the court and burghers met and saluted; but
+at that hour of the night in the early spring it was deserted to the
+roosting birds.  Hares rustled among the covert; here and there a statue
+stood glimmering, with its eternal gesture; here and there the echo of an
+imitation temple clattered ghostly to the trampling of the mare.  Ten
+minutes brought him to the upper end of his own home garden, where the
+small stables opened, over a bridge, upon the park.  The yard clock was
+striking the hour of ten; so was the big bell in the palace bell-tower;
+and, farther off, the belfries of the town.  About the stable all else
+was silent but the stamping of stalled horses and the rattle of halters.
+Otto dismounted; and as he did so a memory came back to him: a whisper of
+dishonest grooms and stolen corn, once heard, long forgotten, and now
+recurring in the nick of opportunity.  He crossed the bridge, and, going
+up to a window, knocked six or seven heavy blows in a particular cadence,
+and, as he did so, smiled.  Presently a wicket was opened in the gate,
+and a man's head appeared in the dim starlight.
+
+'Nothing to-night,' said a voice.
+
+'Bring a lantern,' said the Prince.
+
+'Dear heart a' mercy!' cried the groom.  'Who's that?'
+
+'It is I, the Prince,' replied Otto.  'Bring a lantern, take in the mare,
+and let me through into the garden.'
+
+The man remained silent for a while, his head still projecting through
+the wicket.
+
+'His Highness!' he said at last.  'And why did your Highness knock so
+strange?'
+
+'It is a superstition in Mittwalden,' answered Otto, 'that it cheapens
+corn.'
+
+With a sound like a sob the groom fled.  He was very white when he
+returned, even by the light of the lantern; and his hand trembled as he
+undid the fastenings and took the mare.
+
+'Your Highness,' he began at last, 'for God's sake . . . '  And there he
+paused, oppressed with guilt.
+
+'For God's sake, what?' asked Otto cheerfully.  'For God's sake let us
+have cheaper corn, say I.  Good-night!'  And he strode off into the
+garden, leaving the groom petrified once more.
+
+The garden descended by a succession of stone terraces to the level of
+the fish-pond.  On the far side the ground rose again, and was crowned by
+the confused roofs and gables of the palace.  The modern pillared front,
+the ball-room, the great library, the princely apartments, the busy and
+illuminated quarters of that great house, all faced the town.  The garden
+side was much older; and here it was almost dark; only a few windows
+quietly lighted at various elevations.  The great square tower rose,
+thinning by stages like a telescope; and on the top of all the flag hung
+motionless.
+
+The garden, as it now lay in the dusk and glimmer of the starshine,
+breathed of April violets.  Under night's cavern arch the shrubs
+obscurely bustled.  Through the plotted terraces and down the marble
+stairs the Prince rapidly descended, fleeing before uncomfortable
+thoughts.  But, alas! from these there is no city of refuge.  And now,
+when he was about midway of the descent, distant strains of music began
+to fall upon his ear from the ball-room, where the court was dancing.
+They reached him faint and broken, but they touched the keys of memory;
+and through and above them Otto heard the ranting melody of the
+wood-merchants' song.  Mere blackness seized upon his mind.  Here he was,
+coming home; the wife was dancing, the husband had been playing a trick
+upon a lackey; and meanwhile, all about them, they were a by-word to
+their subjects.  Such a prince, such a husband, such a man, as this Otto
+had become!  And he sped the faster onward.
+
+Some way below he came unexpectedly upon a sentry; yet a little farther,
+and he was challenged by a second; and as he crossed the bridge over the
+fish-pond, an officer making the rounds stopped him once more.  The
+parade of watch was more than usual; but curiosity was dead in Otto's
+mind, and he only chafed at the interruption.  The porter of the back
+postern admitted him, and started to behold him so disordered.  Thence,
+hasting by private stairs and passages, he came at length unseen to his
+own chamber, tore off his clothes, and threw himself upon his bed in the
+dark.  The music of the ball-room still continued to a very lively
+measure; and still, behind that, he heard in spirit the chorus of the
+merchants clanking down the hill.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II--OF LOVE AND POLITICS
+
+
+CHAPTER I--WHAT HAPPENED IN THE LIBRARY
+
+
+At a quarter before six on the following morning Doctor Gotthold was
+already at his desk in the library; and with a small cup of black coffee
+at his elbow, and an eye occasionally wandering to the busts and the long
+array of many-coloured books, was quietly reviewing the labours of the
+day before.  He was a man of about forty, flaxen-haired, with refined
+features a little worn, and bright eyes somewhat faded.  Early to bed and
+early to rise, his life was devoted to two things: erudition and Rhine
+wine.  An ancient friendship existed latent between him and Otto; they
+rarely met, but when they did it was to take up at once the thread of
+their suspended intimacy.  Gotthold, the virgin priest of knowledge, had
+envied his cousin, for half a day, when he was married; he had never
+envied him his throne.
+
+Reading was not a popular diversion at the court of Grunewald; and that
+great, pleasant, sunshiny gallery of books and statues was, in practice,
+Gotthold's private cabinet.  On this particular Wednesday morning,
+however, he had not been long about his manuscript when a door opened and
+the Prince stepped into the apartment.  The doctor watched him as he drew
+near, receiving, from each of the embayed windows in succession, a flush
+of morning sun; and Otto looked so gay, and walked so airily, he was so
+well dressed and brushed and frizzled, so point-device, and of such a
+sovereign elegance, that the heart of his cousin the recluse was rather
+moved against him.
+
+'Good-morning, Gotthold,' said Otto, dropping in a chair.
+
+'Good-morning, Otto,' returned the librarian.  'You are an early bird.
+Is this an accident, or do you begin reforming?'
+
+'It is about time, I fancy,' answered the Prince.
+
+'I cannot imagine,' said the Doctor.  'I am too sceptical to be an
+ethical adviser; and as for good resolutions, I believed in them when I
+was young.  They are the colours of hope's rainbow.'
+
+'If you come to think of it,' said Otto, 'I am not a popular sovereign.'
+And with a look he changed his statement to a question.
+
+'Popular?  Well, there I would distinguish,' answered Gotthold, leaning
+back and joining the tips of his fingers.  'There are various kinds of
+popularity; the bookish, which is perfectly impersonal, as unreal as the
+nightmare; the politician's, a mixed variety; and yours, which is the
+most personal of all.  Women take to you; footmen adore you; it is as
+natural to like you as to pat a dog; and were you a saw-miller you would
+be the most popular citizen in Grunewald.  As a prince--well, you are in
+the wrong trade.  It is perhaps philosophical to recognise it as you do.'
+
+'Perhaps philosophical?' repeated Otto.
+
+'Yes, perhaps.  I would not be dogmatic,' answered Gotthold.
+
+'Perhaps philosophical, and certainly not virtuous,' Otto resumed.
+
+'Not of a Roman virtue,' chuckled the recluse.
+
+Otto drew his chair nearer to the table, leaned upon it with his elbow,
+and looked his cousin squarely in the face.  'In short,' he asked, 'not
+manly?'
+
+'Well,' Gotthold hesitated, 'not manly, if you will.'  And then, with a
+laugh, 'I did not know that you gave yourself out to be manly,' he added.
+'It was one of the points that I inclined to like about you; inclined, I
+believe, to admire.  The names of virtues exercise a charm on most of us;
+we must lay claim to all of them, however incompatible; we must all be
+both daring and prudent; we must all vaunt our pride and go to the stake
+for our humility.  Not so you.  Without compromise you were yourself: a
+pretty sight.  I have always said it: none so void of all pretence as
+Otto.'
+
+'Pretence and effort both!' cried Otto.  'A dead dog in a canal is more
+alive.  And the question, Gotthold, the question that I have to face is
+this: Can I not, with effort and self-denial, can I not become a
+tolerable sovereign?'
+
+'Never,' replied Gotthold.  'Dismiss the notion.  And besides, dear
+child, you would not try.'
+
+'Nay, Gotthold, I am not to be put by,' said Otto.  'If I am
+constitutionally unfit to be a sovereign, what am I doing with this
+money, with this palace, with these guards?  And I--a thief--am to
+execute the law on others?'
+
+'I admit the difficulty,' said Gotthold.
+
+'Well, can I not try?' continued Otto.  'Am I not bound to try?  And with
+the advice and help of such a man as you--'
+
+'Me!' cried the librarian.  'Now, God forbid!'
+
+Otto, though he was in no very smiling humour, could not forbear to
+smile.  'Yet I was told last night,' he laughed, 'that with a man like me
+to impersonate, and a man like you to touch the springs, a very possible
+government could be composed.'
+
+'Now I wonder in what diseased imagination,' Gotthold said, 'that
+preposterous monster saw the light of day?'
+
+'It was one of your own trade--a writer: one Roederer,' said Otto.
+
+'Roederer! an ignorant puppy!' cried the librarian.
+
+'You are ungrateful,' said Otto.  'He is one of your professed admirers.'
+
+'Is he?' cried Gotthold, obviously impressed.  'Come, that is a good
+account of the young man.  I must read his stuff again.  It is the rather
+to his credit, as our views are opposite.  The east and west are not more
+opposite.  Can I have converted him?  But no; the incident belongs to
+Fairyland.'
+
+'You are not then,' asked the Prince, 'an authoritarian?'
+
+'I?  God bless me, no!' said Gotthold.  'I am a red, dear child.'
+
+'That brings me then to my next point, and by a natural transition.  If I
+am so clearly unfitted for my post,' the Prince asked; 'if my friends
+admit it, if my subjects clamour for my downfall, if revolution is
+preparing at this hour, must I not go forth to meet the inevitable?
+should I not save these horrors and be done with these absurdities? in a
+word, should I not abdicate?  O, believe me, I feel the ridicule, the
+vast abuse of language,' he added, wincing, 'but even a principulus like
+me cannot resign; he must make a great gesture, and come buskined forth,
+and abdicate.'
+
+'Ay,' said Gotthold, 'or else stay where he is.  What gnat has bitten you
+to-day?  Do you not know that you are touching, with lay hands, the very
+holiest inwards of philosophy, where madness dwells?  Ay, Otto, madness;
+for in the serene temples of the wise, the inmost shrine, which we
+carefully keep locked, is full of spiders' webs.  All men, all, are
+fundamentally useless; nature tolerates, she does not need, she does not
+use them: sterile flowers!  All--down to the fellow swinking in a byre,
+whom fools point out for the exception--all are useless; all weave ropes
+of sand; or like a child that has breathed on a window, write and
+obliterate, write and obliterate, idle words!  Talk of it no more.  That
+way, I tell you, madness lies.'  The speaker rose from his chair and then
+sat down again.  He laughed a little laugh, and then, changing his tone,
+resumed: 'Yes, dear child, we are not here to do battle with giants; we
+are here to be happy like the flowers, if we can be.  It is because you
+could, that I have always secretly admired you.  Cling to that trade;
+believe me, it is the right one.  Be happy, be idle, be airy.  To the
+devil with all casuistry! and leave the state to Gondremark, as
+heretofore.  He does it well enough, they say; and his vanity enjoys the
+situation.'
+
+'Gotthold,' cried Otto, 'what is this to me?  Useless is not the
+question; I cannot rest at uselessness; I must be useful or I must be
+noxious--one or other.  I grant you the whole thing, prince and
+principality alike, is pure absurdity, a stroke of satire; and that a
+banker or the man who keeps an inn has graver duties.  But now, when I
+have washed my hands of it three years, and left all--labour,
+responsibility, and honour and enjoyment too, if there be any--to
+Gondremark and to--Seraphina--'  He hesitated at the name, and Gotthold
+glanced aside.  'Well,' the Prince continued, 'what has come of it?
+Taxes, army, cannon--why, it's like a box of lead soldiers!  And the
+people sick at the folly of it, and fired with the injustice!  And war,
+too--I hear of war--war in this teapot!  What a complication of absurdity
+and disgrace!  And when the inevitable end arrives--the revolution--who
+will be to blame in the sight of God, who will be gibbeted in public
+opinion?  I!  Prince Puppet!'
+
+'I thought you had despised public opinion,' said Gotthold.
+
+'I did,' said Otto sombrely, 'but now I do not.  I am growing old.  And
+then, Gotthold, there is Seraphina.  She is loathed in this country that
+I brought her to and suffered her to spoil.  Yes, I gave it her as a
+plaything, and she has broken it: a fine Prince, an admirable Princess!
+Even her life--I ask you, Gotthold, is her life safe?'
+
+'It is safe enough to-day,' replied the librarian: 'but since you ask me
+seriously, I would not answer for to-morrow.  She is ill-advised.'
+
+'And by whom?  By this Gondremark, to whom you counsel me to leave my
+country,' cried the Prince.  'Rare advice!  The course that I have been
+following all these years, to come at last to this.  O, ill-advised! if
+that were all!  See now, there is no sense in beating about the bush
+between two men: you know what scandal says of her?'
+
+Gotthold, with pursed lips, silently nodded.
+
+'Well, come, you are not very cheering as to my conduct as the Prince;
+have I even done my duty as a husband?' Otto asked.
+
+'Nay, nay,' said Gotthold, earnestly and eagerly, 'this is another
+chapter.  I am an old celibate, an old monk.  I cannot advise you in your
+marriage.'
+
+'Nor do I require advice,' said Otto, rising.  'All of this must cease.'
+And he began to walk to and fro with his hands behind his back.
+
+'Well, Otto, may God guide you!' said Gotthold, after a considerable
+silence.  'I cannot.'
+
+'From what does all this spring?' said the Prince, stopping in his walk.
+'What am I to call it?  Diffidence?  The fear of ridicule?  Inverted
+vanity?  What matter names, if it has brought me to this?  I could never
+bear to be bustling about nothing; I was ashamed of this toy kingdom from
+the first; I could not tolerate that people should fancy I believed in a
+thing so patently absurd!  I would do nothing that cannot be done
+smiling.  I have a sense of humour, forsooth!  I must know better than my
+Maker.  And it was the same thing in my marriage,' he added more
+hoarsely.  'I did not believe this girl could care for me; I must not
+intrude; I must preserve the foppery of my indifference.  What an
+impotent picture!'
+
+'Ay, we have the same blood,' moralised Gotthold.  'You are drawing, with
+fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic.'
+
+'Sceptic?--coward!' cried Otto.  'Coward is the word.  A springless,
+putty-hearted, cowering coward!'
+
+And as the Prince rapped out the words in tones of unusual vigour, a
+little, stout, old gentleman, opening a door behind Gotthold, received
+them fairly in the face.  With his parrot's beak for a nose, his pursed
+mouth, his little goggling eyes, he was the picture of formality; and in
+ordinary circumstances, strutting behind the drum of his corporation, he
+impressed the beholder with a certain air of frozen dignity and wisdom.
+But at the smallest contrariety, his trembling hands and disconnected
+gestures betrayed the weakness at the root.  And now, when he was thus
+surprisingly received in that library of Mittwalden Palace, which was the
+customary haunt of silence, his hands went up into the air as if he had
+been shot, and he cried aloud with the scream of an old woman.
+
+'O!' he gasped, recovering, 'Your Highness!  I beg ten thousand pardons.
+But your Highness at such an hour in the library!--a circumstance so
+unusual as your Highness's presence was a thing I could not be expected
+to foresee.'
+
+'There is no harm done, Herr Cancellarius,' said Otto.
+
+'I came upon the errand of a moment: some papers I left over-night with
+the Herr Doctor,' said the Chancellor of Grunewald.  'Herr Doctor, if you
+will kindly give me them, I will intrude no longer.'
+
+Gotthold unlocked a drawer and handed a bundle of manuscript to the old
+gentleman, who prepared, with fitting salutations, to take his departure.
+
+'Herr Greisengesang, since we have met,' said Otto, 'let us talk.'
+
+'I am honoured by his Highness's commands,' replied the Chancellor.
+
+'All has been quiet since I left?' asked the Prince, resuming his seat.
+
+'The usual business, your Highness,' answered Greisengesang; 'punctual
+trifles: huge, indeed, if neglected, but trifles when discharged.  Your
+Highness is most zealously obeyed.'
+
+'Obeyed, Herr Cancellarius?' returned the Prince.  'And when have I
+obliged you with an order?  Replaced, let us rather say.  But to touch
+upon these trifles; instance me a few.'
+
+'The routine of government, from which your Highness has so wisely
+dissociated his leisure . . . ' began Greisengesang.
+
+'We will leave my leisure, sir,' said Otto.  'Approach the facts.'
+
+'The routine of business was proceeded with,' replied the official, now
+visibly twittering.
+
+'It is very strange, Herr Cancellarius, that you should so persistently
+avoid my questions,' said the Prince.  'You tempt me to suppose a purpose
+in your dulness.  I have asked you whether all was quiet; do me the
+pleasure to reply.'
+
+'Perfectly--O, perfectly quiet,' jerked the ancient puppet, with every
+signal of untruth.
+
+'I make a note of these words,' said the Prince gravely.  'You assure me,
+your sovereign, that since the date of my departure nothing has occurred
+of which you owe me an account.'
+
+'I take your Highness, I take the Herr Doctor to witness,' cried
+Greisengesang, 'that I have had no such expression.'
+
+'Halt!' said the Prince; and then, after a pause: 'Herr Greisengesang,
+you are an old man, and you served my father before you served me,' he
+added.  'It consists neither with your dignity nor mine that you should
+babble excuses and stumble possibly upon untruths.  Collect your
+thoughts; and then categorically inform me of all you have been charged
+to hide.'
+
+Gotthold, stooping very low over his desk, appeared to have resumed his
+labours; but his shoulders heaved with subterranean merriment.  The
+Prince waited, drawing his handkerchief quietly through his fingers.
+
+'Your Highness, in this informal manner,' said the old gentleman at last,
+'and being unavoidably deprived of documents, it would be difficult, it
+would be impossible, to do justice to the somewhat grave occurrences
+which have transpired.'
+
+'I will not criticise your attitude,' replied the Prince.  'I desire
+that, between you and me, all should be done gently; for I have not
+forgotten, my old friend, that you were kind to me from the first, and
+for a period of years a faithful servant.  I will thus dismiss the
+matters on which you waive immediate inquiry.  But you have certain
+papers actually in your hand.  Come, Herr Greisengesang, there is at
+least one point for which you have authority.  Enlighten me on that.'
+
+'On that?' cried the old gentleman.  'O, that is a trifle; a matter, your
+Highness, of police; a detail of a purely administrative order.  These
+are simply a selection of the papers seized upon the English traveller.'
+
+'Seized?' echoed Otto.  'In what sense?  Explain yourself.'
+
+'Sir John Crabtree,' interposed Gotthold, looking up, 'was arrested
+yesterday evening.'
+
+'It this so, Herr Cancellarius?' demanded Otto sternly.
+
+'It was judged right, your Highness,' protested Greisengesang.  'The
+decree was in due form, invested with your Highness's authority by
+procuration.  I am but an agent; I had no status to prevent the measure.'
+
+'This man, my guest, has been arrested,' said the Prince.  'On what
+grounds, sir?  With what colour of pretence?'
+
+The Chancellor stammered.
+
+'Your Highness will perhaps find the reason in these documents,' said
+Gotthold, pointing with the tail of his pen.
+
+Otto thanked his cousin with a look.  'Give them to me,' he said,
+addressing the Chancellor.
+
+But that gentleman visibly hesitated to obey.  'Baron von Gondremark,' he
+said, 'has made the affair his own.  I am in this case a mere messenger;
+and as such, I am not clothed with any capacity to communicate the
+documents I carry.  Herr Doctor, I am convinced you will not fail to bear
+me out.'
+
+'I have heard a great deal of nonsense,' said Gotthold, 'and most of it
+from you; but this beats all.'
+
+'Come, sir,' said Otto, rising, 'the papers.  I command.'
+
+Herr Greisengesang instantly gave way.
+
+'With your Highness's permission,' he said, 'and laying at his feet my
+most submiss apologies, I will now hasten to attend his further orders in
+the Chancery.'
+
+'Herr Cancellarius, do you see this chair?' said Otto.  'There is where
+you shall attend my further orders.  O, now, no more!' he cried, with a
+gesture, as the old man opened his lips.  'You have sufficiently marked
+your zeal to your employer; and I begin to weary of a moderation you
+abuse.'
+
+The Chancellor moved to the appointed chair and took his seat in silence.
+
+'And now,' said Otto, opening the roll, 'what is all this? it looks like
+the manuscript of a book.'
+
+'It is,' said Gotthold, 'the manuscript of a book of travels.'
+
+'You have read it, Doctor Hohenstockwitz?' asked the Prince.
+
+'Nay, I but saw the title-page,' replied Gotthold.  'But the roll was
+given to me open, and I heard no word of any secrecy.'
+
+Otto dealt the Chancellor an angry glance.
+
+'I see,' he went on.  'The papers of an author seized at this date of the
+world's history, in a state so petty and so ignorant as Grunewald, here
+is indeed an ignominious folly.  Sir,' to the Chancellor, 'I marvel to
+find you in so scurvy an employment.  On your conduct to your Prince I
+will not dwell; but to descend to be a spy!  For what else can it be
+called?  To seize the papers of this gentleman, the private papers of a
+stranger, the toil of a life, perhaps--to open, and to read them.  And
+what have we to do with books?  The Herr Doctor might perhaps be asked
+for his advice; but we have no _index expurgatorius_ in Grunewald.  Had
+we but that, we should be the most absolute parody and farce upon this
+tawdry earth.'
+
+Yet, even while Otto spoke, he had continued to unfold the roll; and now,
+when it lay fully open, his eye rested on the title-page elaborately
+written in red ink.  It ran thus:
+
+                                   MEMOIRS
+                          OF A VISIT TO THE VARIOUS
+                              COURTS OF EUROPE,
+                                      BY
+                         SIR JOHN CRABTREE, BARONET.
+
+Below was a list of chapters, each bearing the name of one of the
+European Courts; and among these the nineteenth and the last upon the
+list was dedicated to Grunewald.
+
+'Ah!  The Court of Grunewald!' said Otto, 'that should be droll reading.'
+And his curiosity itched for it.
+
+'A methodical dog, this English Baronet,' said Gotthold.  'Each chapter
+written and finished on the spot.  I shall look for his work when it
+appears.'
+
+'It would be odd, now, just to glance at it,' said Otto, wavering.
+
+Gotthold's brow darkened, and he looked out of window.
+
+But though the Prince understood the reproof, his weakness prevailed.  'I
+will,' he said, with an uneasy laugh, 'I will, I think, just glance at
+it.'
+
+So saying, he resumed his seat and spread the traveller's manuscript upon
+the table.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--'ON THE COURT OF GRUNEWALD,' BEING A PORTION OF THE
+TRAVELLER'S MANUSCRIPT
+
+
+It may well be asked (_it was thus the English traveller began his
+nineteenth chapter_) why I should have chosen Grunewald out of so many
+other states equally petty, formal, dull, and corrupt.  Accident, indeed,
+decided, and not I; but I have seen no reason to regret my visit.  The
+spectacle of this small society macerating in its own abuses was not
+perhaps instructive, but I have found it exceedingly diverting.
+
+The reigning Prince, Otto Johann Friedrich, a young man of imperfect
+education, questionable valour, and no scintilla of capacity, has fallen
+into entire public contempt.  It was with difficulty that I obtained an
+interview, for he is frequently absent from a court where his presence is
+unheeded, and where his only role is to be a cloak for the amours of his
+wife.  At last, however, on the third occasion when I visited the palace,
+I found this sovereign in the exercise of his inglorious function, with
+the wife on one hand, and the lover on the other.  He is not ill-looking;
+he has hair of a ruddy gold, which naturally curls, and his eyes are
+dark, a combination which I always regard as the mark of some congenital
+deficiency, physical or moral; his features are irregular, but pleasing;
+the nose perhaps a little short, and the mouth a little womanish; his
+address is excellent, and he can express himself with point.  But to
+pierce below these externals is to come on a vacuity of any sterling
+quality, a deliquescence of the moral nature, a frivolity and
+inconsequence of purpose that mark the nearly perfect fruit of a decadent
+age.  He has a worthless smattering of many subjects, but a grasp of
+none.  'I soon weary of a pursuit,' he said to me, laughing; it would
+almost appear as if he took a pride in his incapacity and lack of moral
+courage.  The results of his dilettanteism are to be seen in every field;
+he is a bad fencer, a second-rate horseman, dancer, shot; he sings--I
+have heard him--and he sings like a child; he writes intolerable verses
+in more than doubtful French; he acts like the common amateur; and in
+short there is no end to the number of the things that he does, and does
+badly.  His one manly taste is for the chase.  In sum, he is but a plexus
+of weaknesses; the singing chambermaid of the stage, tricked out in man's
+apparel, and mounted on a circus horse.  I have seen this poor phantom of
+a prince riding out alone or with a few huntsmen, disregarded by all, and
+I have been even grieved for the bearer of so futile and melancholy an
+existence.  The last Merovingians may have looked not otherwise.
+
+The Princess Amalia Seraphina, a daughter of the Grand-Ducal house of
+Toggenburg-Tannhauser, would be equally inconsiderable if she were not a
+cutting instrument in the hands of an ambitious man.  She is much younger
+than the Prince, a girl of two-and-twenty, sick with vanity,
+superficially clever, and fundamentally a fool.  She has a red-brown
+rolling eye, too large for her face, and with sparks of both levity and
+ferocity; her forehead is high and narrow, her figure thin and a little
+stooping.  Her manners, her conversation, which she interlards with
+French, her very tastes and ambitions, are alike assumed; and the
+assumption is ungracefully apparent: Hoyden playing Cleopatra.  I should
+judge her to be incapable of truth.  In private life a girl of this
+description embroils the peace of families, walks attended by a troop of
+scowling swains, and passes, once at least, through the divorce court; it
+is a common and, except to the cynic, an uninteresting type.  On the
+throne, however, and in the hands of a man like Gondremark, she may
+become the authoress of serious public evils.
+
+Gondremark, the true ruler of this unfortunate country, is a more complex
+study.  His position in Grunewald, to which he is a foreigner, is
+eminently false; and that he should maintain it as he does, a very
+miracle of impudence and dexterity.  His speech, his face, his policy,
+are all double: heads and tails.  Which of the two extremes may be his
+actual design he were a bold man who should offer to decide.  Yet I will
+hazard the guess that he follows both experimentally, and awaits, at the
+hand of destiny, one of those directing hints of which she is so lavish
+to the wise.
+
+On the one hand, as _Maire du Palais_ to the incompetent Otto, and using
+the love-sick Princess for a tool and mouthpiece, he pursues a policy of
+arbitrary power and territorial aggrandisement.  He has called out the
+whole capable male population of the state to military service; he has
+bought cannon; he has tempted away promising officers from foreign
+armies; and he now begins, in his international relations, to assume the
+swaggering port and the vague, threatful language of a bully.  The idea
+of extending Grunewald may appear absurd, but the little state is
+advantageously placed, its neighbours are all defenceless; and if at any
+moment the jealousies of the greater courts should neutralise each other,
+an active policy might double the principality both in population and
+extent.  Certainly at least the scheme is entertained in the court of
+Mittwalden; nor do I myself regard it as entirely desperate.  The
+margravate of Brandenburg has grown from as small beginnings to a
+formidable power; and though it is late in the day to try adventurous
+policies, and the age of war seems ended, Fortune, we must not forget,
+still blindly turns her wheel for men and nations.  Concurrently with,
+and tributary to, these warlike preparations, crushing taxes have been
+levied, journals have been suppressed, and the country, which three years
+ago was prosperous and happy, now stagnates in a forced inaction, gold
+has become a curiosity, and the mills stand idle on the mountain streams.
+
+On the other hand, in his second capacity of popular tribune, Gondremark
+is the incarnation of the free lodges, and sits at the centre of an
+organised conspiracy against the state.  To any such movement my
+sympathies were early acquired, and I would not willingly let fall a word
+that might embarrass or retard the revolution.  But to show that I speak
+of knowledge, and not as the reporter of mere gossip, I may mention that
+I have myself been present at a meeting where the details of a republican
+Constitution were minutely debated and arranged; and I may add that
+Gondremark was throughout referred to by the speakers as their captain in
+action and the arbiter of their disputes.  He has taught his dupes (for
+so I must regard them) that his power of resistance to the Princess is
+limited, and at each fresh stretch of authority persuades them, with
+specious reasons, to postpone the hour of insurrection.  Thus (to give
+some instances of his astute diplomacy) he salved over the decree
+enforcing military service, under the plea that to be well drilled and
+exercised in arms was even a necessary preparation for revolt.  And the
+other day, when it began to be rumoured abroad that a war was being
+forced on a reluctant neighbour, the Grand Duke of Gerolstein, and I made
+sure it would be the signal for an instant rising, I was struck dumb with
+wonder to find that even this had been prepared and was to be accepted.
+I went from one to another in the Liberal camp, and all were in the same
+story, all had been drilled and schooled and fitted out with vacuous
+argument.  'The lads had better see some real fighting,' they said; 'and
+besides, it will be as well to capture Gerolstein: we can then extend to
+our neighbours the blessing of liberty on the same day that we snatch it
+for ourselves; and the republic will be all the stronger to resist, if
+the kings of Europe should band themselves together to reduce it.'  I
+know not which of the two I should admire the more: the simplicity of the
+multitude or the audacity of the adventurer.  But such are the
+subtleties, such the quibbling reasons, with which he blinds and leads
+this people.  How long a course so tortuous can be pursued with safety I
+am incapable of guessing; not long, one would suppose; and yet this
+singular man has been treading the mazes for five years, and his favour
+at court and his popularity among the lodges still endure unbroken.
+
+I have the privilege of slightly knowing him.  Heavily and somewhat
+clumsily built, of a vast, disjointed, rambling frame, he can still pull
+himself together, and figure, not without admiration, in the saloon or
+the ball-room.  His hue and temperament are plentifully bilious; he has a
+saturnine eye; his cheek is of a dark blue where he has been shaven.
+Essentially he is to be numbered among the man-haters, a convinced
+contemner of his fellows.  Yet he is himself of a commonplace ambition
+and greedy of applause.  In talk, he is remarkable for a thirst of
+information, loving rather to hear than to communicate; for sound and
+studious views; and, judging by the extreme short-sightedness of common
+politicians, for a remarkable provision of events.  All this, however,
+without grace, pleasantry, or charm, heavily set forth, with a dull
+countenance.  In our numerous conversations, although he has always heard
+me with deference, I have been conscious throughout of a sort of
+ponderous finessing hard to tolerate.  He produces none of the effect of
+a gentleman; devoid not merely of pleasantry, but of all attention or
+communicative warmth of bearing.  No gentleman, besides, would so parade
+his amours with the Princess; still less repay the Prince for his
+long-suffering with a studied insolence of demeanour and the fabrication
+of insulting nicknames, such as Prince Featherhead, which run from ear to
+ear and create a laugh throughout the country.  Gondremark has thus some
+of the clumsier characters of the self-made man, combined with an
+inordinate, almost a besotted, pride of intellect and birth.  Heavy,
+bilious, selfish, inornate, he sits upon this court and country like an
+incubus.
+
+But it is probable that he preserves softer gifts for necessary purposes.
+Indeed, it is certain, although he vouchsafed none of it to me, that this
+cold and stolid politician possesses to a great degree the art of
+ingratiation, and can be all things to all men.  Hence there has probably
+sprung up the idle legend that in private life he is a gross romping
+voluptuary.  Nothing, at least, can well be more surprising than the
+terms of his connection with the Princess.  Older than her husband,
+certainly uglier, and, according to the feeble ideas common among women,
+in every particular less pleasing, he has not only seized the complete
+command of all her thought and action, but has imposed on her in public a
+humiliating part.  I do not here refer to the complete sacrifice of every
+rag of her reputation; for to many women these extremities are in
+themselves attractive.  But there is about the court a certain lady of a
+dishevelled reputation, a Countess von Rosen, wife or widow of a cloudy
+count, no longer in her second youth, and already bereft of some of her
+attractions, who unequivocally occupies the station of the Baron's
+mistress.  I had thought, at first, that she was but a hired accomplice,
+a mere blind or buffer for the more important sinner.  A few hours'
+acquaintance with Madame von Rosen for ever dispelled the illusion.  She
+is one rather to make than to prevent a scandal, and she values none of
+those bribes--money, honours, or employment--with which the situation
+might be gilded.  Indeed, as a person frankly bad, she pleased me, in the
+court of Grunewald, like a piece of nature.
+
+The power of this man over the Princess is, therefore, without bounds.
+She has sacrificed to the adoration with which he has inspired her not
+only her marriage vow and every shred of public decency, but that vice of
+jealousy which is so much dearer to the female sex than either intrinsic
+honour or outward consideration.  Nay, more: a young, although not a very
+attractive woman, and a princess both by birth and fact, she submits to
+the triumphant rivalry of one who might be her mother as to years, and
+who is so manifestly her inferior in station.  This is one of the
+mysteries of the human heart.  But the rage of illicit love, when it is
+once indulged, appears to grow by feeding; and to a person of the
+character and temperament of this unfortunate young lady, almost any
+depth of degradation is within the reach of possibility.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE PRINCE AND THE ENGLISH TRAVELLER
+
+
+So far Otto read, with waxing indignation; and here his fury overflowed.
+He tossed the roll upon the table and stood up.  'This man,' he said, 'is
+a devil.  A filthy imagination, an ear greedy of evil, a ponderous
+malignity of thought and language: I grow like him by the reading!
+Chancellor, where is this fellow lodged?'
+
+'He was committed to the Flag Tower,' replied Greisengesang, 'in the
+Gamiani apartment.'
+
+'Lead me to him,' said the Prince; and then, a thought striking him, 'Was
+it for that,' he asked, 'that I found so many sentries in the garden?'
+
+'Your Highness, I am unaware,' answered Greisengesang, true to his
+policy.  'The disposition of the guards is a matter distinct from my
+functions.'
+
+Otto turned upon the old man fiercely, but ere he had time to speak,
+Gotthold touched him on the arm.  He swallowed his wrath with a great
+effort.  'It is well,' he said, taking the roll.  'Follow me to the Flag
+Tower.'
+
+The Chancellor gathered himself together, and the two set forward.  It
+was a long and complicated voyage; for the library was in the wing of the
+new buildings, and the tower which carried the flag was in the old
+schloss upon the garden.  By a great variety of stairs and corridors,
+they came out at last upon a patch of gravelled court; the garden peeped
+through a high grating with a flash of green; tall, old gabled buildings
+mounted on every side; the Flag Tower climbed, stage after stage, into
+the blue; and high over all, among the building daws, the yellow flag
+wavered in the wind.  A sentinel at the foot of the tower stairs
+presented arms; another paced the first landing; and a third was
+stationed before the door of the extemporised prison.
+
+'We guard this mud-bag like a jewel,' Otto sneered.
+
+The Gamiani apartment was so called from an Italian doctor who had
+imposed on the credulity of a former prince.  The rooms were large, airy,
+pleasant, and looked upon the garden; but the walls were of great
+thickness (for the tower was old), and the windows were heavily barred.
+The Prince, followed by the Chancellor, still trotting to keep up with
+him, brushed swiftly through the little library and the long saloon, and
+burst like a thunderbolt into the bedroom at the farther end.  Sir John
+was finishing his toilet; a man of fifty, hard, uncompromising, able,
+with the eye and teeth of physical courage.  He was unmoved by the
+irruption, and bowed with a sort of sneering ease.
+
+'To what am I to attribute the honour of this visit?' he asked.
+
+'You have eaten my bread,' replied Otto, 'you have taken my hand, you
+have been received under my roof.  When did I fail you in courtesy?  What
+have you asked that was not granted as to an honoured guest?  And here,
+sir,' tapping fiercely on the manuscript, 'here is your return.'
+
+'Your Highness has read my papers?' said the Baronet.  'I am honoured
+indeed.  But the sketch is most imperfect.  I shall now have much to add.
+I can say that the Prince, whom I had accused of idleness, is zealous in
+the department of police, taking upon himself those duties that are most
+distasteful.  I shall be able to relate the burlesque incident of my
+arrest, and the singular interview with which you honour me at present.
+For the rest, I have already communicated with my Ambassador at Vienna;
+and unless you propose to murder me, I shall be at liberty, whether you
+please or not, within the week.  For I hardly fancy the future empire of
+Grunewald is yet ripe to go to war with England.  I conceive I am a
+little more than quits.  I owe you no explanation; yours has been the
+wrong.  You, if you have studied my writing with intelligence, owe me a
+large debt of gratitude.  And to conclude, as I have not yet finished my
+toilet, I imagine the courtesy of a turnkey to a prisoner would induce
+you to withdraw.'
+
+There was some paper on the table, and Otto, sitting down, wrote a
+passport in the name of Sir John Crabtree.
+
+'Affix the seal, Herr Cancellarius,' he said, in his most princely
+manner, as he rose.
+
+Greisengesang produced a red portfolio, and affixed the seal in the
+unpoetic guise of an adhesive stamp; nor did his perturbed and clumsy
+movements at all lessen the comedy of the performance.  Sir John looked
+on with a malign enjoyment; and Otto chafed, regretting, when too late,
+the unnecessary royalty of his command and gesture.  But at length the
+Chancellor had finished his piece of prestidigitation, and, without
+waiting for an order, had countersigned the passport.  Thus regularised,
+he returned it to Otto with a bow.
+
+'You will now,' said the Prince, 'order one of my own carriages to be
+prepared; see it, with your own eyes, charged with Sir John's effects,
+and have it waiting within the hour behind the Pheasant House.  Sir John
+departs this morning for Vienna.'
+
+The Chancellor took his elaborate departure.
+
+'Here, sir, is your passport,' said Otto, turning to the Baronet.  'I
+regret it from my heart that you have met inhospitable usage.'
+
+'Well, there will be no English war,' returned Sir John.
+
+'Nay, sir,' said Otto, 'you surely owe me your civility.  Matters are now
+changed, and we stand again upon the footing of two gentlemen.  It was
+not I who ordered your arrest; I returned late last night from hunting;
+and as you cannot blame me for your imprisonment, you may even thank me
+for your freedom.'
+
+'And yet you read my papers,' said the traveller shrewdly.
+
+'There, sir, I was wrong,' returned Otto; 'and for that I ask your
+pardon.  You can scarce refuse it, for your own dignity, to one who is a
+plexus of weaknesses.  Nor was the fault entirely mine.  Had the papers
+been innocent, it would have been at most an indiscretion.  Your own
+guilt is the sting of my offence.'
+
+Sir John regarded Otto with an approving twinkle; then he bowed, but
+still in silence.
+
+'Well, sir, as you are now at your entire disposal, I have a favour to
+beg of your indulgence,' continued the Prince.  'I have to request that
+you will walk with me alone into the garden so soon as your convenience
+permits.'
+
+'From the moment that I am a free man,' Sir John replied, this time with
+perfect courtesy, 'I am wholly at your Highness's command; and if you
+will excuse a rather summary toilet, I will even follow you, as I am.'
+
+'I thank you, sir,' said Otto.
+
+So without more delay, the Prince leading, the pair proceeded down
+through the echoing stairway of the tower, and out through the grating,
+into the ample air and sunshine of the morning, and among the terraces
+and flower-beds of the garden.  They crossed the fish-pond, where the
+carp were leaping as thick as bees; they mounted, one after another, the
+various flights of stairs, snowed upon, as they went, with April
+blossoms, and marching in time to the great orchestra of birds.  Nor did
+Otto pause till they had reached the highest terrace of the garden.  Here
+was a gate into the park, and hard by, under a tuft of laurel, a marble
+garden seat.  Hence they looked down on the green tops of many elm-trees,
+where the rooks were busy; and, beyond that, upon the palace roof, and
+the yellow banner flying in the blue.  I pray you to be seated, sir,'
+said Otto.
+
+Sir John complied without a word; and for some seconds Otto walked to and
+fro before him, plunged in angry thought.  The birds were all singing for
+a wager.
+
+'Sir,' said the Prince at length, turning towards the Englishman, 'you
+are to me, except by the conventions of society, a perfect stranger.  Of
+your character and wishes I am ignorant.  I have never wittingly
+disobliged you.  There is a difference in station, which I desire to
+waive.  I would, if you still think me entitled to so much
+consideration--I would be regarded simply as a gentleman.  Now, sir, I
+did wrong to glance at these papers, which I here return to you; but if
+curiosity be undignified, as I am free to own, falsehood is both cowardly
+and cruel.  I opened your roll; and what did I find--what did I find
+about my wife; Lies!' he broke out.  'They are lies!  There are not, so
+help me God! four words of truth in your intolerable libel!  You are a
+man; you are old, and might be the girl's father; you are a gentleman;
+you are a scholar, and have learned refinement; and you rake together all
+this vulgar scandal, and propose to print it in a public book!  Such is
+your chivalry!  But, thank God, sir, she has still a husband.  You say,
+sir, in that paper in your hand, that I am a bad fencer; I have to
+request from you a lesson in the art.  The park is close behind; yonder
+is the Pheasant House, where you will find your carriage; should I fall,
+you know, sir--you have written it in your paper--how little my movements
+are regarded; I am in the custom of disappearing; it will be one more
+disappearance; and long before it has awakened a remark, you may be safe
+across the border.'
+
+'You will observe,' said Sir John, 'that what you ask is impossible.'
+
+'And if I struck you?' cried the Prince, with a sudden menacing flash.
+
+'It would be a cowardly blow,' returned the Baronet, unmoved, 'for it
+would make no change.  I cannot draw upon a reigning sovereign.'
+
+'And it is this man, to whom you dare not offer satisfaction, that you
+choose to insult!' cried Otto.
+
+'Pardon me,' said the traveller, 'you are unjust.  It is because you are
+a reigning sovereign that I cannot fight with you; and it is for the same
+reason that I have a right to criticise your action and your wife.  You
+are in everything a public creature; you belong to the public, body and
+bone.  You have with you the law, the muskets of the army, and the eyes
+of spies.  We, on our side, have but one weapon--truth.'
+
+'Truth!' echoed the Prince, with a gesture.
+
+There was another silence.
+
+'Your Highness,' said Sir John at last, 'you must not expect grapes from
+a thistle.  I am old and a cynic.  Nobody cares a rush for me; and on the
+whole, after the present interview, I scarce know anybody that I like
+better than yourself.  You see, I have changed my mind, and have the
+uncommon virtue to avow the change.  I tear up this stuff before you,
+here in your own garden; I ask your pardon, I ask the pardon of the
+Princess; and I give you my word of honour as a gentleman and an old man,
+that when my book of travels shall appear it shall not contain so much as
+the name of Grunewald.  And yet it was a racy chapter!  But had your
+Highness only read about the other courts!  I am a carrion crow; but it
+is not my fault, after all, that the world is such a nauseous kennel.'
+
+'Sir,' said Otto, 'is the eye not jaundiced?'
+
+'Nay,' cried the traveller, 'very likely.  I am one who goes sniffing; I
+am no poet.  I believe in a better future for the world; or, at all
+accounts, I do most potently disbelieve in the present.  Rotten eggs is
+the burthen of my song.  But indeed, your Highness, when I meet with any
+merit, I do not think that I am slow to recognise it.  This is a day that
+I shall still recall with gratitude, for I have found a sovereign with
+some manly virtues; and for once--old courtier and old radical as I
+am--it is from the heart and quite sincerely that I can request the
+honour of kissing your Highness's hand?'
+
+'Nay, sir,' said Otto, 'to my heart!'
+
+And the Englishman, taken at unawares, was clasped for a moment in the
+Prince's arms.
+
+'And now, sir,' added Otto, 'there is the Pheasant House; close behind it
+you will find my carriage, which I pray you to accept.  God speed you to
+Vienna!'
+
+'In the impetuosity of youth,' replied Sir John, 'your Highness has
+overlooked one circumstance.  I am still fasting.'
+
+'Well, sir,' said Otto, smiling, 'you are your own master; you may go or
+stay.  But I warn you, your friend may prove less powerful than your
+enemies.  The Prince, indeed, is thoroughly on your side; he has all the
+will to help; but to whom do I speak?--you know better than I do, he is
+not alone in Grunewald.'
+
+'There is a deal in position,' returned the traveller, gravely nodding.
+'Gondremark loves to temporise; his policy is below ground, and he fears
+all open courses; and now that I have seen you act with so much spirit, I
+will cheerfully risk myself on your protection.  Who knows?  You may be
+yet the better man.'
+
+'Do you indeed believe so?' cried the Prince.  'You put life into my
+heart!'
+
+'I will give up sketching portraits,' said the Baronet.  'I am a blind
+owl; I had misread you strangely.  And yet remember this; a sprint is one
+thing, and to run all day another.  For I still mistrust your
+constitution; the short nose, the hair and eyes of several complexions;
+no, they are diagnostic; and I must end, I see, as I began.'
+
+'I am still a singing chambermaid?' said Otto.
+
+'Nay, your Highness, I pray you to forget what I had written,' said Sir
+John; 'I am not like Pilate; and the chapter is no more.  Bury it, if you
+love me.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--WHILE THE PRINCE IS IN THE ANTE-ROOM . . .
+
+
+Greatly comforted by the exploits of the morning, the Prince turned
+towards the Princess's ante-room, bent on a more difficult enterprise.
+The curtains rose before him, the usher called his name, and he entered
+the room with an exaggeration of his usual mincing and airy dignity.
+There were about a score of persons waiting, principally ladies; it was
+one of the few societies in Grunewald where Otto knew himself to be
+popular; and while a maid of honour made her exit by a side door to
+announce his arrival to the Princess, he moved round the apartment,
+collecting homage and bestowing compliments with friendly grace.  Had
+this been the sum of his duties, he had been an admirable monarch.  Lady
+after lady was impartially honoured by his attention.
+
+'Madam,' he said to one, 'how does this happen?  I find you daily more
+adorable.'
+
+'And your Highness daily browner,' replied the lady.  'We began equal; O,
+there I will be bold: we have both beautiful complexions.  But while I
+study mine, your Highness tans himself.'
+
+'A perfect negro, madam; and what so fitly--being beauty's slave?' said
+Otto.--'Madame Grafinski, when is our next play?  I have just heard that
+I am a bad actor.'
+
+'_O ciel_!' cried Madame Grafinski.  'Who could venture?  What a bear!'
+
+'An excellent man, I can assure you,' returned Otto.
+
+'O, never!  O, is it possible!' fluted the lady.  'Your Highness plays
+like an angel.'
+
+'You must be right, madam; who could speak falsely and yet look so
+charming?' said the Prince.  'But this gentleman, it seems, would have
+preferred me playing like an actor.'
+
+A sort of hum, a falsetto, feminine cooing, greeted the tiny sally; and
+Otto expanded like a peacock.  This warm atmosphere of women and flattery
+and idle chatter pleased him to the marrow.
+
+'Madame von Eisenthal, your coiffure is delicious,' he remarked.
+
+'Every one was saying so,' said one.
+
+'If I have pleased Prince Charming?'  And Madame von Eisenthal swept him
+a deep curtsy with a killing glance of adoration.
+
+'It is new?' he asked.  'Vienna fashion.'
+
+'Mint new,' replied the lady, 'for your Highness's return.  I felt young
+this morning; it was a premonition.  But why, Prince, do you ever leave
+us?'
+
+'For the pleasure of the return,' said Otto.  'I am like a dog; I must
+bury my bone, and then come back to great upon it.'
+
+'O, a bone!  Fie, what a comparison!  You have brought back the manners
+of the wood,' returned the lady.
+
+'Madam, it is what the dog has dearest,' said the Prince.  'But I observe
+Madame von Rosen.'
+
+And Otto, leaving the group to which he had been piping, stepped towards
+the embrasure of a window where a lady stood.
+
+The Countess von Rosen had hitherto been silent, and a thought depressed,
+but on the approach of Otto she began to brighten.  She was tall, slim as
+a nymph, and of a very airy carriage; and her face, which was already
+beautiful in repose, lightened and changed, flashed into smiles, and
+glowed with lovely colour at the touch of animation.  She was a good
+vocalist; and, even in speech, her voice commanded a great range of
+changes, the low notes rich with tenor quality, the upper ringing, on the
+brink of laughter, into music.  A gem of many facets and variable hues of
+fire; a woman who withheld the better portion of her beauty, and then, in
+a caressing second, flashed it like a weapon full on the beholder; now
+merely a tall figure and a sallow handsome face, with the evidences of a
+reckless temper; anon opening like a flower to life and colour, mirth and
+tenderness:--Madame von Rosen had always a dagger in reserve for the
+despatch of ill-assured admirers.  She met Otto with the dart of tender
+gaiety.
+
+'You have come to me at last, Prince Cruel,' she said.  'Butterfly!
+Well, and am I not to kiss your hand?' she added.
+
+'Madam, it is I who must kiss yours.'  And Otto bowed and kissed it.
+
+'You deny me every indulgence,' she said, smiling.
+
+'And now what news in Court?' inquired the Prince.  'I come to you for my
+gazette.'
+
+'Ditch-water!' she replied.  'The world is all asleep, grown grey in
+slumber; I do not remember any waking movement since quite an eternity;
+and the last thing in the nature of a sensation was the last time my
+governess was allowed to box my ears.  But yet I do myself and your
+unfortunate enchanted palace some injustice.  Here is the last--O
+positively!'  And she told him the story from behind her fan, with many
+glances, many cunning strokes of the narrator's art.  The others had
+drawn away, for it was understood that Madame von Rosen was in favour
+with the Prince.  None the less, however, did the Countess lower her
+voice at times to within a semitone of whispering; and the pair leaned
+together over the narrative.
+
+'Do you know,' said Otto, laughing, 'you are the only entertaining woman
+on this earth!'
+
+'O, you have found out so much,' she cried.
+
+'Yes, madam, I grow wiser with advancing years,' he returned.
+
+'Years,' she repeated.  'Do you name the traitors?  I do not believe in
+years; the calendar is a delusion.'
+
+'You must be right, madam,' replied the Prince.  'For six years that we
+have been good friends, I have observed you to grow younger.'
+
+'Flatterer!' cried she, and then with a change, 'But why should I say
+so,' she added, 'when I protest I think the same?  A week ago I had a
+council with my father director, the glass; and the glass replied, "Not
+yet!"  I confess my face in this way once a month.  O! a very solemn
+moment.  Do you know what I shall do when the mirror answers, "Now"?'
+
+'I cannot guess,' said he.
+
+'No more can I,' returned the Countess.  'There is such a choice!
+Suicide, gambling, a nunnery, a volume of memoirs, or politics--the last,
+I am afraid.'
+
+'It is a dull trade,' said Otto.
+
+'Nay,' she replied, 'it is a trade I rather like.  It is, after all,
+first cousin to gossip, which no one can deny to be amusing.  For
+instance, if I were to tell you that the Princess and the Baron rode out
+together daily to inspect the cannon, it is either a piece of politics or
+scandal, as I turn my phrase.  I am the alchemist that makes the
+transmutation.  They have been everywhere together since you left,' she
+continued, brightening as she saw Otto darken; 'that is a poor snippet of
+malicious gossip--and they were everywhere cheered--and with that
+addition all becomes political intelligence.'
+
+'Let us change the subject,' said Otto.
+
+'I was about to propose it,' she replied, 'or rather to pursue the
+politics.  Do you know? this war is popular--popular to the length of
+cheering Princess Seraphina.'
+
+'All things, madam, are possible,' said the Prince; and this among
+others, that we may be going into war, but I give you my word of honour I
+do not know with whom.'
+
+'And you put up with it?' she cried.  'I have no pretensions to morality;
+and I confess I have always abominated the lamb, and nourished a romantic
+feeling for the wolf.  O, be done with lambiness!  Let us see there is a
+prince, for I am weary of the distaff.'
+
+'Madam,' said Otto, 'I thought you were of that faction.'
+
+'I should be of yours, _mon Prince_, if you had one,' she retorted.  'Is
+it true that you have no ambition?  There was a man once in England whom
+they call the kingmaker.  Do you know,' she added, 'I fancy I could make
+a prince?'
+
+'Some day, madam,' said Otto, 'I may ask you to help make a farmer.'
+
+'Is that a riddle?' asked the Countess.
+
+'It is,' replied the Prince, 'and a very good one too.'
+
+'Tit for tat.  I will ask you another,' she returned.  'Where is
+Gondremark?'
+
+'The Prime Minister?  In the prime-ministry, no doubt,' said Otto.
+
+'Precisely,' said the Countess; and she pointed with her fan to the door
+of the Princess's apartments.  'You and I, _mon Prince_, are in the
+ante-room.  You think me unkind,' she added.  'Try me and you will see.
+Set me a task, put me a question; there is no enormity I am not capable
+of doing to oblige you, and no secret that I am not ready to betray.'
+
+'Nay, madam, but I respect my friend too much,' he answered, kissing her
+hand.  'I would rather remain ignorant of all.  We fraternise like foemen
+soldiers at the outposts, but let each be true to his own army.'
+
+'Ah,' she cried, 'if all men were generous like you, it would be worth
+while to be a woman!'  Yet, judging by her looks, his generosity, if
+anything, had disappointed her; she seemed to seek a remedy, and, having
+found it, brightened once more.  'And now,' she said, 'may I dismiss my
+sovereign?  This is rebellion and a _cas pendable_; but what am I to do?
+My bear is jealous!'
+
+'Madam, enough!' cried Otto.  'Ahasuerus reaches you the sceptre; more,
+he will obey you in all points.  I should have been a dog to come to
+whistling.'
+
+And so the Prince departed, and fluttered round Grafinski and von
+Eisenthal.  But the Countess knew the use of her offensive weapons, and
+had left a pleasant arrow in the Prince's heart.  That Gondremark was
+jealous--here was an agreeable revenge!  And Madame von Rosen, as the
+occasion of the jealousy, appeared to him in a new light.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--. . . GONDREMARK IS IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER
+
+
+The Countess von Rosen spoke the truth.  The great Prime Minister of
+Grunewald was already closeted with Seraphina.  The toilet was over; and
+the Princess, tastefully arrayed, sat face to face with a tall mirror.
+Sir John's description was unkindly true, true in terms and yet a libel,
+a misogynistic masterpiece.  Her forehead was perhaps too high, but it
+became her; her figure somewhat stooped, but every detail was formed and
+finished like a gem; her hand, her foot, her ear, the set of her comely
+head, were all dainty and accordant; if she was not beautiful, she was
+vivid, changeful, coloured, and pretty with a thousand various
+prettinesses; and her eyes, if they indeed rolled too consciously, yet
+rolled to purpose.  They were her most attractive feature, yet they
+continually bore eloquent false witness to her thoughts; for while she
+herself, in the depths of her immature, unsoftened heart, was given
+altogether to manlike ambition and the desire of power, the eyes were by
+turns bold, inviting, fiery, melting, and artful, like the eyes of a
+rapacious siren.  And artful, in a sense, she was.  Chafing that she was
+not a man, and could not shine by action, she had conceived a woman's
+part, of answerable domination; she sought to subjugate for by-ends, to
+rain influence and be fancy free; and, while she loved not man, loved to
+see man obey her.  It is a common girl's ambition.  Such was perhaps that
+lady of the glove, who sent her lover to the lions.  But the snare is
+laid alike for male and female, and the world most artfully contrived.
+
+Near her, in a low chair, Gondremark had arranged his limbs into a
+cat-like attitude, high-shouldered, stooping, and submiss.  The
+formidable blue jowl of the man, and the dull bilious eye, set perhaps a
+higher value on his evident desire to please.  His face was marked by
+capacity, temper, and a kind of bold, piratical dishonesty which it would
+be calumnious to call deceit.  His manners, as he smiled upon the
+Princess, were over-fine, yet hardly elegant.
+
+'Possibly,' said the Baron, 'I should now proceed to take my leave.  I
+must not keep my sovereign in the ante-room.  Let us come at once to a
+decision.'
+
+'It cannot, cannot be put off?' she asked.
+
+'It is impossible,' answered Gondremark.  'Your Highness sees it for
+herself.  In the earlier stages, we might imitate the serpent; but for
+the ultimatum, there is no choice but to be bold like lions.  Had the
+Prince chosen to remain away, it had been better; but we have gone too
+far forward to delay.'
+
+'What can have brought him?' she cried.  'To-day of all days?'
+
+'The marplot, madam, has the instinct of his nature,' returned
+Gondremark.  'But you exaggerate the peril.  Think, madam, how far we
+have prospered, and against what odds!  Shall a Featherhead?--but no!'
+And he blew upon his fingers lightly with a laugh.
+
+'Featherhead,' she replied, 'is still the Prince of Grunewald.'
+
+'On your sufferance only, and so long as you shall please to be
+indulgent,' said the Baron.  'There are rights of nature; power to the
+powerful is the law.  If he shall think to cross your destiny--well, you
+have heard of the brazen and the earthen pot.'
+
+'Do you call me pot?  You are ungallant, Baron,' laughed the Princess.
+
+'Before we are done with your glory, I shall have called you by many
+different titles,' he replied.
+
+The girl flushed with pleasure.  'But Frederic is still the Prince,
+_monsieur le flatteur_,' she said.  'You do not propose a
+revolution?--you of all men?'
+
+'Dear madam, when it is already made!' he cried.  'The Prince reigns
+indeed in the almanac; but my Princess reigns and rules.'  And he looked
+at her with a fond admiration that made the heart of Seraphina swell.
+Looking on her huge slave, she drank the intoxicating joys of power.
+Meanwhile he continued, with that sort of massive archness that so ill
+became him, 'She has but one fault; there is but one danger in the great
+career that I foresee for her.  May I name it? may I be so irreverent?
+It is in herself--her heart is soft.'
+
+'Her courage is faint, Baron,' said the Princess.  'Suppose we have
+judged ill, suppose we were defeated?'
+
+'Defeated, madam?' returned the Baron, with a touch of ill-humour.  'Is
+the dog defeated by the hare?  Our troops are all cantoned along the
+frontier; in five hours the vanguard of five thousand bayonets shall be
+hammering on the gates of Brandenau; and in all Gerolstein there are not
+fifteen hundred men who can manoeuvre.  It is as simple as a sum.  There
+can be no resistance.'
+
+'It is no great exploit,' she said.  'Is that what you call glory?  It is
+like beating a child.'
+
+'The courage, madam, is diplomatic,' he replied.  'We take a grave step;
+we fix the eyes of Europe, for the first time, on Grunewald; and in the
+negotiations of the next three months, mark me, we stand or fall.  It is
+there, madam, that I shall have to depend upon your counsels,' he added,
+almost gloomily.  'If I had not seen you at work, if I did not know the
+fertility of your mind, I own I should tremble for the consequence.  But
+it is in this field that men must recognise their inability.  All the
+great negotiators, when they have not been women, have had women at their
+elbows.  Madame de Pompadour was ill served; she had not found her
+Gondremark; but what a mighty politician!  Catherine de' Medici, too,
+what justice of sight, what readiness of means, what elasticity against
+defeat!  But alas! madam, her Featherheads were her own children; and she
+had that one touch of vulgarity, that one trait of the good-wife, that
+she suffered family ties and affections to confine her liberty.'
+
+These singular views of history, strictly _ad usum Seraphinae_, did not
+weave their usual soothing spell over the Princess.  It was plain that
+she had taken a momentary distaste to her own resolutions; for she
+continued to oppose her counsellor, looking upon him out of half-closed
+eyes and with the shadow of a sneer upon her lips.  'What boys men are!'
+she said; 'what lovers of big words!  Courage, indeed!  If you had to
+scour pans, Herr Von Gondremark, you would call it, I suppose, Domestic
+Courage?'
+
+'I would, madam,' said the Baron stoutly, 'if I scoured them well.  I
+would put a good name upon a virtue; you will not overdo it: they are not
+so enchanting in themselves.'
+
+'Well, but let me see,' she said.  'I wish to understand your courage.
+Why we asked leave, like children!  Our grannie in Berlin, our uncle in
+Vienna, the whole family, have patted us on the head and sent us forward.
+Courage?  I wonder when I hear you!'
+
+'My Princess is unlike herself,' returned the Baron.  'She has forgotten
+where the peril lies.  True, we have received encouragement on every
+hand; but my Princess knows too well on what untenable conditions; and
+she knows besides how, in the publicity of the diet, these whispered
+conferences are forgotten and disowned.  The danger is very real'--he
+raged inwardly at having to blow the very coal he had been
+quenching--'none the less real in that it is not precisely military, but
+for that reason the easier to be faced.  Had we to count upon your
+troops, although I share your Highness's expectations of the conduct of
+Alvenau, we cannot forget that he has not been proved in chief command.
+But where negotiation is concerned, the conduct lies with us; and with
+your help, I laugh at danger.'
+
+'It may be so,' said Seraphina, sighing.  'It is elsewhere that I see
+danger.  The people, these abominable people--suppose they should
+instantly rebel?  What a figure we should make in the eyes of Europe to
+have undertaken an invasion while my own throne was tottering to its
+fall!'
+
+'Nay, madam,' said Gondremark, smiling, 'here you are beneath yourself.
+What is it that feeds their discontent?  What but the taxes?  Once we
+have seized Gerolstein, the taxes are remitted, the sons return covered
+with renown, the houses are adorned with pillage, each tastes his little
+share of military glory, and behold us once again a happy family!  "Ay,"
+they will say, in each other's long ears, "the Princess knew what she was
+about; she was in the right of it; she has a head upon her shoulders; and
+here we are, you see, better off than before."  But why should I say all
+this?  It is what my Princess pointed out to me herself; it was by these
+reasons that she converted me to this adventure.'
+
+'I think, Herr von Gondremark,' said Seraphina, somewhat tartly, 'you
+often attribute your own sagacity to your Princess.'
+
+For a second Gondremark staggered under the shrewdness of the attack; the
+next, he had perfectly recovered.  'Do I?' he said.  'It is very
+possible.  I have observed a similar tendency in your Highness.'
+
+It was so openly spoken, and appeared so just, that Seraphina breathed
+again.  Her vanity had been alarmed, and the greatness of the relief
+improved her spirits.  'Well,' she said, 'all this is little to the
+purpose.  We are keeping Frederic without, and I am still ignorant of our
+line of battle.  Come, co-admiral, let us consult. . . . How am I to
+receive him now?  And what are we to do if he should appear at the
+council?'
+
+'Now,' he answered.  'I shall leave him to my Princess for just now!  I
+have seen her at work.  Send him off to his theatricals!  But in all
+gentleness,' he added.  'Would it, for instance, would it displease my
+sovereign to affect a headache?'
+
+'Never!' said she.  'The woman who can manage, like the man who can
+fight, must never shrink from an encounter.  The knight must not disgrace
+his weapons.'
+
+'Then let me pray my _belle dame sans merci_,' he returned, 'to affect
+the only virtue that she lacks.  Be pitiful to the poor young man; affect
+an interest in his hunting; be weary of politics; find in his society, as
+it were, a grateful repose from dry considerations.  Does my Princess
+authorise the line of battle?'
+
+'Well, that is a trifle,' answered Seraphina.  'The council--there is the
+point.'
+
+'The council?' cried Gondremark.  'Permit me, madam.'  And he rose and
+proceeded to flutter about the room, counterfeiting Otto both in voice
+and gesture not unhappily.  'What is there to-day, Herr von Gondremark?
+Ah, Herr Cancellarius, a new wig!  You cannot deceive me; I know every
+wig in Grunewald; I have the sovereign's eye.  What are these papers
+about?  O, I see.  O, certainly.  Surely, surely.  I wager none of you
+remarked that wig.  By all means.  I know nothing about that.  Dear me,
+are there as many as all that?  Well, you can sign them; you have the
+procuration.  You see, Herr Cancellarius, I knew your wig.  And so,'
+concluded Gondremark, resuming his own voice, 'our sovereign, by the
+particular grace of God, enlightens and supports his privy councillors.'
+
+But when the Baron turned to Seraphina for approval, he found her frozen.
+'You are pleased to be witty, Herr von Gondremark,' she said, 'and have
+perhaps forgotten where you are.  But these rehearsals are apt to be
+misleading.  Your master, the Prince of Grunewald, is sometimes more
+exacting.'
+
+Gondremark cursed her in his soul.  Of all injured vanities, that of the
+reproved buffoon is the most savage; and when grave issues are involved,
+these petty stabs become unbearable.  But Gondremark was a man of iron;
+he showed nothing; he did not even, like the common trickster, retreat
+because he had presumed, but held to his point bravely.  'Madam,' he
+said, 'if, as you say, he prove exacting, we must take the bull by the
+horns.'
+
+'We shall see,' she said, and she arranged her skirt like one about to
+rise.  Temper, scorn, disgust, all the more acrid feelings, became her
+like jewels; and she now looked her best.
+
+'Pray God they quarrel,' thought Gondremark.  'The damned minx may fail
+me yet, unless they quarrel.  It is time to let him in.  Zz--fight,
+dogs!'  Consequent on these reflections, he bent a stiff knee and
+chivalrously kissed the Princess's hand.  'My Princess,' he said, 'must
+now dismiss her servant.  I have much to arrange against the hour of
+council.'
+
+'Go,' she said, and rose.
+
+And as Gondremark tripped out of a private door, she touched a bell, and
+gave the order to admit the Prince.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE PRINCE DELIVERS A LECTURE ON MARRIAGE, WITH PRACTICAL
+ILLUSTRATIONS OF DIVORCE
+
+
+With what a world of excellent intentions Otto entered his wife's
+cabinet! how fatherly, how tender! how morally affecting were the words
+he had prepared!  Nor was Seraphina unamiably inclined.  Her usual fear
+of Otto as a marplot in her great designs was now swallowed up in a
+passing distrust of the designs themselves.  For Gondremark, besides, she
+had conceived an angry horror.  In her heart she did not like the Baron.
+Behind his impudent servility, behind the devotion which, with indelicate
+delicacy, he still forced on her attention, she divined the grossness of
+his nature.  So a man may be proud of having tamed a bear, and yet sicken
+at his captive's odour.  And above all, she had certain jealous
+intimations that the man was false and the deception double.  True, she
+falsely trifled with his love; but he, perhaps, was only trifling with
+her vanity.  The insolence of his late mimicry, and the odium of her own
+position as she sat and watched it, lay besides like a load upon her
+conscience.  She met Otto almost with a sense of guilt, and yet she
+welcomed him as a deliverer from ugly things.
+
+But the wheels of an interview are at the mercy of a thousand ruts; and
+even at Otto's entrance, the first jolt occurred.  Gondremark, he saw,
+was gone; but there was the chair drawn close for consultation; and it
+pained him not only that this man had been received, but that he should
+depart with such an air of secrecy.  Struggling with this twinge, it was
+somewhat sharply that he dismissed the attendant who had brought him in.
+
+'You make yourself at home, _chez moi_,' she said, a little ruffled both
+by his tone of command and by the glance he had thrown upon the chair.
+
+'Madam,' replied Otto, 'I am here so seldom that I have almost the rights
+of a stranger.'
+
+'You choose your own associates, Frederic,' she said.
+
+'I am here to speak of it,' he returned.  'It is now four years since we
+were married; and these four years, Seraphina, have not perhaps been
+happy either for you or for me.  I am well aware I was unsuitable to be
+your husband.  I was not young, I had no ambition, I was a trifler; and
+you despised me, I dare not say unjustly.  But to do justice on both
+sides, you must bear in mind how I have acted.  When I found it amused
+you to play the part of Princess on this little stage, did I not
+immediately resign to you my box of toys, this Grunewald?  And when I
+found I was distasteful as a husband, could any husband have been less
+intrusive?  You will tell me that I have no feelings, no preference, and
+thus no credit; that I go before the wind; that all this was in my
+character.  And indeed, one thing is true, that it is easy, too easy, to
+leave things undone.  But Seraphina, I begin to learn it is not always
+wise.  If I were too old and too uncongenial for your husband, I should
+still have remembered that I was the Prince of that country to which you
+came, a visitor and a child.  In that relation also there were duties,
+and these duties I have not performed.'
+
+To claim the advantage of superior age is to give sure offence.  'Duty!'
+laughed Seraphina, 'and on your lips, Frederic!  You make me laugh.  What
+fancy is this?  Go, flirt with the maids and be a prince in Dresden
+china, as you look.  Enjoy yourself, _mon enfant_, and leave duty and the
+state to us.'
+
+The plural grated on the Prince.  'I have enjoyed myself too much,' he
+said, 'since enjoyment is the word.  And yet there were much to say upon
+the other side.  You must suppose me desperately fond of hunting.  But
+indeed there were days when I found a great deal of interest in what it
+was courtesy to call my government.  And I have always had some claim to
+taste; I could tell live happiness from dull routine; and between
+hunting, and the throne of Austria, and your society, my choice had never
+wavered, had the choice been mine.  You were a girl, a bud, when you were
+given me--'
+
+'Heavens!' she cried, 'is this to be a love-scene?'
+
+'I am never ridiculous,' he said; 'it is my only merit; and you may be
+certain this shall be a scene of marriage _a la mode_.  But when I
+remember the beginning, it is bare courtesy to speak in sorrow.  Be just,
+madam: you would think me strangely uncivil to recall these days without
+the decency of a regret.  Be yet a little juster, and own, if only in
+complaisance, that you yourself regret that past.'
+
+'I have nothing to regret,' said the Princess.  'You surprise me.  I
+thought you were so happy.'
+
+'Happy and happy, there are so many hundred ways,' said Otto.  'A man may
+be happy in revolt; he may be happy in sleep; wine, change, and travel
+make him happy; virtue, they say, will do the like--I have not tried; and
+they say also that in old, quiet, and habitual marriages there is yet
+another happiness.  Happy, yes; I am happy if you like; but I will tell
+you frankly, I was happier when I brought you home.'
+
+'Well,' said the Princess, not without constraint, 'it seems you changed
+your mind.'
+
+'Not I,' returned Otto, 'I never changed.  Do you remember, Seraphina, on
+our way home, when you saw the roses in the lane, and I got out and
+plucked them?  It was a narrow lane between great trees; the sunset at
+the end was all gold, and the rooks were flying overhead.  There were
+nine, nine red roses; you gave me a kiss for each, and I told myself that
+every rose and every kiss should stand for a year of love.  Well, in
+eighteen months there was an end.  But do you fancy, Seraphina, that my
+heart has altered?'
+
+'I am sure I cannot tell,' she said, like an automaton.
+
+'It has not,' the Prince continued.  'There is nothing ridiculous, even
+from a husband, in a love that owns itself unhappy and that asks no more.
+I built on sand; pardon me, I do not breathe a reproach--I built, I
+suppose, upon my own infirmities; but I put my heart in the building, and
+it still lies among the ruins.'
+
+'How very poetical!' she said, with a little choking laugh, unknown
+relentings, unfamiliar softnesses, moving within her.  'What would you be
+at?' she added, hardening her voice.
+
+'I would be at this,' he answered; 'and hard it is to say.  I would be at
+this:--Seraphina, I am your husband after all, and a poor fool that loves
+you.  Understand,' he cried almost fiercely, 'I am no suppliant husband;
+what your love refuses I would scorn to receive from your pity.  I do not
+ask, I would not take it.  And for jealousy, what ground have I?  A
+dog-in-the-manger jealousy is a thing the dogs may laugh at.  But at
+least, in the world's eye, I am still your husband; and I ask you if you
+treat me fairly?  I keep to myself, I leave you free, I have given you in
+everything your will.  What do you in return?  I find, Seraphina, that
+you have been too thoughtless.  But between persons such as we are, in
+our conspicuous station, particular care and a particular courtesy are
+owing.  Scandal is perhaps not easy to avoid; but it is hard to bear.'
+
+'Scandal!' she cried, with a deep breath.  'Scandal!  It is for this you
+have been driving!'
+
+'I have tried to tell you how I feel,' he replied.  'I have told you that
+I love you--love you in vain--a bitter thing for a husband; I have laid
+myself open that I might speak without offence.  And now that I have
+begun, I will go on and finish.'
+
+'I demand it,' she said.  'What is this about?'
+
+Otto flushed crimson.  'I have to say what I would fain not,' he
+answered.  'I counsel you to see less of Gondremark.'
+
+'Of Gondremark?  And why?' she asked.
+
+'Your intimacy is the ground of scandal, madam,' said Otto, firmly
+enough--'of a scandal that is agony to me, and would be crushing to your
+parents if they knew it.'
+
+'You are the first to bring me word of it,' said she.  'I thank you.'
+
+'You have perhaps cause,' he replied.  'Perhaps I am the only one among
+your friends--'
+
+'O, leave my friends alone,' she interrupted.  'My friends are of a
+different stamp.  You have come to me here and made a parade of
+sentiment.  When have I last seen you?  I have governed your kingdom for
+you in the meanwhile, and there I got no help.  At last, when I am weary
+with a man's work, and you are weary of your playthings, you return to
+make me a scene of conjugal reproaches--the grocer and his wife!  The
+positions are too much reversed; and you should understand, at least,
+that I cannot at the same time do your work of government and behave
+myself like a little girl.  Scandal is the atmosphere in which we live,
+we princes; it is what a prince should know.  You play an odious part.
+Do you believe this rumour?'
+
+'Madam, should I be here?' said Otto.
+
+'It is what I want to know!' she cried, the tempest of her scorn
+increasing.  'Suppose you did--I say, suppose you did believe it?'
+
+'I should make it my business to suppose the contrary,' he answered.
+
+'I thought so.  O, you are made of baseness!' said she.
+
+'Madam,' he cried, roused at last, 'enough of this.  You wilfully
+misunderstand my attitude; you outwear my patience.  In the name of your
+parents, in my own name, I summon you to be more circumspect.'
+
+'Is this a request, _monsieur mon mari_?' she demanded.
+
+'Madam, if I chose, I might command,' said Otto.
+
+'You might, sir, as the law stands, make me prisoner,' returned
+Seraphina.  'Short of that you will gain nothing.'
+
+'You will continue as before?' he asked.
+
+'Precisely as before,' said she.  'As soon as this comedy is over, I
+shall request the Freiherr von Gondremark to visit me.  Do you
+understand?' she added, rising.  'For my part, I have done.'
+
+'I will then ask the favour of your hand, madam,' said Otto, palpitating
+in every pulse with anger.  'I have to request that you will visit in my
+society another part of my poor house.  And reassure yourself--it will
+not take long--and it is the last obligation that you shall have the
+chance to lay me under.'
+
+'The last?' she cried.  'Most joyfully?'
+
+She offered her hand, and he took it; on each side with an elaborate
+affectation, each inwardly incandescent.  He led her out by the private
+door, following where Gondremark had passed; they threaded a corridor or
+two, little frequented, looking on a court, until they came at last into
+the Prince's suite.  The first room was an armoury, hung all about with
+the weapons of various countries, and looking forth on the front terrace.
+
+'Have you brought me here to slay me?' she inquired.
+
+'I have brought you, madam, only to pass on,' replied Otto.
+
+Next they came to a library, where an old chamberlain sat half asleep.
+He rose and bowed before the princely couple, asking for orders.
+
+'You will attend us here,' said Otto.
+
+The next stage was a gallery of pictures, where Seraphina's portrait hung
+conspicuous, dressed for the chase, red roses in her hair, as Otto, in
+the first months of marriage, had directed.  He pointed to it without a
+word; she raised her eyebrows in silence; and they passed still forward
+into a matted corridor where four doors opened.  One led to Otto's
+bedroom; one was the private door to Seraphina's.  And here, for the
+first time, Otto left her hand, and stepping forward, shot the bolt.
+
+'It is long, madam,' said he, 'since it was bolted on the other side.'
+
+'One was effectual,' returned the Princess.  'Is this all?'
+
+'Shall I reconduct you?' he asking, bowing.
+
+'I should prefer,' she asked, in ringing tones, 'the conduct of the
+Freiherr von Gondremark.'
+
+Otto summoned the chamberlain.  'If the Freiherr von Gondremark is in the
+palace,' he said, 'bid him attend the Princess here.'  And when the
+official had departed, 'Can I do more to serve you, madam?' the Prince
+asked.
+
+'Thank you, no.  I have been much amused,' she answered.
+
+'I have now,' continued Otto, 'given you your liberty complete.  This has
+been for you a miserable marriage.'
+
+'Miserable!' said she.
+
+'It has been made light to you; it shall be lighter still,' continued the
+Prince.  'But one thing, madam, you must still continue to bear--my
+father's name, which is now yours.  I leave it in your hands.  Let me see
+you, since you will have no advice of mine, apply the more attention of
+your own to bear it worthily.'
+
+'Herr von Gondremark is long in coming,' she remarked.
+
+'O Seraphina, Seraphina!' he cried.  And that was the end of their
+interview.
+
+She tripped to a window and looked out; and a little after, the
+chamberlain announced the Freiherr von Gondremark, who entered with
+something of a wild eye and changed complexion, confounded, as he was, at
+this unusual summons.  The Princess faced round from the window with a
+pearly smile; nothing but her heightened colour spoke of discomposure.
+
+Otto was pale, but he was otherwise master of himself.
+
+'Herr von Gondremark,' said he, 'oblige me so far: reconduct the Princess
+to her own apartment.'
+
+The Baron, still all at sea, offered his hand, which was smilingly
+accepted, and the pair sailed forth through the picture-gallery.
+
+As soon as they were gone, and Otto knew the length and breadth of his
+miscarriage, and how he had done the contrary of all that he intended, he
+stood stupefied.  A fiasco so complete and sweeping was laughable, even
+to himself; and he laughed aloud in his wrath.  Upon this mood there
+followed the sharpest violence of remorse; and to that again, as he
+recalled his provocation, anger succeeded afresh.  So he was tossed in
+spirit; now bewailing his inconsequence and lack of temper, now flaming
+up in white-hot indignation and a noble pity for himself.
+
+He paced his apartment like a leopard.  There was danger in Otto, for a
+flash.  Like a pistol, he could kill at one moment, and the next he might
+he kicked aside.  But just then, as he walked the long floors in his
+alternate humours, tearing his handkerchief between his hands, he was
+strung to his top note, every nerve attent.  The pistol, you might say,
+was charged.  And when jealousy from time to time fetched him a lash
+across the tenderest of his feeling, and sent a string of her
+fire-pictures glancing before his mind's eye, the contraction of his face
+was even dangerous.  He disregarded jealousy's inventions, yet they
+stung.  In this height of anger, he still preserved his faith in
+Seraphina's innocence; but the thought of her possible misconduct was the
+bitterest ingredient in his pot of sorrow.
+
+There came a knock at the door, and the chamberlain brought him a note.
+He took it and ground it in his hand, continuing his march, continuing
+his bewildered thoughts; and some minutes had gone by before the
+circumstance came clearly to his mind.  Then he paused and opened it.  It
+was a pencil scratch from Gotthold, thus conceived:
+
+    'The council is privately summoned at once.
+
+                                                                 G. v. H.'
+
+If the council was thus called before the hour, and that privately, it
+was plain they feared his interference.  Feared: here was a sweet
+thought.  Gotthold, too--Gotthold, who had always used and regarded him
+as a mere peasant lad, had now been at the pains to warn him; Gotthold
+looked for something at his hands.  Well, none should be disappointed;
+the Prince, too long beshadowed by the uxorious lover, should now return
+and shine.  He summoned his valet, repaired the disorder of his
+appearance with elaborate care; and then, curled and scented and adorned,
+Prince Charming in every line, but with a twitching nostril, he set forth
+unattended for the council.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--THE PRINCE DISSOLVES THE COUNCIL
+
+
+It was as Gotthold wrote.  The liberation of Sir John, Greisengesang's
+uneasy narrative, last of all, the scene between Seraphina and the
+Prince, had decided the conspirators to take a step of bold timidity.
+There had been a period of bustle, liveried messengers speeding here and
+there with notes; and at half-past ten in the morning, about an hour
+before its usual hour, the council of Grunewald sat around the board.
+
+It was not a large body.  At the instance of Gondremark, it had undergone
+a strict purgation, and was now composed exclusively of tools.  Three
+secretaries sat at a side-table.  Seraphina took the head; on her right
+was the Baron, on her left Greisengesang; below these Grafinski the
+treasurer, Count Eisenthal, a couple of non-combatants, and, to the
+surprise of all, Gotthold.  He had been named a privy councillor by Otto,
+merely that he might profit by the salary; and as he was never known to
+attend a meeting, it had occurred to nobody to cancel his appointment.
+His present appearance was the more ominous, coming when it did.
+Gondremark scowled upon him; and the non-combatant on his right,
+intercepting this black look, edged away from one who was so clearly out
+of favour.
+
+'The hour presses, your Highness,' said the Baron; 'may we proceed to
+business?'
+
+'At once,' replied Seraphina.
+
+'Your Highness will pardon me,' said Gotthold; 'but you are still,
+perhaps, unacquainted with the fact that Prince Otto has returned.'
+
+'The Prince will not attend the council,' replied Seraphina, with a
+momentary blush.  'The despatches, Herr Cancellarius?  There is one for
+Gerolstein?'
+
+A secretary brought a paper.
+
+'Here, madam,' said Greisengesang.  'Shall I read it?'
+
+'We are all familiar with its terms,' replied Gondremark.  'Your Highness
+approves?'
+
+'Unhesitatingly,' said Seraphina.
+
+'It may then be held as read,' concluded the Baron.  'Will your Highness
+sign?'
+
+The Princess did so; Gondremark, Eisenthal, and one of the non-combatants
+followed suit; and the paper was then passed across the table to the
+librarian.  He proceeded leisurely to read.
+
+'We have no time to spare, Herr Doctor,' cried the Baron brutally.  'If
+you do not choose to sign on the authority of your sovereign, pass it on.
+Or you may leave the table,' he added, his temper ripping out.
+
+'I decline your invitation, Herr von Gondremark; and my sovereign, as I
+continue to observe with regret, is still absent from the board,' replied
+the Doctor calmly; and he resumed the perusal of the paper, the rest
+chafing and exchanging glances.  'Madame and gentlemen,' he said, at
+last, 'what I hold in my hand is simply a declaration of war.'
+
+'Simply,' said Seraphina, flashing defiance.
+
+'The sovereign of this country is under the same roof with us,' continued
+Gotthold, 'and I insist he shall be summoned.  It is needless to adduce
+my reasons; you are all ashamed at heart of this projected treachery.'
+
+The council waved like a sea.  There were various outcries.
+
+'You insult the Princess,' thundered Gondremark.
+
+'I maintain my protest,' replied Gotthold.
+
+At the height of this confusion the door was thrown open; an usher
+announced, 'Gentlemen, the Prince!' and Otto, with his most excellent
+bearing, entered the apartment.  It was like oil upon the troubled
+waters; every one settled instantly into his place, and Griesengesang, to
+give himself a countenance, became absorbed in the arrangement of his
+papers; but in their eagerness to dissemble, one and all neglected to
+rise.
+
+'Gentlemen,' said the Prince, pausing.
+
+They all got to their feet in a moment; and this reproof still further
+demoralised the weaker brethren.
+
+The Prince moved slowly towards the lower end of the table; then he
+paused again, and, fixing his eye on Greisengesang, 'How comes it, Herr
+Cancellarius,' he asked, 'that I have received no notice of the change of
+hour?'
+
+'Your Highness,' replied the Chancellor, 'her Highness the Princess . . . '
+and there paused.
+
+'I understood,' said Seraphina, taking him up, 'that you did not purpose
+to be present.'
+
+Their eyes met for a second, and Seraphina's fell; but her anger only
+burned the brighter for that private shame.
+
+'And now, gentlemen,' said Otto, taking his chair, 'I pray you to be
+seated.  I have been absent: there are doubtless some arrears; but ere we
+proceed to business, Herr Grafinski, you will direct four thousand crowns
+to be sent to me at once.  Make a note, if you please,' he added, as the
+treasurer still stared in wonder.
+
+'Four thousand crowns?' asked Seraphina.  'Pray, for what?'
+
+'Madam,' returned Otto, smiling, 'for my own purposes.'
+
+Gondremark spurred up Grafinski underneath the table.
+
+'If your Highness will indicate the destination . . . ' began the puppet.
+
+'You are not here, sir, to interrogate your Prince,' said Otto.
+
+Grafinski looked for help to his commander; and Gondremark came to his
+aid, in suave and measured tones.
+
+'Your Highness may reasonably be surprised,' he said; 'and Herr
+Grafinski, although I am convinced he is clear of the intention of
+offending, would have perhaps done better to begin with an explanation.
+The resources of the state are at the present moment entirely swallowed
+up, or, as we hope to prove, wisely invested.  In a month from now, I do
+not question we shall be able to meet any command your Highness may lay
+upon us; but at this hour I fear that, even in so small a matter, he must
+prepare himself for disappointment.  Our zeal is no less, although our
+power may be inadequate.'
+
+'How much, Herr Grafinski, have we in the treasury?' asked Otto.
+
+'Your Highness,' protested the treasurer, 'we have immediate need of
+every crown.'
+
+'I think, sir, you evade me,' flashed the Prince; and then turning to the
+side-table, 'Mr. Secretary,' he added, 'bring me, if you please, the
+treasury docket.'
+
+Herr Grafinski became deadly pale; the Chancellor, expecting his own
+turn, was probably engaged in prayer; Gondremark was watching like a
+ponderous cat.  Gotthold, on his part, looked on with wonder at his
+cousin; he was certainly showing spirit, but what, in such a time of
+gravity, was all this talk of money? and why should he waste his strength
+upon a personal issue?
+
+'I find,' said Otto, with his finger on the docket, 'that we have 20,000
+crowns in case.'
+
+'That is exact, your Highness,' replied the Baron.  'But our liabilities,
+all of which are happily not liquid, amount to a far larger sum; and at
+the present point of time it would be morally impossible to divert a
+single florin.  Essentially, the case is empty.  We have, already
+presented, a large note for material of war.'
+
+'Material of war?' exclaimed Otto, with an excellent assumption of
+surprise.  'But if my memory serves me right, we settled these accounts
+in January.'
+
+'There have been further orders,' the Baron explained.  'A new park of
+artillery has been completed; five hundred stand of arms, seven hundred
+baggage mules--the details are in a special memorandum.--Mr. Secretary
+Holtz, the memorandum, if you please.'
+
+'One would think, gentlemen, that we were going to war,' said Otto.
+
+'We are,' said Seraphina.
+
+'War!' cried the Prince, 'and, gentlemen, with whom?  The peace of
+Grunewald has endured for centuries.  What aggression, what insult, have
+we suffered?'
+
+'Here, your Highness,' said Gotthold, 'is the ultimatum.  It was in the
+very article of signature, when your Highness so opportunely entered.'
+
+Otto laid the paper before him; as he read, his fingers played tattoo
+upon the table.  'Was it proposed,' he inquired, 'to send this paper
+forth without a knowledge of my pleasure?'
+
+One of the non-combatants, eager to trim, volunteered an answer.  'The
+Herr Doctor von Hohenstockwitz had just entered his dissent,' he added.
+
+'Give me the rest of this correspondence,' said the Prince.  It was
+handed to him, and he read it patiently from end to end, while the
+councillors sat foolishly enough looking before them on the table.
+
+The secretaries, in the background, were exchanging glances of delight; a
+row at the council was for them a rare and welcome feature.
+
+'Gentlemen,' said Otto, when he had finished, 'I have read with pain.
+This claim upon Obermunsterol is palpably unjust; it has not a tincture,
+not a show, of justice.  There is not in all this ground enough for
+after-dinner talk, and you propose to force it as a _casus belli_.'
+
+'Certainly, your Highness,' returned Gondremark, too wise to defend the
+indefensible, 'the claim on Obermunsterol is simply a pretext.'
+
+'It is well,' said the Prince.  'Herr Cancellarius, take your pen.  "The
+council," he began to dictate--'I withhold all notice of my
+intervention,' he said, in parenthesis, and addressing himself more
+directly to his wife; 'and I say nothing of the strange suppression by
+which this business has been smuggled past my knowledge.  I am content to
+be in time--"The council,"' he resumed, '"on a further examination of the
+facts, and enlightened by the note in the last despatch from Gerolstein,
+have the pleasure to announce that they are entirely at one, both as to
+fact and sentiment, with the Grand-Ducal Court of Gerolstein."  You have
+it?  Upon these lines, sir, you will draw up the despatch.'
+
+'If your Highness will allow me,' said the Baron, 'your Highness is so
+imperfectly acquainted with the internal history of this correspondence,
+that any interference will be merely hurtful.  Such a paper as your
+Highness proposes would be to stultify the whole previous policy of
+Grunewald.'
+
+'The policy of Grunewald!' cried the Prince.  'One would suppose you had
+no sense of humour!  Would you fish in a coffee cup?'
+
+'With deference, your Highness,' returned the Baron, 'even in a coffee
+cup there may be poison.  The purpose of this war is not simply
+territorial enlargement; still less is it a war of glory; for, as your
+Highness indicates, the state of Grunewald is too small to be ambitious.
+But the body politic is seriously diseased; republicanism, socialism,
+many disintegrating ideas are abroad; circle within circle, a really
+formidable organisation has grown up about your Highness's throne.'
+
+'I have heard of it, Herr von Gondremark,' put in the Prince; 'but I have
+reason to be aware that yours is the more authoritative information.'
+
+'I am honoured by this expression of my Prince's confidence' returned
+Gondremark, unabashed.  'It is, therefore, with a single eye to these
+disorders that our present external policy has been shaped.  Something
+was required to divert public attention, to employ the idle, to
+popularise your Highness's rule, and, if it were possible, to enable him
+to reduce the taxes at a blow and to a notable amount.  The proposed
+expedition--for it cannot without hyperbole be called a war--seemed to
+the council to combine the various characters required; a marked
+improvement in the public sentiment has followed even upon our
+preparations; and I cannot doubt that when success shall follow, the
+effect will surpass even our boldest hopes.'
+
+'You are very adroit, Herr von Gondremark,' said Otto.  'You fill me with
+admiration.  I had not heretofore done justice to your qualities.'
+
+Seraphina looked up with joy, supposing Otto conquered; but Gondremark
+still waited, armed at every point; he knew how very stubborn is the
+revolt of a weak character.
+
+'And the territorial army scheme, to which I was persuaded to
+consent--was it secretly directed to the same end?' the Prince asked.
+
+'I still believe the effect to have been good,' replied the Baron;
+'discipline and mounting guard are excellent sedatives.  But I will avow
+to your Highness, I was unaware, at the date of that decree, of the
+magnitude of the revolutionary movement; nor did any of us, I think,
+imagine that such a territorial army was a part of the republican
+proposals.'
+
+'It was?' asked Otto.  'Strange!  Upon what fancied grounds?'
+
+'The grounds were indeed fanciful,' returned the Baron.  'It was
+conceived among the leaders that a territorial army, drawn from and
+returning to the people, would, in the event of any popular uprising,
+prove lukewarm or unfaithful to the throne.'
+
+'I see,' said the Prince.  'I begin to understand.'
+
+'His Highness begins to understand?' repeated Gondremark, with the
+sweetest politeness.  'May I beg of him to complete the phrase?'
+
+'The history of the revolution,' replied Otto dryly.  'And now,' he
+added, 'what do you conclude?'
+
+'I conclude, your Highness, with a simple reflection,' said the Baron,
+accepting the stab without a quiver, 'the war is popular; were the rumour
+contradicted to-morrow, a considerable disappointment would be felt in
+many classes; and in the present tension of spirits, the most lukewarm
+sentiment may be enough to precipitate events.  There lies the danger.
+The revolution hangs imminent; we sit, at this council board, below the
+sword of Damocles.'
+
+'We must then lay our heads together,' said the Prince, 'and devise some
+honourable means of safety.'
+
+Up to this moment, since the first note of opposition fell from the
+librarian, Seraphina had uttered about twenty words.  With a somewhat
+heightened colour, her eyes generally lowered, her foot sometimes
+nervously tapping on the floor, she had kept her own counsel and
+commanded her anger like a hero.  But at this stage of the engagement she
+lost control of her impatience.
+
+'Means!' she cried.  'They have been found and prepared before you knew
+the need for them.  Sign the despatch, and let us be done with this
+delay.'
+
+'Madam, I said "honourable,"' returned Otto, bowing.  'This war is, in my
+eyes, and by Herr von Gondremark's account, an inadmissible expedient.
+If we have misgoverned here in Grunewald, are the people of Gerolstein to
+bleed and pay for our mis-doings?  Never, madam; not while I live.  But I
+attach so much importance to all that I have heard to-day for the first
+time--and why only to-day, I do not even stop to ask--that I am eager to
+find some plan that I can follow with credit to myself.'
+
+'And should you fail?' she asked.
+
+'Should I fail, I will then meet the blow half-way,' replied the Prince.
+'On the first open discontent, I shall convoke the States, and, when it
+pleases them to bid me, abdicate.'
+
+Seraphina laughed angrily.  'This is the man for whom we have been
+labouring!' she cried.  'We tell him of change; he will devise the means,
+he says; and his device is abdication?  Sir, have you no shame to come
+here at the eleventh hour among those who have borne the heat and burthen
+of the day?  Do you not wonder at yourself?  I, sir, was here in my
+place, striving to uphold your dignity alone.  I took counsel with the
+wisest I could find, while you were eating and hunting.  I have laid my
+plans with foresight; they were ripe for action; and then--'she
+choked--'then you return--for a forenoon--to ruin all!  To-morrow, you
+will be once more about your pleasures; you will give us leave once more
+to think and work for you; and again you will come back, and again you
+will thwart what you had not the industry or knowledge to conceive.  O!
+it is intolerable.  Be modest, sir.  Do not presume upon the rank you
+cannot worthily uphold.  I would not issue my commands with so much
+gusto--it is from no merit in yourself they are obeyed.  What are you?
+What have you to do in this grave council?  Go,' she cried, 'go among
+your equals?  The very people in the streets mock at you for a prince.'
+
+At this surprising outburst the whole council sat aghast.
+
+'Madam,' said the Baron, alarmed out of his caution, 'command yourself.'
+
+'Address yourself to me, sir!' cried the Prince.  'I will not bear these
+whisperings!'
+
+Seraphina burst into tears.
+
+'Sir,' cried the Baron, rising, 'this lady--'
+
+'Herr von Gondremark,' said the Prince, 'one more observation, and I
+place you under arrest.'
+
+'Your Highness is the master,' replied Gondremark, bowing.
+
+'Bear it in mind more constantly,' said Otto.  'Herr Cancellarius, bring
+all the papers to my cabinet.  Gentlemen, the council is dissolved.'
+
+And he bowed and left the apartment, followed by Greisengesang and the
+secretaries, just at the moment when the Princess's ladies, summoned in
+all haste, entered by another door to help her forth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE PARTY OF WAR TAKES ACTION
+
+
+Half an hour after, Gondremark was once more closeted with Seraphina.
+
+'Where is he now?' she asked, on his arrival.
+
+'Madam, he is with the Chancellor,' replied the Baron.  'Wonder of
+wonders, he is at work!'
+
+'Ah,' she said, 'he was born to torture me!  O what a fall, what a
+humiliation!  Such a scheme to wreck upon so small a trifle!  But now all
+is lost.'
+
+'Madam,' said Gondremark, 'nothing is lost.  Something, on the other
+hand, is found.  You have found your senses; you see him as he is--see
+him as you see everything where your too-good heart is not in
+question--with the judicial, with the statesman's eye.  So long as he had
+a right to interfere, the empire that may be was still distant.  I have
+not entered on this course without the plain foresight of its dangers;
+and even for this I was prepared.  But, madam, I knew two things: I knew
+that you were born to command, that I was born to serve; I knew that by a
+rare conjuncture, the hand had found the tool; and from the first I was
+confident, as I am confident to-day, that no hereditary trifler has the
+power to shatter that alliance.'
+
+'I, born to command!' she said.  'Do you forget my tears?'
+
+'Madam, they were the tears of Alexander,' cried the Baron.  'They
+touched, they thrilled me; I, forgot myself a moment--even I!  But do you
+suppose that I had not remarked, that I had not admired, your previous
+bearing? your great self-command?  Ay, that was princely!'  He paused.
+'It was a thing to see.  I drank confidence!  I tried to imitate your
+calm.  And I was well inspired; in my heart, I think that I was well
+inspired; that any man, within the reach of argument, had been convinced!
+But it was not to be; nor, madam, do I regret the failure.  Let us be
+open; let me disclose my heart.  I have loved two things, not unworthily:
+Grunewald and my sovereign!'  Here he kissed her hand.  'Either I must
+resign my ministry, leave the land of my adoption and the queen whom I
+had chosen to obey--or--'  He paused again.
+
+'Alas, Herr von Gondremark, there is no "or,"' said Seraphina.
+
+'Nay, madam, give me time,' he replied.  'When first I saw you, you were
+still young; not every man would have remarked your powers; but I had not
+been twice honoured by your conversation ere I had found my mistress.  I
+have, madam, I believe, some genius; and I have much ambition.  But the
+genius is of the serving kind; and to offer a career to my ambition, I
+had to find one born to rule.  This is the base and essence of our union;
+each had need of the other; each recognised, master and servant, lever
+and fulcrum, the complement of his endowment.  Marriages, they say, are
+made in heaven: how much more these pure, laborious, intellectual
+fellowships, born to found empires!  Nor is this all.  We found each
+other ripe, filled with great ideas that took shape and clarified with
+every word.  We grew together--ay, madam, in mind we grew together like
+twin children.  All of my life until we met was petty and groping; was it
+not--I will flatter myself openly--it _was_ the same with you!  Not till
+then had you those eagle surveys, that wide and hopeful sweep of
+intuition!  Thus we had formed ourselves, and we were ready.'
+
+'It is true,' she cried.  'I feel it.  Yours is the genius; your
+generosity confounds your insight; all I could offer you was the
+position, was this throne, to be a fulcrum.  But I offered it without
+reserve; I entered at least warmly into all your thoughts; you were sure
+of me--sure of my support--certain of justice.  Tell me, tell me again,
+that I have helped you.'
+
+'Nay, madam,' he said, 'you made me.  In everything you were my
+inspiration.  And as we prepared our policy, weighing every step, how
+often have I had to admire your perspicacity, your man-like diligence and
+fortitude!  You know that these are not the words of flattery; your
+conscience echoes them; have you spared a day? have you indulged yourself
+in any pleasure?  Young and beautiful, you have lived a life of high
+intellectual effort, of irksome intellectual patience with details.
+Well, you have your reward: with the fall of Brandenau, the throne of
+your Empire is founded.'
+
+'What thought have you in your mind?' she asked.  'Is not all ruined?'
+
+'Nay, my Princess, the same thought is in both our minds,' he said.
+
+'Herr von Gondremark,' she replied, 'by all that I hold sacred, I have
+none; I do not think at all; I am crushed.'
+
+'You are looking at the passionate side of a rich nature, misunderstood
+and recently insulted,' said the Baron.  'Look into your intellect, and
+tell me.'
+
+'I find nothing, nothing but tumult,' she replied.
+
+'You find one word branded, madam,' returned the Baron: '"Abdication!"'
+
+'O!' she cried.  'The coward!  He leaves me to bear all, and in the hour
+of trial he stabs me from behind.  There is nothing in him, not respect,
+not love, not courage--his wife, his dignity, his throne, the honour of
+his father, he forgets them all!'
+
+'Yes,' pursued the Baron, 'the word Abdication.  I perceive a glimmering
+there.'
+
+'I read your fancy,' she returned.  'It is mere madness, midsummer
+madness.  Baron, I am more unpopular than he.  You know it.  They can
+excuse, they can love, his weakness; but me, they hate.'
+
+'Such is the gratitude of peoples,' said the Baron.  'But we trifle.
+Here, madam, are my plain thoughts.  The man who in the hour of danger
+speaks of abdication is, for me, a venomous animal.  I speak with the
+bluntness of gravity, madam; this is no hour for mincing.  The coward, in
+a station of authority, is more dangerous than fire.  We dwell on a
+volcano; if this man can have his way, Grunewald before a week will have
+been deluged with innocent blood.  You know the truth of what I say; we
+have looked unblenching into this ever-possible catastrophe.  To him it
+is nothing: he will abdicate!  Abdicate, just God! and this unhappy
+country committed to his charge, and the lives of men and the honour of
+women . . .'  His voice appeared to fail him; in an instant he had
+conquered his emotion and resumed: 'But you, madam, conceive more
+worthily of your responsibilities.  I am with you in the thought; and in
+the face of the horrors that I see impending, I say, and your heart
+repeats it--we have gone too far to pause.  Honour, duty, ay, and the
+care of our own lives, demand we should proceed.'
+
+She was looking at him, her brow thoughtfully knitted.  'I feel it,' she
+said.  'But how?  He has the power.'
+
+'The power, madam?  The power is in the army,' he replied; and then
+hastily, ere she could intervene, 'we have to save ourselves,' he went
+on; 'I have to save my Princess, she has to save her minister; we have
+both of us to save this infatuated youth from his own madness.  He in the
+outbreak would be the earliest victim; I see him,' he cried, 'torn in
+pieces; and Grunewald, unhappy Grunewald!  Nay, madam, you who have the
+power must use it; it lies hard upon your conscience.'
+
+'Show me how!' she cried.  'Suppose I were to place him under some
+constraint, the revolution would break upon us instantly.'
+
+The Baron feigned defeat.  'It is true,' he said.  'You see more clearly
+than I do.  Yet there should, there must be, some way.'  And he waited
+for his chance.
+
+'No,' she said; 'I told you from the first there is no remedy.  Our hopes
+are lost: lost by one miserable trifler, ignorant, fretful, fitful--who
+will have disappeared to-morrow, who knows? to his boorish pleasures!'
+
+Any peg would do for Gondremark.  'The thing!' he cried, striking his
+brow.  'Fool, not to have thought of it!  Madam, without perhaps knowing
+it, you have solved our problem.'
+
+'What do you mean?  Speak!' she said.
+
+He appeared to collect himself; and then, with a smile, 'The Prince,' he
+said, 'must go once more a-hunting.'
+
+'Ay, if he would!' cried she, 'and stay there!'
+
+'And stay there,' echoed the Baron.  It was so significantly said, that
+her face changed; and the schemer, fearful of the sinister ambiguity of
+his expressions, hastened to explain.  'This time he shall go hunting in
+a carriage, with a good escort of our foreign lancers.  His destination
+shall be the Felsenburg; it is healthy, the rock is high, the windows are
+small and barred; it might have been built on purpose.  We shall intrust
+the captaincy to the Scotsman Gordon; he at least will have no scruple.
+Who will miss the sovereign?  He is gone hunting; he came home on
+Tuesday, on Thursday he returned; all is usual in that.  Meanwhile the
+war proceeds; our Prince will soon weary of his solitude; and about the
+time of our triumph, or, if he prove very obstinate, a little later, he
+shall be released upon a proper understanding, and I see him once more
+directing his theatricals.'
+
+Seraphina sat gloomy, plunged in thought.  'Yes,' she said suddenly, 'and
+the despatch?  He is now writing it.'
+
+'It cannot pass the council before Friday,' replied Gondremark; 'and as
+for any private note, the messengers are all at my disposal.  They are
+picked men, madam.  I am a person of precaution.'
+
+'It would appear so,' she said, with a flash of her occasional repugnance
+to the man; and then after a pause, 'Herr von Gondremark,' she added, 'I
+recoil from this extremity.'
+
+'I share your Highness's repugnance,' answered he.  'But what would you
+have?  We are defenceless, else.'
+
+'I see it, but this is sudden.  It is a public crime,' she said, nodding
+at him with a sort of horror.
+
+'Look but a little deeper,' he returned, 'and whose is the crime?'
+
+'His!' she cried.  'His, before God!  And I hold him liable.  But
+still--'
+
+'It is not as if he would be harmed,' submitted Gondremark.
+
+'I know it,' she replied, but it was still unheartily.
+
+And then, as brave men are entitled, by prescriptive right as old as the
+world's history, to the alliance and the active help of Fortune, the
+punctual goddess stepped down from the machine.  One of the Princess's
+ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the
+Freiherr von Gondremark.  It proved to be a pencil billet, which the
+crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under
+the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the
+terror of the actor.  For Greisengesang had but one influential motive:
+fear.  The note ran thus: 'At the first council, procuration to be
+withdrawn.--CORN. GREIS.'
+
+So, after three years of exercise, the right of signature was to be
+stript from Seraphina.  It was more than an insult; it was a public
+disgrace; and she did not pause to consider how she had earned it, but
+morally bounded under the attack as bounds the wounded tiger.
+
+'Enough,' she said; 'I will sign the order.  When shall he leave?'
+
+'It will take me twelve hours to collect my men, and it had best be done
+at night.  To-morrow midnight, if you please?' answered the Baron.
+
+'Excellent,' she said.  'My door is always open to you, Baron.  As soon
+as the order is prepared, bring it me to sign.'
+
+'Madam,' he said, 'alone of all of us you do not risk your head in this
+adventure.  For that reason, and to prevent all hesitation, I venture to
+propose the order should be in your hand throughout.'
+
+'You are right,' she replied.
+
+He laid a form before her, and she wrote the order in a clear hand, and
+re-read it.  Suddenly a cruel smile came on her face.  'I had forgotten
+his puppet,' said she.  'They will keep each other company.'  And she
+interlined and initiated the condemnation of Doctor Gotthold.
+
+'Your Highness has more memory than your servant,' said the Baron; and
+then he, in his turn, carefully perused the fateful paper.  'Good!' said
+he.
+
+'You will appear in the drawing-room, Baron?' she asked.
+
+'I thought it better,' said he, 'to avoid the possibility of a public
+affront.  Anything that shook my credit might hamper us in the immediate
+future.'
+
+'You are right,' she said; and she held out her hand as to an old friend
+and equal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--THE PRICE OF THE RIVER FARM; IN WHICH VAINGLORY GOES BEFORE A
+FALL
+
+
+The pistol had been practically fired.  Under ordinary circumstances the
+scene at the council table would have entirely exhausted Otto's store
+both of energy and anger; he would have begun to examine and condemn his
+conduct, have remembered all that was true, forgotten all that was unjust
+in Seraphina's onslaught; and by half an hour after would have fallen
+into that state of mind in which a Catholic flees to the confessional and
+a sot takes refuge with the bottle.  Two matters of detail preserved his
+spirits.  For, first, he had still an infinity of business to transact;
+and to transact business, for a man of Otto's neglectful and
+procrastinating habits, is the best anodyne for conscience.  All
+afternoon he was hard at it with the Chancellor, reading, dictating,
+signing, and despatching papers; and this kept him in a glow of
+self-approval.  But, secondly, his vanity was still alarmed; he had
+failed to get the money; to-morrow before noon he would have to
+disappoint old Killian; and in the eyes of that family which counted him
+so little, and to which he had sought to play the part of the heroic
+comforter, he must sink lower than at first.  To a man of Otto's temper,
+this was death.  He could not accept the situation.  And even as he
+worked, and worked wisely and well, over the hated details of his
+principality, he was secretly maturing a plan by which to turn the
+situation.  It was a scheme as pleasing to the man as it was
+dishonourable in the prince; in which his frivolous nature found and took
+vengeance for the gravity and burthen of the afternoon.  He chuckled as
+he thought of it: and Greisengesang heard him with wonder, and attributed
+his lively spirits to the skirmish of the morning.
+
+Led by this idea, the antique courtier ventured to compliment his
+sovereign on his bearing.  It reminded him, he said, of Otto's father.
+
+'What?' asked the Prince, whose thoughts were miles away.
+
+'Your Highness's authority at the board,' explained the flatterer.
+
+'O, that!  O yes,' returned Otto; but for all his carelessness, his
+vanity was delicately tickled, and his mind returned and dwelt
+approvingly over the details of his victory.  'I quelled them all,' he
+thought.
+
+When the more pressing matters had been dismissed, it was already late,
+and Otto kept the Chancellor to dinner, and was entertained with a leash
+of ancient histories and modern compliments.  The Chancellor's career had
+been based, from the first off-put, on entire subserviency; he had
+crawled into honours and employments; and his mind was prostitute.  The
+instinct of the creature served him well with Otto.  First, he let fall a
+sneering word or two upon the female intellect; thence he proceeded to a
+closer engagement; and before the third course he was artfully dissecting
+Seraphina's character to her approving husband.  Of course no names were
+used; and of course the identity of that abstract or ideal man, with whom
+she was currently contrasted, remained an open secret.  But this stiff
+old gentleman had a wonderful instinct for evil, thus to wind his way
+into man's citadel; thus to harp by the hour on the virtues of his hearer
+and not once alarm his self-respect.  Otto was all roseate, in and out,
+with flattery and Tokay and an approving conscience.  He saw himself in
+the most attractive colours.  If even Greisengesang, he thought, could
+thus espy the loose stitches in Seraphina's character, and thus
+disloyally impart them to the opposite camp, he, the discarded
+husband--the dispossessed Prince--could scarce have erred on the side of
+severity.
+
+In this excellent frame he bade adieu to the old gentleman, whose voice
+had proved so musical, and set forth for the drawing-room.  Already on
+the stair, he was seized with some compunction; but when he entered the
+great gallery and beheld his wife, the Chancellor's abstract flatteries
+fell from him like rain, and he re-awoke to the poetic facts of life.
+She stood a good way off below a shining lustre, her back turned.  The
+bend of her waist overcame him with physical weakness.  This was the
+girl-wife who had lain in his arms and whom he had sworn to cherish;
+there was she, who was better than success.
+
+It was Seraphina who restored him from the blow.  She swam forward and
+smiled upon her husband with a sweetness that was insultingly artificial.
+'Frederic,' she lisped, 'you are late.'  It was a scene of high comedy,
+such as is proper to unhappy marriages; and her _aplomb_ disgusted him.
+
+There was no etiquette at these small drawing-rooms.  People came and
+went at pleasure.  The window embrasures became the roost of happy
+couples; at the great chimney the talkers mostly congregated, each
+full-charged with scandal; and down at the farther end the gamblers
+gambled.  It was towards this point that Otto moved, not ostentatiously,
+but with a gentle insistence, and scattering attentions as he went.  Once
+abreast of the card-table, he placed himself opposite to Madame von
+Rosen, and, as soon as he had caught her eye, withdrew to the embrasure
+of a window.  There she had speedily joined him.
+
+'You did well to call me,' she said, a little wildly.  'These cards will
+be my ruin.'
+
+'Leave them,' said Otto.
+
+'I!' she cried, and laughed; 'they are my destiny.  My only chance was to
+die of a consumption; now I must die in a garret.'
+
+'You are bitter to-night,' said Otto.
+
+'I have been losing,' she replied.  'You do not know what greed is.'
+
+'I have come, then, in an evil hour,' said he.
+
+'Ah, you wish a favour!' she cried, brightening beautifully.
+
+'Madam,' said he, 'I am about to found my party, and I come to you for a
+recruit.'
+
+'Done,' said the Countess.  'I am a man again.'
+
+'I may be wrong,' continued Otto, 'but I believe upon my heart you wish
+me no ill.'
+
+'I wish you so well,' she said, 'that I dare not tell it you.'
+
+'Then if I ask my favour?' quoth the Prince.
+
+'Ask it, _mon Prince_,' she answered.  'Whatever it is, it is granted.'
+
+'I wish you,' he returned, 'this very night to make the farmer of our
+talk.'
+
+'Heaven knows your meaning!' she exclaimed.  'I know not, neither care;
+there are no bounds to my desire to please you.  Call him made.'
+
+'I will put it in another way,' returned Otto.  'Did you ever steal?'
+
+'Often!' cried the Countess.  'I have broken all the ten commandments;
+and if there were more to-morrow, I should not sleep till I had broken
+these.'
+
+'This is a case of burglary: to say the truth, I thought it would amuse
+you,' said the Prince.
+
+'I have no practical experience,' she replied, 'but O! the good-will!  I
+have broken a work-box in my time, and several hearts, my own included.
+Never a house!  But it cannot be difficult; sins are so unromantically
+easy!  What are we to break?'
+
+'Madam, we are to break the treasury,' said Otto and he sketched to her
+briefly, wittily, with here and there a touch of pathos, the story of his
+visit to the farm, of his promise to buy it, and of the refusal with
+which his demand for money had been met that morning at the council;
+concluding with a few practical words as to the treasury windows, and the
+helps and hindrances of the proposed exploit.
+
+'They refused you the money,' she said when he had done.  'And you
+accepted the refusal?  Well!'
+
+'They gave their reasons,' replied Otto, colouring.  'They were not such
+as I could combat; and I am driven to dilapidate the funds of my own
+country by a theft.  It is not dignified; but it is fun.'
+
+'Fun,' she said; 'yes.'  And then she remained silently plunged in
+thought for an appreciable time.  'How much do you require?' she asked at
+length.
+
+'Three thousand crowns will do,' he answered, 'for I have still some
+money of my own.'
+
+'Excellent,' she said, regaining her levity.  'I am your true accomplice.
+And where are we to meet?'
+
+'You know the Flying Mercury,' he answered, 'in the Park?  Three pathways
+intersect; there they have made a seat and raised the statue.  The spot
+is handy and the deity congenial.'
+
+'Child,' she said, and tapped him with her fan.  'But do you know, my
+Prince, you are an egoist--your handy trysting-place is miles from me.
+You must give me ample time; I cannot, I think, possibly be there before
+two.  But as the bell beats two, your helper shall arrive: welcome, I
+trust.  Stay--do you bring any one?' she added.  'O, it is not for a
+chaperon--I am not a prude!'
+
+'I shall bring a groom of mine,' said Otto.  'I caught him stealing
+corn.'
+
+'His name?' she asked.
+
+'I profess I know not.  I am not yet intimate with my corn-stealer,'
+returned the Prince.  'It was in a professional capacity--'
+
+'Like me!  Flatterer!' she cried.  'But oblige me in one thing.  Let me
+find you waiting at the seat--yes, you shall await me; for on this
+expedition it shall be no longer Prince and Countess, it shall be the
+lady and the squire--and your friend the thief shall be no nearer than
+the fountain.  Do you promise?'
+
+'Madam, in everything you are to command; you shall be captain, I am but
+supercargo,' answered Otto.
+
+'Well, Heaven bring all safe to port!' she said.  'It is not Friday!'
+
+Something in her manner had puzzled Otto, had possibly touched him with
+suspicion.
+
+'Is it not strange,' he remarked, 'that I should choose my accomplice
+from the other camp?'
+
+'Fool!' she said.  'But it is your only wisdom that you know your
+friends.'  And suddenly, in the vantage of the deep window, she caught up
+his hand and kissed it with a sort of passion.  'Now go,' she added, 'go
+at once.'
+
+He went, somewhat staggered, doubting in his heart that he was over-bold.
+For in that moment she had flashed upon him like a jewel; and even
+through the strong panoply of a previous love he had been conscious of a
+shock.  Next moment he had dismissed the fear.
+
+Both Otto and the Countess retired early from the drawing-room; and the
+Prince, after an elaborate feint, dismissed his valet, and went forth by
+the private passage and the back postern in quest of the groom.
+
+Once more the stable was in darkness, once more Otto employed the
+talismanic knock, and once more the groom appeared and sickened with
+terror.
+
+'Good-evening, friend,' said Otto pleasantly.  'I want you to bring a
+corn sack--empty this time--and to accompany me.  We shall be gone all
+night.'
+
+'Your Highness,' groaned the man, 'I have the charge of the small
+stables.  I am here alone.'
+
+'Come,' said the Prince, 'you are no such martinet in duty.'  And then
+seeing that the man was shaking from head to foot, Otto laid a hand upon
+his shoulder.  'If I meant you harm,' he said, 'should I be here?'
+
+The fellow became instantly reassured.  He got the sack; and Otto led him
+round by several paths and avenues, conversing pleasantly by the way, and
+left him at last planted by a certain fountain where a goggle-eyed Triton
+spouted intermittently into a rippling laver.  Thence he proceeded alone
+to where, in a round clearing, a copy of Gian Bologna's Mercury stood
+tiptoe in the twilight of the stars.  The night was warm and windless.  A
+shaving of new moon had lately arisen; but it was still too small and too
+low down in heaven to contend with the immense host of lesser luminaries;
+and the rough face of the earth was drenched with starlight.  Down one of
+the alleys, which widened as it receded, he could see a part of the
+lamplit terrace where a sentry silently paced, and beyond that a corner
+of the town with interlacing street-lights.  But all around him the young
+trees stood mystically blurred in the dim shine; and in the stock-still
+quietness the upleaping god appeared alive.
+
+In this dimness and silence of the night, Otto's conscience became
+suddenly and staringly luminous, like the dial of a city clock.  He
+averted the eyes of his mind, but the finger rapidly travelling, pointed
+to a series of misdeeds that took his breath away.  What was he doing in
+that place?  The money had been wrongly squandered, but that was largely
+by his own neglect.  And he now proposed to embarrass the finances of
+this country which he had been too idle to govern.  And he now proposed
+to squander the money once again, and this time for a private, if a
+generous end.  And the man whom he had reproved for stealing corn he was
+now to set stealing treasure.  And then there was Madame von Rosen, upon
+whom he looked down with some of that ill-favoured contempt of the chaste
+male for the imperfect woman.  Because he thought of her as one degraded
+below scruples, he had picked her out to be still more degraded, and to
+risk her whole irregular establishment in life by complicity in this
+dishonourable act.  It was uglier than a seduction.
+
+Otto had to walk very briskly and whistle very busily; and when at last
+he heard steps in the narrowest and darkest of the alleys, it was with a
+gush of relief that he sprang to meet the Countess.  To wrestle alone
+with one's good angel is so hard! and so precious, at the proper time, is
+a companion certain to be less virtuous than oneself!
+
+It was a young man who came towards him--a young man of small stature and
+a peculiar gait, wearing a wide flapping hat, and carrying, with great
+weariness, a heavy bag.  Otto recoiled; but the young man held up his
+hand by way of signal, and coming up with a panting run, as if with the
+last of his endurance, laid the bag upon the ground, threw himself upon
+the bench, and disclosed the features of Madame von Rosen.
+
+'You, Countess!' cried the Prince.
+
+'No, no,' she panted, 'the Count von Rosen--my young brother.  A capital
+fellow.  Let him get his breath.'
+
+'Ah, madam . . . ' said he.
+
+'Call me Count,' she returned, 'respect my incognito.'
+
+'Count be it, then,' he replied.  'And let me implore that gallant
+gentleman to set forth at once on our enterprise.'
+
+'Sit down beside me here,' she returned, patting the further corner of
+the bench.  'I will follow you in a moment.  O, I am so tired--feel how
+my heart leaps!  Where is your thief?'
+
+'At his post,' replied Otto.  'Shall I introduce him?  He seems an
+excellent companion.'
+
+'No,' she said, 'do not hurry me yet.  I must speak to you.  Not but I
+adore your thief; I adore any one who has the spirit to do wrong.  I
+never cared for virtue till I fell in love with my Prince.'  She laughed
+musically.  'And even so, it is not for your virtues,' she added.
+
+Otto was embarrassed.  'And now,' he asked, 'if you are anyway rested?'
+
+'Presently, presently.  Let me breathe,' she said, panting a little
+harder than before.
+
+'And what has so wearied you?' he asked.  'This bag?  And why, in the
+name of eccentricity, a bag?  For an empty one, you might have relied on
+my own foresight; and this one is very far from being empty.  My dear
+Count, with what trash have you come laden?  But the shortest method is
+to see for myself.'  And he put down his hand.
+
+She stopped him at once.  'Otto,' she said, 'no--not that way.  I will
+tell, I will make a clean breast.  It is done already.  I have robbed the
+treasury single-handed.  There are three thousand two hundred crowns.  O,
+I trust it is enough!'
+
+Her embarrassment was so obvious that the Prince was struck into a muse,
+gazing in her face, with his hand still outstretched, and she still
+holding him by the wrist.  'You!' he said at last.  'How?' And then
+drawing himself up, 'O madam,' he cried, 'I understand.  You must indeed
+think meanly of the Prince.'
+
+'Well, then, it was a lie!' she cried.  'The money is mine, honestly my
+own--now yours.  This was an unworthy act that you proposed.  But I love
+your honour, and I swore to myself that I should save it in your teeth.
+I beg of you to let me save it'--with a sudden lovely change of tone.
+'Otto, I beseech you let me save it.  Take this dross from your poor
+friend who loves you!'
+
+'Madam, madam,' babbled Otto, in the extreme of misery, 'I cannot--I must
+go.'
+
+And he half rose; but she was on the ground before him in an instant,
+clasping his knees.  'No,' she gasped, 'you shall not go.  Do you despise
+me so entirely?  It is dross; I hate it; I should squander it at play and
+be no richer; it is an investment, it is to save me from ruin.  Otto,'
+she cried, as he again feebly tried to put her from him, 'if you leave me
+alone in this disgrace, I will die here!'  He groaned aloud.  'O,' she
+said, 'think what I suffer!  If you suffer from a piece of delicacy,
+think what I suffer in my shame!  To have my trash refused!  You would
+rather steal, you think of me so basely!  You would rather tread my heart
+in pieces!  O, unkind!  O my Prince!  O Otto!  O pity me!'  She was still
+clasping him; then she found his hand and covered it with kisses, and at
+this his head began to turn.  'O,' she cried again, 'I see it!  O what a
+horror!  It is because I am old, because I am no longer beautiful.'  And
+she burst into a storm of sobs.
+
+This was the _coup de grace_.  Otto had now to comfort and compose her as
+he could, and before many words, the money was accepted.  Between the
+woman and the weak man such was the inevitable end.  Madame von Rosen
+instantly composed her sobs.  She thanked him with a fluttering voice,
+and resumed her place upon the bench, at the far end from Otto.  'Now you
+see,' she said, 'why I bade you keep the thief at distance, and why I
+came alone.  How I trembled for my treasure!'
+
+'Madam,' said Otto, with a tearful whimper in his voice, 'spare me!  You
+are too good, too noble!'
+
+'I wonder to hear you,' she returned.  'You have avoided a great folly.
+You will be able to meet your good old peasant.  You have found an
+excellent investment for a friend's money.  You have preferred essential
+kindness to an empty scruple; and now you are ashamed of it!  You have
+made your friend happy; and now you mourn as the dove!  Come, cheer up.
+I know it is depressing to have done exactly right; but you need not make
+a practice of it.  Forgive yourself this virtue; come now, look me in the
+face and smile!'
+
+He did look at her.  When a man has been embraced by a woman, he sees her
+in a glamour; and at such a time, in the baffling glimmer of the stars,
+she will look wildly well.  The hair is touched with light; the eyes are
+constellations; the face sketched in shadows--a sketch, you might say, by
+passion.  Otto became consoled for his defeat; he began to take an
+interest.  'No,' he said, 'I am no ingrate.'
+
+'You promised me fun,' she returned, with a laugh.  'I have given you as
+good.  We have had a stormy _scena_.'
+
+He laughed in his turn, and the sound of the laughter, in either case,
+was hardly reassuring.
+
+'Come, what are you going to give me in exchange,' she continued, 'for my
+excellent declamation?'
+
+'What you will,' he said.
+
+'Whatever I will?  Upon your honour?  Suppose I asked the crown?'  She
+was flashing upon him, beautiful in triumph.
+
+'Upon my honour,' he replied.
+
+'Shall I ask the crown?' she continued.  'Nay; what should I do with it?
+Grunewald is but a petty state; my ambition swells above it.  I shall
+ask--I find I want nothing,' she concluded.  'I will give you something
+instead.  I will give you leave to kiss me--once.'
+
+Otto drew near, and she put up her face; they were both smiling, both on
+the brink of laughter, all was so innocent and playful; and the Prince,
+when their lips encountered, was dumbfoundered by the sudden convulsion
+of his being.  Both drew instantly apart, and for an appreciable time sat
+tongue-tied.  Otto was indistinctly conscious of a peril in the silence,
+but could find no words to utter.  Suddenly the Countess seemed to awake.
+'As for your wife--' she began in a clear and steady voice.
+
+The word recalled Otto, with a shudder, from his trance.  'I will hear
+nothing against my wife,' he cried wildly; and then, recovering himself
+and in a kindlier tone, 'I will tell you my one secret,' he added.  'I
+love my wife.'
+
+'You should have let me finish,' she returned, smiling.  'Do you suppose
+I did not mention her on purpose?  You know you had lost your head.
+Well, so had I.  Come now, do not be abashed by words,' she added
+somewhat sharply.  'It is the one thing I despise.  If you are not a
+fool, you will see that I am building fortresses about your virtue.  And
+at any rate, I choose that you shall understand that I am not dying of
+love for you.  It is a very smiling business; no tragedy for me!  And now
+here is what I have to say about your wife; she is not and she never has
+been Gondremark's mistress.  Be sure he would have boasted if she had.
+Good-night!'
+
+And in a moment she was gone down the alley, and Otto was alone with the
+bag of money and the flying god.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--GOTTHOLD'S REVISED OPINION; AND THE FALL COMPLETED
+
+
+The Countess left poor Otto with a caress and buffet simultaneously
+administered.  The welcome word about his wife and the virtuous ending of
+his interview should doubtless have delighted him.  But for all that, as
+he shouldered the bag of money and set forward to rejoin his groom, he
+was conscious of many aching sensibilities.  To have gone wrong and to
+have been set right makes but a double trial for man's vanity.  The
+discovery of his own weakness and possible unfaith had staggered him to
+the heart; and to hear, in the same hour, of his wife's fidelity from one
+who loved her not, increased the bitterness of the surprise.
+
+He was about half-way between the fountain and the Flying Mercury before
+his thoughts began to be clear; and he was surprised to find them
+resentful.  He paused in a kind of temper, and struck with his hand a
+little shrub.  Thence there arose instantly a cloud of awakened sparrows,
+which as instantly dispersed and disappeared into the thicket.  He looked
+at them stupidly, and when they were gone continued staring at the stars.
+'I am angry.  By what right?  By none!' he thought; but he was still
+angry.  He cursed Madame von Rosen and instantly repented.  Heavy was the
+money on his shoulders.
+
+When he reached the fountain, he did, out of ill-humour and parade, an
+unpardonable act.  He gave the money bodily to the dishonest groom.
+'Keep this for me,' he said, 'until I call for it to-morrow.  It is a
+great sum, and by that you will judge that I have not condemned you.'
+And he strode away ruffling, as if he had done something generous.  It
+was a desperate stroke to re-enter at the point of the bayonet into his
+self-esteem; and, like all such, it was fruitless in the end.  He got to
+bed with the devil, it appeared: kicked and tumbled till the grey of the
+morning; and then fell inopportunely into a leaden slumber, and awoke to
+find it ten.  To miss the appointment with old Killian after all, had
+been too tragic a miscarriage: and he hurried with all his might, found
+the groom (for a wonder) faithful to his trust, and arrived only a few
+minutes before noon in the guest-chamber of the Morning Star.  Killian
+was there in his Sunday's best and looking very gaunt and rigid; a lawyer
+from Brandenau stood sentinel over his outspread papers; and the groom
+and the landlord of the inn were called to serve as witnesses.  The
+obvious deference of that great man, the innkeeper, plainly affected the
+old farmer with surprise; but it was not until Otto had taken the pen and
+signed that the truth flashed upon him fully.  Then, indeed, he was
+beside himself.
+
+'His Highness!' he cried, 'His Highness!' and repeated the exclamation
+till his mind had grappled fairly with the facts.  Then he turned to the
+witnesses.  'Gentlemen,' he said, 'you dwell in a country highly favoured
+by God; for of all generous gentlemen, I will say it on my conscience,
+this one is the king.  I am an old man, and I have seen good and bad, and
+the year of the great famine; but a more excellent gentleman, no, never.'
+
+'We know that,' cried the landlord, 'we know that well in Grunewald.  If
+we saw more of his Highness we should be the better pleased.'
+
+'It is the kindest Prince,' began the groom, and suddenly closed his
+mouth upon a sob, so that every one turned to gaze upon his emotion--Otto
+not last; Otto struck with remorse, to see the man so grateful.
+
+Then it was the lawyer's turn to pay a compliment.  'I do not know what
+Providence may hold in store,' he said, 'but this day should be a bright
+one in the annals of your reign.  The shouts of armies could not be more
+eloquent than the emotion on these honest faces.'  And the Brandenau
+lawyer bowed, skipped, stepped back, and took snuff, with the air of a
+man who has found and seized an opportunity.
+
+'Well, young gentleman,' said Killian, 'if you will pardon me the
+plainness of calling you a gentleman, many a good day's work you have
+done, I doubt not, but never a better, or one that will be better
+blessed; and whatever, sir, may be your happiness and triumph in that
+high sphere to which you have been called, it will be none the worse,
+sir, for an old man's blessing!'
+
+The scene had almost assumed the proportions of an ovation; and when the
+Prince escaped he had but one thought: to go wherever he was most sure of
+praise.  His conduct at the board of council occurred to him as a fair
+chapter; and this evoked the memory of Gotthold.  To Gotthold he would
+go.
+
+Gotthold was in the library as usual, and laid down his pen, a little
+angrily, on Otto's entrance.  'Well,' he said, 'here you are.'
+
+'Well,' returned Otto, 'we made a revolution, I believe.'
+
+'It is what I fear,' returned the Doctor.
+
+'How?' said Otto.  'Fear?  Fear is the burnt child.  I have learned my
+strength and the weakness of the others; and I now mean to govern.'
+
+Gotthold said nothing, but he looked down and smoothed his chin.
+
+'You disapprove?' cried Otto.  'You are a weather-cock.'
+
+'On the contrary,' replied the Doctor.  'My observation has confirmed my
+fears.  It will not do, Otto, not do.'
+
+'What will not do?' demanded the Prince, with a sickening stab of pain.
+
+'None of it,' answered Gotthold.  'You are unfitted for a life of action;
+you lack the stamina, the habit, the restraint, the patience.  Your wife
+is greatly better, vastly better; and though she is in bad hands,
+displays a very different aptitude.  She is a woman of affairs; you
+are--dear boy, you are yourself.  I bid you back to your amusements; like
+a smiling dominie, I give you holidays for life.  Yes,' he continued,
+'there is a day appointed for all when they shall turn again upon their
+own philosophy.  I had grown to disbelieve impartially in all; and if in
+the atlas of the sciences there were two charts I disbelieved in more
+than all the rest, they were politics and morals.  I had a sneaking
+kindness for your vices; as they were negative, they flattered my
+philosophy; and I called them almost virtues.  Well, Otto, I was wrong; I
+have forsworn my sceptical philosophy; and I perceive your faults to be
+unpardonable.  You are unfit to be a Prince, unfit to be a husband.  And
+I give you my word, I would rather see a man capably doing evil than
+blundering about good.'
+
+Otto was still silent, in extreme dudgeon.
+
+Presently the Doctor resumed: 'I will take the smaller matter first: your
+conduct to your wife.  You went, I hear, and had an explanation.  That
+may have been right or wrong; I know not; at least, you had stirred her
+temper.  At the council she insults you; well, you insult her back--a man
+to a woman, a husband to his wife, in public!  Next upon the back of
+this, you propose--the story runs like wildfire--to recall the power of
+signature.  Can she ever forgive that? a woman--a young woman--ambitious,
+conscious of talents beyond yours?  Never, Otto.  And to sum all, at such
+a crisis in your married life, you get into a window corner with that
+ogling dame von Rosen.  I do not dream that there was any harm; but I do
+say it was an idle disrespect to your wife.  Why, man, the woman is not
+decent.'
+
+'Gotthold,' said Otto, 'I will hear no evil of the Countess.'
+
+'You will certainly hear no good of her,' returned Gotthold; 'and if you
+wish your wife to be the pink of nicety, you should clear your court of
+demi-reputations.'
+
+'The commonplace injustice of a by-word,' Otto cried.  'The partiality of
+sex.  She is a demirep; what then is Gondremark?  Were she a man--'
+
+'It would be all one,' retorted Gotthold roughly.  'When I see a man,
+come to years of wisdom, who speaks in double-meanings and is the
+braggart of his vices, I spit on the other side.  "You, my friend," say
+I, "are not even a gentleman."  Well, she's not even a lady.'
+
+'She is the best friend I have, and I choose that she shall be
+respected,' Otto said.
+
+'If she is your friend, so much the worse,' replied the Doctor.  'It will
+not stop there.'
+
+'Ah!' cried Otto, 'there is the charity of virtue!  All evil in the
+spotted fruit.  But I can tell you, sir, that you do Madame von Rosen
+prodigal injustice.'
+
+'You can tell me!' said the Doctor shrewdly.  'Have you, tried? have you
+been riding the marches?'
+
+The blood came into Otto's face.
+
+'Ah!' cried Gotthold, 'look at your wife and blush!  There's a wife for a
+man to marry and then lose!  She's a carnation, Otto.  The soul is in her
+eyes.'
+
+'You have changed your note for Seraphina, I perceive,' said Otto.
+
+'Changed it!' cried the Doctor, with a flush.  'Why, when was it
+different?  But I own I admired her at the council.  When she sat there
+silent, tapping with her foot, I admired her as I might a hurricane.
+Were I one of those who venture upon matrimony, there had been the prize
+to tempt me!  She invites, as Mexico invited Cortez; the enterprise is
+hard, the natives are unfriendly--I believe them cruel too--but the
+metropolis is paved with gold and the breeze blows out of paradise.  Yes,
+I could desire to be that conqueror.  But to philander with von Rosen!
+never!  Senses?  I discard them; what are they?--pruritus!  Curiosity?
+Reach me my Anatomy!'
+
+'To whom do you address yourself?' cried Otto.  'Surely you, of all men,
+know that I love my wife!'
+
+'O, love!' cried Gotthold; 'love is a great word; it is in all the
+dictionaries.  If you had loved, she would have paid you back.  What does
+she ask?  A little ardour!'
+
+'It is hard to love for two,' replied the Prince.
+
+'Hard?  Why, there's the touchstone!  O, I know my poets!' cried the
+Doctor.  'We are but dust and fire, too and to endure life's scorching;
+and love, like the shadow of a great rock, should lend shelter and
+refreshment, not to the lover only, but to his mistress and to the
+children that reward them; and their very friends should seek repose in
+the fringes of that peace.  Love is not love that cannot build a home.
+And you call it love to grudge and quarrel and pick faults?  You call it
+love to thwart her to her face, and bandy insults?  Love!'
+
+'Gotthold, you are unjust.  I was then fighting for my country,' said the
+Prince.
+
+'Ay, and there's the worst of all,' returned the Doctor.  'You could not
+even see that you were wrong; that being where they were, retreat was
+ruin.'
+
+Why, you supported me!' cried Otto.
+
+'I did.  I was a fool like you,' replied Gotthold.  'But now my eyes are
+open.  If you go on as you have started, disgrace this fellow Gondremark,
+and publish the scandal of your divided house, there will befall a most
+abominable thing in Grunewald.  A revolution, friend--a revolution.'
+
+'You speak strangely for a red,' said Otto.
+
+'A red republican, but not a revolutionary,' returned the Doctor.  'An
+ugly thing is a Grunewalder drunk!  One man alone can save the country
+from this pass, and that is the double-dealer Gondremark, with whom I
+conjure you to make peace.  It will not be you; it never can be
+you:--you, who can do nothing, as your wife said, but trade upon your
+station--you, who spent the hours in begging money!  And in God's name,
+what for?  Why money?  What mystery of idiocy was this?'
+
+'It was to no ill end.  It was to buy a farm,' quoth Otto sulkily.
+
+'To buy a farm!' cried Gotthold.  'Buy a farm!'
+
+'Well, what then?' returned Otto. 'I have bought it, if you come to
+that.'
+
+Gotthold fairly bounded on his seat.  'And how that?' he cried.
+
+'How?' repeated Otto, startled.
+
+'Ay, verily, how!' returned the Doctor.  'How came you by the money?'
+
+The Prince's countenance darkened.  'That is my affair,' said he.
+
+'You see you are ashamed,' retorted Gotthold.  'And so you bought a farm
+in the hour of our country's need--doubtless to be ready for the
+abdication; and I put it that you stole the funds.  There are not three
+ways of getting money: there are but two: to earn and steal.  And now,
+when you have combined Charles the Fifth and Long-fingered Tom, you come
+to me to fortify your vanity!  But I will clear my mind upon this matter:
+until I know the right and wrong of the transaction, I put my hand behind
+my back.  A man may be the pitifullest prince; he must be a spotless
+gentleman.'
+
+The Prince had gotten to his feet, as pale as paper.  Gotthold,' he said,
+'you drive me beyond bounds.  Beware, sir, beware!'
+
+'Do you threaten me, friend Otto?' asked the Doctor grimly.  'That would
+be a strange conclusion.'
+
+'When have you ever known me use my power in any private animosity?'
+cried Otto.  'To any private man your words were an unpardonable insult,
+but at me you shoot in full security, and I must turn aside to compliment
+you on your plainness.  I must do more than pardon, I must admire,
+because you have faced this--this formidable monarch, like a Nathan
+before David.  You have uprooted an old kindness, sir, with an unsparing
+hand.  You leave me very bare.  My last bond is broken; and though I take
+Heaven to witness that I sought to do the right, I have this reward: to
+find myself alone.  You say I am no gentleman; yet the sneers have been
+upon your side; and though I can very well perceive where you have lodged
+your sympathies, I will forbear the taunt.'
+
+'Otto, are you insane?' cried Gotthold, leaping up.  'Because I ask you
+how you came by certain moneys, and because you refuse--'
+
+'Herr von Hohenstockwitz, I have ceased to invite your aid in my
+affairs,' said Otto.  'I have heard all that I desire, and you have
+sufficiently trampled on my vanity.  It may be that I cannot govern, it
+may be that I cannot love--you tell me so with every mark of honesty; but
+God has granted me one virtue, and I can still forgive.  I forgive you;
+even in this hour of passion, I can perceive my faults and your excuses;
+and if I desire that in future I may be spared your conversation, it is
+not, sir, from resentment--not resentment--but, by Heaven, because no man
+on earth could endure to be so rated.  You have the satisfaction to see
+your sovereign weep; and that person whom you have so often taunted with
+his happiness reduced to the last pitch of solitude and misery.  No,--I
+will hear nothing; I claim the last word, sir, as your Prince; and that
+last word shall be--forgiveness.'
+
+And with that Otto was gone from the apartment, and Doctor Gotthold was
+left alone with the most conflicting sentiments of sorrow, remorse, and
+merriment; walking to and fro before his table, and asking himself, with
+hands uplifted, which of the pair of them was most to blame for this
+unhappy rupture.  Presently, he took from a cupboard a bottle of Rhine
+wine and a goblet of the deep Bohemian ruby.  The first glass a little
+warmed and comforted his bosom; with the second he began to look down
+upon these troubles from a sunny mountain; yet a while, and filled with
+this false comfort and contemplating life throughout a golden medium, he
+owned to himself, with a flush, a smile, and a half-pleasurable sigh,
+that he had been somewhat over plain in dealing with his cousin.  'He
+said the truth, too,' added the penitent librarian, 'for in my monkish
+fashion I adore the Princess.'  And then, with a still deepening flush
+and a certain stealth, although he sat all alone in that great gallery,
+he toasted Seraphina to the dregs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--PROVIDENCE VON ROSEN: ACT THE FIRST
+SHE BEGUILES THE BARON
+
+
+At a sufficiently late hour, or to be more exact, at three in the
+afternoon, Madame von Rosen issued on the world.  She swept downstairs
+and out across the garden, a black mantilla thrown over her head, and the
+long train of her black velvet dress ruthlessly sweeping in the dirt.
+
+At the other end of that long garden, and back to back with the villa of
+the Countess, stood the large mansion where the Prime Minister transacted
+his affairs and pleasures.  This distance, which was enough for decency
+by the easy canons of Mittwalden, the Countess swiftly traversed, opened
+a little door with a key, mounted a flight of stairs, and entered
+unceremoniously into Gondremark's study.  It was a large and very high
+apartment; books all about the walls, papers on the table, papers on the
+floor; here and there a picture, somewhat scant of drapery; a great fire
+glowing and flaming in the blue tiled hearth; and the daylight streaming
+through a cupola above.  In the midst of this sat the great Baron
+Gondremark in his shirt-sleeves, his business for that day fairly at an
+end, and the hour arrived for relaxation.  His expression, his very
+nature, seemed to have undergone a fundamental change.  Gondremark at
+home appeared the very antipode of Gondremark on duty.  He had an air of
+massive jollity that well became him; grossness and geniality sat upon
+his features; and along with his manners, he had laid aside his sly and
+sinister expression.  He lolled there, sunning his bulk before the fire,
+a noble animal.
+
+'Hey!' he cried.  'At last!'
+
+The Countess stepped into the room in silence, threw herself on a chair,
+and crossed her legs.  In her lace and velvet, with a good display of
+smooth black stocking and of snowy petticoat, and with the refined
+profile of her face and slender plumpness of her body, she showed in
+singular contrast to the big, black, intellectual satyr by the fire.
+
+'How often do you send for me?' she cried.  'It is compromising.'
+
+Gondremark laughed.  'Speaking of that,' said he, 'what in the devil's
+name were you about?  You were not home till morning.'
+
+'I was giving alms,' she said.
+
+The Baron again laughed loud and long, for in his shirt-sleeves he was a
+very mirthful creature.  'It is fortunate I am not jealous,' he remarked.
+'But you know my way: pleasure and liberty go hand in hand.  I believe
+what I believe; it is not much, but I believe it.--But now to business.
+Have you not read my letter?'
+
+'No,' she said; 'my head ached.'
+
+'Ah, well! then I have news indeed!' cried Gondremark.  'I was mad to see
+you all last night and all this morning: for yesterday afternoon I
+brought my long business to a head; the ship has come home; one more dead
+lift, and I shall cease to fetch and carry for the Princess Ratafia.
+Yes, 'tis done.  I have the order all in Ratafia's hand; I carry it on my
+heart.  At the hour of twelve to-night, Prince Featherhead is to be taken
+in his bed and, like the bambino, whipped into a chariot; and by next
+morning he will command a most romantic prospect from the donjon of the
+Felsenburg.  Farewell, Featherhead!  The war goes on, the girl is in my
+hand; I have long been indispensable, but now I shall be sole.  I have
+long,' he added exultingly, 'long carried this intrigue upon my
+shoulders, like Samson with the gates of Gaza; now I discharge that
+burthen.'
+
+She had sprung to her feet a little paler.  'Is this true?' she cried.
+
+'I tell you a fact,' he asseverated.  'The trick is played.'
+
+'I will never believe it,' she said.  'An order in her own hand?  I will
+never believe it, Heinrich.'
+
+'I swear to you,' said he.
+
+'O, what do you care for oaths--or I either?  What would you swear by?
+Wine, women, and song?  It is not binding,' she said.  She had come quite
+close up to him and laid her hand upon his arm.  'As for the order--no,
+Heinrich, never!  I will never believe it.  I will die ere I believe it.
+You have some secret purpose--what, I cannot guess--but not one word of
+it is true.'
+
+'Shall I show it you?' he asked.
+
+'You cannot,' she answered.  'There is no such thing.'
+
+'Incorrigible Sadducee!' he cried.  'Well, I will convert you; you shall
+see the order.'  He moved to a chair where he had thrown his coat, and
+then drawing forth and holding out a paper, 'Read,' said he.
+
+She took it greedily, and her eye flashed as she perused it.
+
+'Hey!' cried the Baron, 'there falls a dynasty, and it was I that felled
+it; and I and you inherit!'  He seemed to swell in stature; and next
+moment, with a laugh, he put his hand forward.  Give me the dagger,' said
+he.
+
+But she whisked the paper suddenly behind her back and faced him,
+lowering.  'No, no,' she said.  'You and I have first a point to settle.
+Do you suppose me blind?  She could never have given that paper but to
+one man, and that man her lover.  Here you stand--her lover, her
+accomplice, her master--O, I well believe it, for I know your power.  But
+what am I?' she cried; 'I, whom you deceive!'
+
+'Jealousy!' cried Gondremark.  'Anna, I would never have believed it!
+But I declare to you by all that's credible that I am not her lover.  I
+might be, I suppose; but I never yet durst risk the declaration.  The
+chit is so unreal; a mincing doll; she will and she will not; there is no
+counting on her, by God!  And hitherto I have had my own way without, and
+keep the lover in reserve.  And I say, Anna,' he added with severity,
+'you must break yourself of this new fit, my girl; there must be no
+combustion.  I keep the creature under the belief that I adore her; and
+if she caught a breath of you and me, she is such a fool, prude, and dog
+in the manger, that she is capable of spoiling all.'
+
+'All very fine,' returned the lady.  'With whom do you pass your days?
+and which am I to believe, your words or your actions?'
+
+'Anna, the devil take you, are you blind?' cried Gondremark.  'You know
+me.  Am I likely to care for such a preciosa?  'Tis hard that we should
+have been together for so long, and you should still take me for a
+troubadour.  But if there is one thing that I despise and deprecate, it
+is all such figures in Berlin wool.  Give me a human woman--like myself.
+You are my mate; you were made for me; you amuse me like the play.  And
+what have I to gain that I should pretend to you?  If I do not love you,
+what use are you to me?  Why, none.  It is as clear as noonday.'
+
+'Do you love me, Heinrich?' she asked, languishing.  'Do you truly?'
+
+'I tell you,' he cried, 'I love you next after myself.  I should be all
+abroad if I had lost you.'
+
+'Well, then,' said she, folding up the paper and putting it calmly in her
+pocket, 'I will believe you, and I join the plot.  Count upon me.  At
+midnight, did you say?  It is Gordon, I see, that you have charged with
+it.  Excellent; he will stick at nothing--'
+
+Gondremark watched her suspiciously.  'Why do you take the paper?' he
+demanded.  'Give it here.'
+
+'No,' she returned; 'I mean to keep it.  It is I who must prepare the
+stroke; you cannot manage it without me; and to do my best I must possess
+the paper.  Where shall I find Gordon?  In his rooms?'  She spoke with a
+rather feverish self-possession.
+
+'Anna,' he said sternly, the black, bilious countenance of his palace
+_role_ taking the place of the more open favour of his hours at home, 'I
+ask you for that paper.  Once, twice, and thrice.'
+
+'Heinrich,' she returned, looking him in the face, 'take care.  I will
+put up with no dictation.'
+
+Both looked dangerous; and the silence lasted for a measurable interval
+of time.  Then she made haste to have the first word; and with a laugh
+that rang clear and honest, 'Do not be a child,' she said.  'I wonder at
+you.  If your assurances are true, you can have no reason to mistrust me,
+nor I to play you false.  The difficulty is to get the Prince out of the
+palace without scandal.  His valets are devoted; his chamberlain a slave;
+and yet one cry might ruin all.'
+
+'They must be overpowered,' he said, following her to the new ground,
+'and disappear along with him.'
+
+'And your whole scheme along with them!' she cried.  'He does not take
+his servants when he goes a-hunting: a child could read the truth.  No,
+no; the plan is idiotic; it must be Ratafia's.  But hear me.  You know
+the Prince worships me?'
+
+'I know,' he said.  'Poor Featherhead, I cross his destiny!'
+
+'Well now,' she continued, 'what if I bring him alone out of the palace,
+to some quiet corner of the Park--the Flying Mercury, for instance?
+Gordon can be posted in the thicket; the carriage wait behind the temple;
+not a cry, not a scuffle, not a footfall; simply, the Prince
+vanishes!--What do you say?  Am I an able ally?  Are my _beaux yuex_ of
+service?  Ah, Heinrich, do not lose your Anna!--she has power!'
+
+He struck with his open hand upon the chimney.  'Witch!' he said, 'there
+is not your match for devilry in Europe.  Service! the thing runs on
+wheels.'
+
+'Kiss me, then, and let me go.  I must not miss my Featherhead,' she
+said.
+
+'Stay, stay,' said the Baron; 'not so fast.  I wish, upon my soul, that I
+could trust you; but you are, out and in, so whimsical a devil that I
+dare not.  Hang it, Anna, no; it's not possible!'
+
+'You doubt me, Heinrich?' she cried.
+
+'Doubt is not the word,' said he.  'I know you.  Once you were clear of
+me with that paper in your pocket, who knows what you would do with
+it?--not you, at least--nor I.  You see,' he added, shaking his head
+paternally upon the Countess, 'you are as vicious as a monkey.'
+
+'I swear to you,' she cried, 'by my salvation . . . '
+
+'I have no curiosity to hear you swearing,' said the Baron.
+
+'You think that I have no religion?  You suppose me destitute of honour.
+Well,' she said, 'see here: I will not argue, but I tell you once for
+all: leave me this order, and the Prince shall be arrested--take it from
+me, and, as certain as I speak, I will upset the coach.  Trust me, or
+fear me: take your choice.'  And she offered him the paper.
+
+The Baron, in a great contention of mind, stood irresolute, weighing the
+two dangers.  Once his hand advanced, then dropped.  'Well,' he said,
+'since trust is what you call it . . .'
+
+'No more,' she interrupted, 'Do not spoil your attitude.  And now since
+you have behaved like a good sort of fellow in the dark, I will
+condescend to tell you why.  I go to the palace to arrange with Gordon;
+but how is Gordon to obey me?  And how can I foresee the hours?  It may
+be midnight; ay, and it may be nightfall; all's a chance; and to act, I
+must be free and hold the strings of the adventure.  And now,' she cried,
+'your Vivien goes.  Dub me your knight!'  And she held out her arms and
+smiled upon him radiant.
+
+'Well,' he said, when he had kissed her, 'every man must have his folly;
+I thank God mine is no worse.  Off with you!  I have given a child a
+squib.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--PROVIDENCE VON ROSEN: ACT THE SECOND
+SHE INFORMS THE PRINCE
+
+
+It was the first impulse of Madame von Rosen to return to her own villa
+and revise her toilette.  Whatever else should come of this adventure, it
+was her firm design to pay a visit to the Princess.  And before that
+woman, so little beloved, the Countess would appear at no disadvantage.
+It was the work of minutes.  Von Rosen had the captain's eye in matters
+of the toilette; she was none of those who hang in Fabian helplessness
+among their finery and, after hours, come forth upon the world as
+dowdies.  A glance, a loosened curl, a studied and admired disorder in
+the hair, a bit of lace, a touch of colour, a yellow rose in the bosom;
+and the instant picture was complete.
+
+'That will do,' she said.  'Bid my carriage follow me to the palace.  In
+half an hour it should be there in waiting.'
+
+The night was beginning to fall and the shops to shine with lamps along
+the tree-beshadowed thorough-fares of Otto's capital, when the Countess
+started on her high emprise.  She was jocund at heart; pleasure and
+interest had winged her beauty, and she knew it.  She paused before the
+glowing jeweller's; she remarked and praised a costume in the milliner's
+window; and when she reached the lime-tree walk, with its high,
+umbrageous arches and stir of passers-by in the dim alleys, she took her
+place upon a bench and began to dally with the pleasures of the hour.  It
+was cold, but she did not feel it, being warm within; her thoughts, in
+that dark corner, shone like the gold and rubies at the jewellers; her
+ears, which heard the brushing of so many footfalls, transposed it into
+music.
+
+What was she to do?  She held the paper by which all depended.  Otto and
+Gondremark and Ratafia, and the state itself, hung light in her balances,
+as light as dust; her little finger laid in either scale would set all
+flying: and she hugged herself upon her huge preponderance, and then
+laughed aloud to think how giddily it might be used.  The vertigo of
+omnipotence, the disease of Caesars, shook her reason.  'O the mad
+world!' she thought, and laughed aloud in exultation.
+
+A child, finger in mouth, had paused a little way from where she sat, and
+stared with cloudy interest upon this laughing lady.  She called it
+nearer; but the child hung back.  Instantly, with that curious passion
+which you may see any woman in the world display, on the most odd
+occasions, for a similar end, the Countess bent herself with singleness
+of mind to overcome this diffidence; and presently, sure enough, the
+child was seated on her knee, thumbing and glowering at her watch.
+
+'If you had a clay bear and a china monkey,' asked Von Rosen, 'which
+would you prefer to break?'
+
+'But I have neither,' said the child.
+
+'Well,' she said, 'here is a bright florin, with which you may purchase
+both the one and the other; and I shall give it you at once, if you will
+answer my question.  The clay bear or the china monkey--come?'
+
+But the unbreeched soothsayer only stared upon the florin with big eyes;
+the oracle could not be persuaded to reply; and the Countess kissed him
+lightly, gave him the florin, set him down upon the path, and resumed her
+way with swinging and elastic gait.
+
+'Which shall I break?' she wondered; and she passed her hand with delight
+among the careful disarrangement of her locks.  'Which?' and she
+consulted heaven with her bright eyes.  'Do I love both or neither?  A
+little--passionately--not at all?  Both or neither--both, I believe; but
+at least I will make hay of Ratafia.'
+
+By the time she had passed the iron gates, mounted the drive, and set her
+foot upon the broad flagged terrace, the night had come completely; the
+palace front was thick with lighted windows; and along the balustrade,
+the lamp on every twentieth baluster shone clear.  A few withered tracks
+of sunset, amber and glow-worm green, still lingered in the western sky;
+and she paused once again to watch them fading.
+
+'And to think,' she said, 'that here am I--destiny embodied, a norn, a
+fate, a providence--and have no guess upon which side I shall declare
+myself!  What other woman in my place would not be prejudiced, and think
+herself committed?  But, thank Heaven!  I was born just!'  Otto's windows
+were bright among the rest, and she looked on them with rising
+tenderness.  'How does it feel to be deserted?' she thought.  'Poor dear
+fool!  The girl deserves that he should see this order.'
+
+Without more delay, she passed into the palace and asked for an audience
+of Prince Otto.  The Prince, she was told, was in his own apartment, and
+desired to be private.  She sent her name.  A man presently returned with
+word that the Prince tendered his apologies, but could see no one.  'Then
+I will write,' she said, and scribbled a few lines alleging urgency of
+life and death.  'Help me, my Prince,' she added; 'none but you can help
+me.'  This time the messenger returned more speedily, and begged the
+Countess to follow him: the Prince was graciously pleased to receive the
+Frau Grafin von Rosen.
+
+Otto sat by the fire in his large armoury, weapons faintly glittering all
+about him in the changeful light.  His face was disfigured by the marks
+of weeping; he looked sour and sad; nor did he rise to greet his visitor,
+but bowed, and bade the man begone.  That kind of general tenderness
+which served the Countess for both heart and conscience, sharply smote
+her at this spectacle of grief and weakness; she began immediately to
+enter into the spirit of her part; and as soon as they were alone, taking
+one step forward and with a magnificent gesture--'Up!' she cried.
+
+'Madame von Rosen,' replied Otto dully, 'you have used strong words.  You
+speak of life and death.  Pray, madam, who is threatened?  Who is there,'
+he added bitterly, 'so destitute that even Otto of Grunewald can assist
+him?'
+
+'First learn,' said she, 'the names of the conspirators; the Princess and
+the Baron Gondremark.  Can you not guess the rest?'  And then, as he
+maintained his silence--'You!' she cried, pointing at him with her
+finger.  ''Tis you they threaten!  Your rascal and mine have laid their
+heads together and condemned you.  But they reckoned without you and me.
+We make a _partie carree_, Prince, in love and politics.  They lead an
+ace, but we shall trump it.  Come, partner, shall I draw my card?'
+
+'Madam,' he said, 'explain yourself.  Indeed I fail to comprehend.'
+
+'See, then,' said she; and handed him the order.
+
+He took it, looked upon it with a start; and then, still without speech,
+he put his hand before his face.  She waited for a word in vain.
+
+'What!' she cried, 'do you take the thing down-heartedly?  As well seek
+wine in a milk-pail as love in that girl's heart!  Be done with this, and
+be a man.  After the league of the lions, let us have a conspiracy of
+mice, and pull this piece of machinery to ground.  You were brisk enough
+last night when nothing was at stake and all was frolic.  Well, here is
+better sport; here is life indeed.'
+
+He got to his feet with some alacrity, and his face, which was a little
+flushed, bore the marks of resolution.
+
+'Madame von Rosen,' said he, 'I am neither unconscious nor ungrateful;
+this is the true continuation of your friendship; but I see that I must
+disappoint your expectations.  You seem to expect from me some effort of
+resistance; but why should I resist?  I have not much to gain; and now
+that I have read this paper, and the last of a fool's paradise is
+shattered, it would be hyperbolical to speak of loss in the same breath
+with Otto of Grunewald.  I have no party, no policy; no pride, nor
+anything to be proud of.  For what benefit or principle under Heaven do
+you expect me to contend?  Or would you have me bite and scratch like a
+trapped weasel?  No, madam; signify to those who sent you my readiness to
+go.  I would at least avoid a scandal.'
+
+'You go?--of your own will, you go?' she cried.
+
+'I cannot say so much, perhaps,' he answered; 'but I go with good
+alacrity.  I have desired a change some time; behold one offered me!
+Shall I refuse?  Thank God, I am not so destitute of humour as to make a
+tragedy of such a farce.'  He flicked the order on the table.  'You may
+signify my readiness,' he added grandly.
+
+'Ah,' she said, 'you are more angry than you own.'
+
+'I, madam? angry?' he cried.  'You rave!  I have no cause for anger.  In
+every way I have been taught my weakness, my instability, and my
+unfitness for the world.  I am a plexus of weaknesses, an impotent
+Prince, a doubtful gentleman; and you yourself, indulgent as you are,
+have twice reproved my levity.  And shall I be angry?  I may feel the
+unkindness, but I have sufficient honesty of mind to see the reasons of
+this _coup d'etat_.'
+
+'From whom have you got this?' she cried in wonder.  'You think you have
+not behaved well?  My Prince, were you not young and handsome, I should
+detest you for your virtues.  You push them to the verge of commonplace.
+And this ingratitude--'
+
+'Understand me, Madame von Rosen,' returned the Prince, flushing a little
+darker, 'there can be here no talk of gratitude, none of pride.  You are
+here, by what circumstance I know not, but doubtless led by your
+kindness, mixed up in what regards my family alone.  You have no
+knowledge what my wife, your sovereign, may have suffered; it is not for
+you--no, nor for me--to judge.  I own myself in fault; and were it
+otherwise, a man were a very empty boaster who should talk of love and
+start before a small humiliation.  It is in all the copybooks that one
+should die to please his lady-love; and shall a man not go to prison?'
+
+'Love?  And what has love to do with being sent to gaol?' exclaimed the
+Countess, appealing to the walls and roof.  'Heaven knows I think as much
+of love as any one; my life would prove it; but I admit no love, at least
+for a man, that is not equally returned.  The rest is moonshine.'
+
+'I think of love more absolutely, madam, though I am certain no more
+tenderly, than a lady to whom I am indebted for such kindnesses,'
+returned the Prince.  'But this is unavailing.  We are not here to hold a
+court of troubadours.'
+
+'Still,' she replied, 'there is one thing you forget.  If she conspires
+with Gondremark against your liberty, she may conspire with him against
+your honour also.'
+
+'My honour?' he repeated.  'For a woman, you surprise me.  If I have
+failed to gain her love or play my part of husband, what right is left
+me? or what honour can remain in such a scene of defeat?  No honour that
+I recognise.  I am become a stranger.  If my wife no longer loves me, I
+will go to prison, since she wills it; if she love another, where should
+I be more in place? or whose fault is it but mine?  You speak, Madame von
+Rosen, like too many women, with a man's tongue.  Had I myself fallen
+into temptation (as, Heaven knows, I might) I should have trembled, but
+still hoped and asked for her forgiveness; and yet mine had been a
+treason in the teeth of love.  But let me tell you, madam,' he pursued,
+with rising irritation, 'where a husband by futility, facility, and
+ill-timed humours has outwearied his wife's patience, I will suffer
+neither man nor woman to misjudge her.  She is free; the man has been
+found wanting.'
+
+'Because she loves you not?' the Countess cried.  'You know she is
+incapable of such a feeling.'
+
+'Rather, it was I who was born incapable of inspiring it,' said Otto.
+
+Madame von Rosen broke into sudden laughter.  'Fool,' she cried, 'I am in
+love with you myself!'
+
+'Ah, madam, you are most compassionate,' the Prince retorted, smiling.
+'But this is waste debate.  I know my purpose.  Perhaps, to equal you in
+frankness, I know and embrace my advantage.  I am not without the spirit
+of adventure.  I am in a false position--so recognised by public
+acclamation: do you grudge me, then, my issue?'
+
+'If your mind is made up, why should I dissuade you?' said the Countess.
+'I own, with a bare face, I am the gainer.  Go, you take my heart with
+you, or more of it than I desire; I shall not sleep at night for thinking
+of your misery.  But do not be afraid; I would not spoil you, you are
+such a fool and hero.'
+
+'Alas! madam,' cried the Prince, 'and your unlucky money!  I did amiss to
+take it, but you are a wonderful persuader.  And I thank God, I can still
+offer you the fair equivalent.'  He took some papers from the chimney.
+'Here, madam, are the title-deeds,' he said; 'where I am going, they can
+certainly be of no use to me, and I have now no other hope of making up
+to you your kindness.  You made the loan without formality, obeying your
+kind heart.  The parts are somewhat changed; the sun of this Prince of
+Grunewald is upon the point of setting; and I know you better than to
+doubt you will once more waive ceremony, and accept the best that he can
+give you.  If I may look for any pleasure in the coming time, it will be
+to remember that the peasant is secure, and my most generous friend no
+loser.'
+
+'Do you not understand my odious position?' cried the Countess.  'Dear
+Prince, it is upon your fall that I begin my fortune.'
+
+'It was the more like you to tempt me to resistance,' returned Otto.
+'But this cannot alter our relations; and I must, for the last time, lay
+my commands upon you in the character of Prince.'  And with his loftiest
+dignity, he forced the deeds on her acceptance.
+
+'I hate the very touch of them,' she cried.
+
+There followed upon this a little silence.  'At what time,' resumed Otto,
+'(if indeed you know) am I to be arrested?'
+
+'Your Highness, when you please!' exclaimed the Countess.  'Or, if you
+choose to tear that paper, never!'
+
+'I would rather it were done quickly,' said the Prince.  'I shall take
+but time to leave a letter for the Princess.'
+
+'Well,' said the Countess, 'I have advised you to resist; at the same
+time, if you intend to be dumb before your shearers, I must say that I
+ought to set about arranging your arrest.  I offered'--she hesitated--'I
+offered to manage it, intending, my dear friend--intending, upon my soul,
+to be of use to you.  Well, if you will not profit by my goodwill, then
+be of use to me; and as soon as ever you feel ready, go to the Flying
+Mercury where we met last night.  It will be none the worse for you; and
+to make it quite plain, it will be better for the rest of us.'
+
+'Dear madam, certainly,' said Otto.  'If I am prepared for the chief
+evil, I shall not quarrel with details.  Go, then, with my best
+gratitude; and when I have written a few lines of leave-taking, I shall
+immediately hasten to keep tryst.  To-night I shall not meet so dangerous
+a cavalier,' he added, with a smiling gallantry.
+
+As soon as Madame von Rosen was gone, he made a great call upon his
+self-command.  He was face to face with a miserable passage where, if it
+were possible, he desired to carry himself with dignity.  As to the main
+fact, he never swerved or faltered; he had come so heart-sick and so
+cruelly humiliated from his talk with Gotthold, that he embraced the
+notion of imprisonment with something bordering on relief.  Here was, at
+least, a step which he thought blameless; here was a way out of his
+troubles.  He sat down to write to Seraphina; and his anger blazed.  The
+tale of his forbearances mounted, in his eyes, to something monstrous;
+still more monstrous, the coldness, egoism, and cruelty that had required
+and thus requited them.  The pen which he had taken shook in his hand.
+He was amazed to find his resignation fled, but it was gone beyond his
+recall.  In a few white-hot words, he bade adieu, dubbing desperation by
+the name of love, and calling his wrath forgiveness; then he cast but one
+look of leave-taking on the place that had been his for so long and was
+now to be his no longer; and hurried forth--love's prisoner--or pride's.
+
+He took that private passage which he had trodden so often in less
+momentous hours.  The porter let him out; and the bountiful, cold air of
+the night and the pure glory of the stars received him on the threshold.
+He looked round him, breathing deep of earth's plain fragrance; he looked
+up into the great array of heaven, and was quieted.  His little turgid
+life dwindled to its true proportions; and he saw himself (that great
+flame-hearted martyr!) stand like a speck under the cool cupola of the
+night.  Thus he felt his careless injuries already soothed; the live air
+of out-of-doors, the quiet of the world, as if by their silent music,
+sobering and dwarfing his emotions.
+
+'Well, I forgive her,' he said.  'If it be of any use to her, I forgive.'
+
+And with brisk steps he crossed the garden, issued upon the Park, and
+came to the Flying Mercury.  A dark figure moved forward from the shadow
+of the pedestal.
+
+'I have to ask your pardon, sir,' a voice observed, 'but if I am right in
+taking you for the Prince, I was given to understand that you would be
+prepared to meet me.'
+
+'Herr Gordon, I believe?' said Otto.
+
+'Herr Oberst Gordon,' replied that officer.  'This is rather a ticklish
+business for a man to be embarked in; and to find that all is to go
+pleasantly is a great relief to me.  The carriage is at hand; shall I
+have the honour of following your Highness?'
+
+'Colonel,' said the Prince, 'I have now come to that happy moment of my
+life when I have orders to receive but none to give.'
+
+'A most philosophical remark,' returned the Colonel.  'Begad, a very
+pertinent remark! it might be Plutarch.  I am not a drop's blood to your
+Highness, or indeed to any one in this principality; or else I should
+dislike my orders.  But as it is, and since there is nothing unnatural or
+unbecoming on my side, and your Highness takes it in good part, I begin
+to believe we may have a capital time together, sir--a capital time.  For
+a gaoler is only a fellow-captive.'
+
+'May I inquire, Herr Gordon,' asked Otto, 'what led you to accept this
+dangerous and I would fain hope thankless office?'
+
+'Very natural, I am sure,' replied the officer of fortune.  'My pay is,
+in the meanwhile, doubled.'
+
+'Well, sir, I will not presume to criticise,' returned the Prince.  'And
+I perceive the carriage.'
+
+Sure enough, at the intersection of two alleys of the Park, a coach and
+four, conspicuous by its lanterns, stood in waiting.  And a little way
+off about a score of lancers were drawn up under the shadow of the trees.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII--PROVIDENCE VON ROSEN: ACT THE THIRD
+SHE ENLIGHTENS SERAPHINA
+
+
+When Madame von Rosen left the Prince, she hurried straight to Colonel
+Gordon; and not content with directing the arrangements, she had herself
+accompanied the soldier of fortune to the Flying Mercury.  The Colonel
+gave her his arm, and the talk between this pair of conspirators ran high
+and lively.  The Countess, indeed, was in a whirl of pleasure and
+excitement; her tongue stumbled upon laughter, her eyes shone, the colour
+that was usually wanting now perfected her face.  It would have taken
+little more to bring Gordon to her feet--or so, at least, she believed,
+disdaining the idea.
+
+Hidden among some lilac bushes, she enjoyed the great decorum of the
+arrest, and heard the dialogue of the two men die away along the path.
+Soon after, the rolling of a carriage and the beat of hoofs arose in the
+still air of the night, and passed speedily farther and fainter into
+silence.  The Prince was gone.
+
+Madame von Rosen consulted her watch.  She had still, she thought, time
+enough for the tit-bit of her evening; and hurrying to the palace, winged
+by the fear of Gondremark's arrival, she sent her name and a pressing
+request for a reception to the Princess Seraphina.  As the Countess von
+Rosen unqualified, she was sure to be refused; but as an emissary of the
+Baron's, for so she chose to style herself, she gained immediate entry.
+
+The Princess sat alone at table, making a feint of dining.  Her cheeks
+were mottled, her eyes heavy; she had neither slept nor eaten; even her
+dress had been neglected.  In short, she was out of health, out of looks,
+out of heart, and hag-ridden by her conscience.  The Countess drew a
+swift comparison, and shone brighter in beauty.
+
+'You come, madam, _de la part de Monsieur le Baron_,' drawled the
+Princess.  'Be seated!  What have you to say?'
+
+'To say?' repeated Madame von Rosen, 'O, much to say!  Much to say that I
+would rather not, and much to leave unsaid that I would rather say.  For
+I am like St. Paul, your Highness, and always wish to do the things I
+should not.  Well! to be categorical--that is the word?--I took the
+Prince your order.  He could not credit his senses.  "Ah," he cried "dear
+Madame von Rosen, it is not possible--it cannot be I must hear it from
+your lips.  My wife is a poor girl misled, she is only silly, she is not
+cruel."  "_Mon Prince_," said I, "a girl--and therefore cruel; youth
+kills flies."--He had such pain to understand it!'
+
+'Madame von Rosen,' said the Princess, in most steadfast tones, but with
+a rose of anger in her face, 'who sent you here, and for what purpose?
+Tell your errand.'
+
+'O, madam, I believe you understand me very well,' returned von Rosen.
+'I have not your philosophy.  I wear my heart upon my sleeve, excuse the
+indecency!  It is a very little one,' she laughed, 'and I so often change
+the sleeve!'
+
+'Am I to understand the Prince has been arrested?' asked the Princess,
+rising.
+
+'While you sat there dining!' cried the Countess, still nonchalantly
+seated.
+
+'You have discharged your errand,' was the reply; 'I will not detain
+you.'
+
+'O no, madam,' said the Countess, 'with your permission, I have not yet
+done.  I have borne much this evening in your service.  I have suffered.
+I was made to suffer in your service.'  She unfolded her fan as she
+spoke.  Quick as her pulses beat, the fan waved languidly.  She betrayed
+her emotion only by the brightness of her eyes and face, and by the
+almost insolent triumph with which she looked down upon the Princess.
+There were old scores of rivalry between them in more than one field; so
+at least von Rosen felt; and now she was to have her hour of victory in
+them all.
+
+'You are no servant, Madame von Rosen, of mine,' said Seraphina.
+
+'No, madam, indeed,' returned the Countess; 'but we both serve the same
+person, as you know--or if you do not, then I have the pleasure of
+informing you.  Your conduct is so light--so light,' she repeated, the
+fan wavering higher like a butterfly, 'that perhaps you do not truly
+understand.'  The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap,
+and rose to a less languorous position.  'Indeed,' she continued, 'I
+should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation.  You began with
+every advantage--birth, a suitable marriage--quite pretty too--and see
+what you have come to!  My poor girl, to think of it!  But there is
+nothing that does so much harm,' observed the Countess finely, 'as
+giddiness of mind.'  And she once more unfurled the fan, and approvingly
+fanned herself.
+
+'I will no longer permit you to forget yourself,' cried Seraphina.  'I
+think you are mad.'
+
+'Not mad,' returned von Rosen.  'Sane enough to know you dare not break
+with me to-night, and to profit by the knowledge.  I left my poor, pretty
+Prince Charming crying his eyes out for a wooden doll.  My heart is soft;
+I love my pretty Prince; you will never understand it, but I long to give
+my Prince his doll, dry his poor eyes, and send him off happy.  O, you
+immature fool!' the Countess cried, rising to her feet, and pointing at
+the Princess the closed fan that now began to tremble in her hand.  'O
+wooden doll!' she cried, 'have you a heart, or blood, of any nature?
+This is a man, child--a man who loves you.  O, it will not happen twice!
+it is not common; beautiful and clever women look in vain for it.  And
+you, you pitiful schoolgirl, tread this jewel under foot! you, stupid
+with your vanity!  Before you try to govern kingdoms, you should first be
+able to behave yourself at home; home is the woman's kingdom.'  She
+paused and laughed a little, strangely to hear and look upon.  'I will
+tell you one of the things,' she said, 'that were to stay unspoken.  Von
+Rosen is a better women than you, my Princess, though you will never have
+the pain of understanding it; and when I took the Prince your order, and
+looked upon his face, my soul was melted--O, I am frank--here, within my
+arms, I offered him repose!'  She advanced a step superbly as she spoke,
+with outstretched arms; and Seraphina shrank.  'Do not be alarmed!' the
+Countess cried; 'I am not offering that hermitage to you; in all the
+world there is but one who wants to, and him you have dismissed!  "If it
+will give her pleasure I should wear the martyr's crown," he cried, "I
+will embrace the thorns."  I tell you--I am quite frank--I put the order
+in his power and begged him to resist.  You, who have betrayed your
+husband, may betray me to Gondremark; my Prince would betray no one.
+Understand it plainly,' she cried, ''tis of his pure forbearance that you
+sit there; he had the power--I gave it him--to change the parts; and he
+refused, and went to prison in your place.'
+
+The Princess spoke with some distress.  'Your violence shocks me and
+pains me,' she began, 'but I cannot be angry with what at least does
+honour to the mistaken kindness of your heart: it was right for me to
+know this.  I will condescend to tell you.  It was with deep regret that
+I was driven to this step.  I admire in many ways the Prince--I admit his
+amiability.  It was our great misfortune, it was perhaps somewhat of my
+fault, that we were so unsuited to each other; but I have a regard, a
+sincere regard, for all his qualities.  As a private person I should
+think as you do.  It is difficult, I know, to make allowances for state
+considerations.  I have only with deep reluctance obeyed the call of a
+superior duty; and so soon as I dare do it for the safety of the state, I
+promise you the Prince shall be released.  Many in my situation would
+have resented your freedoms.  I am not'--and she looked for a moment
+rather piteously upon the Countess--'I am not altogether so inhuman as
+you think.'
+
+'And you can put these troubles of the state,' the Countess cried, 'to
+weigh with a man's love?'
+
+'Madame von Rosen, these troubles are affairs of life and death to many;
+to the Prince, and perhaps even to yourself, among the number,' replied
+the Princess, with dignity.  'I have learned, madam, although still so
+young, in a hard school, that my own feelings must everywhere come last.'
+
+'O callow innocence!' exclaimed the other.  'Is it possible you do not
+know, or do not suspect, the intrigue in which you move?  I find it in my
+heart to pity you!  We are both women after all--poor girl, poor
+girl!--and who is born a woman is born a fool.  And though I hate all
+women--come, for the common folly, I forgive you.  Your Highness'--she
+dropped a deep stage curtsey and resumed her fan--'I am going to insult
+you, to betray one who is called my lover, and if it pleases you to use
+the power I now put unreservedly into your hands, to ruin my dear self.
+O what a French comedy!  You betray, I betray, they betray.  It is now my
+cue.  The letter, yes.  Behold the letter, madam, its seal unbroken as I
+found it by my bed this morning; for I was out of humour, and I get many,
+too many, of these favours.  For your own sake, for the sake of my Prince
+Charming, for the sake of this great principality that sits so heavy on
+your conscience, open it and read!'
+
+'Am I to understand,' inquired the Princess, 'that this letter in any way
+regards me?'
+
+'You see I have not opened it,' replied von Rosen; 'but 'tis mine, and I
+beg you to experiment.'
+
+'I cannot look at it till you have,' returned Seraphina, very seriously.
+'There may be matter there not meant for me to see; it is a private
+letter.'
+
+The Countess tore it open, glanced it through, and tossed it back; and
+the Princess, taking up the sheet, recognised the hand of Gondremark, and
+read with a sickening shock the following lines:--
+
+    'Dearest Anna, come at once.  Ratafia has done the deed, her husband
+    is to be packed to prison.  This puts the minx entirely in my power;
+    _le tour est joue_; she will now go steady in harness, or I will know
+    the reason why.  Come.
+
+                                                                HEINRICH.'
+
+'Command yourself, madam,' said the Countess, watching with some alarm
+the white face of Seraphina.  'It is in vain for you to fight with
+Gondremark; he has more strings than mere court favour, and could bring
+you down to-morrow with a word.  I would not have betrayed him otherwise;
+but Heinrich is a man, and plays with all of you like marionnettes.  And
+now at least you see for what you sacrificed my Prince.  Madam, will you
+take some wine?  I have been cruel.'
+
+'Not cruel, madam--salutary,' said Seraphina, with a phantom smile.  'No,
+I thank you, I require no attentions.  The first surprise affected me:
+will you give me time a little?  I must think.'
+
+She took her head between her hands, and contemplated for a while the
+hurricane confusion of her thoughts.
+
+'This information reaches me,' she said, 'when I have need of it.  I
+would not do as you have done, but yet I thank you.  I have been much
+deceived in Baron Gondremark.'
+
+'O, madam, leave Gondremark, and think upon the Prince!' cried von Rosen.
+
+'You speak once more as a private person,' said the Princess; 'nor do I
+blame you.  But my own thoughts are more distracted.  However, as I
+believe you are truly a friend to my--to the--as I believe,' she said,
+'you are a friend to Otto, I shall put the order for his release into
+your hands this moment.  Give me the ink-dish.  There!'  And she wrote
+hastily, steadying her arm upon the table, for she trembled like a reed.
+'Remember; madam,' she resumed, handing her the order, 'this must not be
+used nor spoken of at present; till I have seen the Baron, any hurried
+step--I lose myself in thinking.  The suddenness has shaken me.'
+
+'I promise you I will not use it,' said the Countess, 'till you give me
+leave, although I wish the Prince could be informed of it, to comfort his
+poor heart.  And O, I had forgotten, he has left a letter.  Suffer me,
+madam, I will bring it you.  This is the door, I think?'  And she sought
+to open it.
+
+'The bolt is pushed,' said Seraphina, flushing.
+
+'O!  O!' cried the Countess.
+
+A silence fell between them.
+
+'I will get it for myself,' said Seraphina; 'and in the meanwhile I beg
+you to leave me.  I thank you, I am sure, but I shall be obliged if you
+will leave me.'
+
+The Countess deeply curtseyed, and withdrew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV--RELATES THE CAUSE AND OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+
+Brave as she was, and brave by intellect, the Princess, when first she
+was alone, clung to the table for support.  The four corners of her
+universe had fallen.  She had never liked nor trusted Gondremark
+completely; she had still held it possible to find him false to
+friendship; but from that to finding him devoid of all those public
+virtues for which she had honoured him, a mere commonplace intriguer,
+using her for his own ends, the step was wide and the descent giddy.
+Light and darkness succeeded each other in her brain; now she believed,
+and now she could not.  She turned, blindly groping for the note.  But
+von Rosen, who had not forgotten to take the warrant from the Prince, had
+remembered to recover her note from the Princess: von Rosen was an old
+campaigner, whose most violent emotion aroused rather than clouded the
+vigour of her reason.
+
+The thought recalled to Seraphina the remembrance of the other
+letter--Otto's.  She rose and went speedily, her brain still wheeling,
+and burst into the Prince's armoury.  The old chamberlain was there in
+waiting; and the sight of another face, prying (or so she felt) on her
+distress, struck Seraphina into childish anger.
+
+'Go!' she cried; and then, when the old man was already half-way to the
+door, 'Stay!' she added.  'As soon as Baron Gondremark arrives, let him
+attend me here.'
+
+'It shall be so directed,' said the chamberlain.
+
+'There was a letter . . . ' she began, and paused.
+
+'Her Highness,' said the chamberlain, 'will, find a letter on the table.
+I had received no orders, or her Highness had been spared this trouble.'
+
+'No, no, no,' she cried.  'I thank you.  I desire to be alone.'
+
+And then, when he was gone, she leaped upon the letter.  Her mind was
+still obscured; like the moon upon a night of clouds and wind, her reason
+shone and was darkened, and she read the words by flashes.
+
+    'Seraphina,' the Prince wrote, 'I will write no syllable of reproach.
+    I have seen your order, and I go.  What else is left me?  I have
+    wasted my love, and have no more.  To say that I forgive you is not
+    needful; at least, we are now separate for ever; by your own act, you
+    free me from my willing bondage: I go free to prison.  This is the
+    last that you will hear of me in love or anger.  I have gone out of
+    your life; you may breathe easy; you have now rid yourself of the
+    husband who allowed you to desert him, of the Prince who gave you his
+    rights, and of the married lover who made it his pride to defend you
+    in your absence.  How you have requited him, your own heart more
+    loudly tells you than my words.  There is a day coming when your vain
+    dreams will roll away like clouds, and you will find yourself alone.
+    Then you will remember
+
+                                                                    OTTO.'
+
+She read with a great horror on her mind; that day, of which he wrote,
+was come.  She was alone; she had been false, she had been cruel; remorse
+rolled in upon her; and then with a more piercing note, vanity bounded on
+the stage of consciousness.  She a dupe! she helpless! she to have
+betrayed herself in seeking to betray her husband! she to have lived
+these years upon flattery, grossly swallowing the bolus, like a clown
+with sharpers! she--Seraphina!  Her swift mind drank the consequences;
+she foresaw the coming fall, her public shame; she saw the odium,
+disgrace, and folly of her story flaunt through Europe.  She recalled the
+scandal she had so royally braved; and alas! she had now no courage to
+confront it with.  To be thought the mistress of that man: perhaps for
+that. . . . She closed her eyes on agonising vistas.  Swift as thought
+she had snatched a bright dagger from the weapons that shone along the
+wall.  Ay, she would escape.  From that world-wide theatre of nodding
+heads and buzzing whisperers, in which she now beheld herself unpitiably
+martyred, one door stood open.  At any cost, through any stress of
+suffering, that greasy laughter should be stifled.  She closed her eyes,
+breathed a wordless prayer, and pressed the weapon to her bosom.
+
+At the astonishing sharpness of the prick, she gave a cry and awoke to a
+sense of undeserved escape.  A little ruby spot of blood was the reward
+of that great act of desperation; but the pain had braced her like a
+tonic, and her whole design of suicide had passed away.
+
+At the same instant regular feet drew near along the gallery, and she
+knew the tread of the big Baron, so often gladly welcome, and even now
+rallying her spirits like a call to battle.  She concealed the dagger in
+the folds of her skirt; and drawing her stature up, she stood
+firm-footed, radiant with anger, waiting for the foe.
+
+The Baron was announced, and entered.  To him, Seraphina was a hated
+task: like the schoolboy with his Virgil, he had neither will nor leisure
+to remark her beauties; but when he now beheld her standing illuminated
+by her passion, new feelings flashed upon him, a frank admiration, a
+brief sparkle of desire.  He noted both with joy; they were means.  'If I
+have to play the lover,' thought he, for that was his constant
+preoccupation, 'I believe I can put soul into it.'  Meanwhile, with his
+usual ponderous grace, he bent before the lady.
+
+'I propose,' she said in a strange voice, not known to her till then,
+'that we release the Prince and do not prosecute the war.'
+
+'Ah, madam,' he replied, ''tis as I knew it would be!  Your heart, I
+knew, would wound you when we came to this distasteful but most necessary
+step.  Ah, madam, believe me, I am not unworthy to be your ally; I know
+you have qualities to which I am a stranger, and count them the best
+weapons in the armoury of our alliance:--the girl in the queen--pity,
+love, tenderness, laughter; the smile that can reward.  I can only
+command; I am the frowner.  But you!  And you have the fortitude to
+command these comely weaknesses, to tread them down at the call of
+reason.  How often have I not admired it even to yourself!  Ay, even to
+yourself,' he added tenderly, dwelling, it seemed, in memory on hours of
+more private admiration.  'But now, madam--'
+
+'But now, Herr von Gondremark, the time for these declarations has gone
+by,' she cried.  'Are you true to me? are you false?  Look in your heart
+and answer: it is your heart I want to know.'
+
+'It has come,' thought Gondremark.  'You, madam!' he cried, starting
+back--with fear, you would have said, and yet a timid joy.  'You!
+yourself, you bid me look into my heart?'
+
+'Do you suppose I fear?' she cried, and looked at him with such a
+heightened colour, such bright eyes, and a smile of so abstruse a
+meaning, that the Baron discarded his last doubt.
+
+'Ah, madam!' he cried, plumping on his knees.  'Seraphina!  Do you permit
+me? have you divined my secret?  It is true--I put my life with joy into
+your power--I love you, love with ardour, as an equal, as a mistress, as
+a brother-in-arms, as an adored, desired, sweet-hearted woman.  O Bride!'
+he cried, waxing dithyrambic, 'bride of my reason and my senses, have
+pity, have pity on my love!'
+
+She heard him with wonder, rage, and then contempt.  His words offended
+her to sickness; his appearance, as he grovelled bulkily upon the floor,
+moved her to such laughter as we laugh in nightmares.
+
+'O shame!' she cried.  'Absurd and odious!  What would the Countess say?'
+
+That great Baron Gondremark, the excellent politician, remained for some
+little time upon his knees in a frame of mind which perhaps we are
+allowed to pity.  His vanity, within his iron bosom, bled and raved.  If
+he could have blotted all, if he could have withdrawn part, if he had not
+called her bride--with a roaring in his ears, he thus regretfully
+reviewed his declaration.  He got to his feet tottering; and then, in
+that first moment when a dumb agony finds a vent in words, and the tongue
+betrays the inmost and worst of a man, he permitted himself a retort
+which, for six weeks to follow, he was to repent at leisure.
+
+'Ah,' said he, 'the Countess?  Now I perceive the reason of your
+Highness's disorder.'
+
+The lackey-like insolence of the words was driven home by a more insolent
+manner.  There fell upon Seraphina one of those storm-clouds which had
+already blackened upon her reason; she heard herself cry out; and when
+the cloud dispersed, flung the blood-stained dagger on the floor, and saw
+Gondremark reeling back with open mouth and clapping his hand upon the
+wound.  The next moment, with oaths that she had never heard, he leaped
+at her in savage passion; clutched her as she recoiled; and in the very
+act, stumbled and drooped.  She had scarce time to fear his murderous
+onslaught ere he fell before her feet.
+
+He rose upon one elbow; she still staring upon him, white with horror.
+
+'Anna!' he cried, 'Anna!  Help!'
+
+And then his utterance failed him, and he fell back, to all appearance
+dead.
+
+Seraphina ran to and fro in the room; she wrung her hands and cried
+aloud; within she was all one uproar of terror, and conscious of no
+articulate wish but to awake.
+
+There came a knocking at the door; and she sprang to it and held it,
+panting like a beast, and with the strength of madness in her arms, till
+she had pushed the bolt.  At this success a certain calm fell upon her
+reason.  She went back and looked upon her victim, the knocking growing
+louder.  O yes, he was dead.  She had killed him.  He had called upon von
+Rosen with his latest breath; ah! who would call on Seraphina?  She had
+killed him.  She, whose irresolute hand could scarce prick blood from her
+own bosom, had found strength to cast down that great colossus at a blow.
+
+All this while the knocking was growing more uproarious and more unlike
+the staid career of life in such a palace.  Scandal was at the door, with
+what a fatal following she dreaded to conceive; and at the same time
+among the voices that now began to summon her by name, she recognised the
+Chancellor's.  He or another, somebody must be the first.
+
+'Is Herr von Greisengesang without?' she called.
+
+'Your Highness--yes!' the old gentleman answered.  'We have heard cries,
+a fall.  Is anything amiss?'
+
+'Nothing,' replied Seraphina 'I desire to speak with you.  Send off the
+rest.'  She panted between each phrase; but her mind was clear.  She let
+the looped curtain down upon both sides before she drew the bolt; and,
+thus secure from any sudden eyeshot from without, admitted the obsequious
+Chancellor, and again made fast the door.
+
+Greisengesang clumsily revolved among the wings of the curtain, so that
+she was clear of it as soon as he.
+
+'My God!' he cried 'The Baron!'
+
+'I have killed him,' she said.  'O, killed him!'
+
+'Dear me,' said the old gentleman, 'this is most unprecedented.  Lovers'
+quarrels,' he added ruefully, 'redintegratio--' and then paused.  'But,
+my dear madam,' he broke out again, 'in the name of all that is
+practical, what are we to do?  This is exceedingly grave; morally, madam,
+it is appalling.  I take the liberty, your Highness, for one moment, of
+addressing you as a daughter, a loved although respected daughter; and I
+must say that I cannot conceal from you that this is morally most
+questionable.  And, O dear me, we have a dead body!'
+
+She had watched him closely; hope fell to contempt; she drew away her
+skirts from his weakness, and, in the act, her own strength returned to
+her.
+
+'See if he be dead,' she said; not one word of explanation or defence;
+she had scorned to justify herself before so poor a creature: 'See if he
+be dead' was all.
+
+With the greatest compunction, the Chancellor drew near; and as he did so
+the wounded Baron rolled his eyes.
+
+'He lives,' cried the old courtier, turning effusively to Seraphina.
+'Madam, he still lives.'
+
+'Help him, then,' returned the Princess, standing fixed.  'Bind up his
+wound.'
+
+'Madam, I have no means,' protested the Chancellor.
+
+'Can you not take your handkerchief, your neck-cloth, anything?' she
+cried; and at the same moment, from her light muslin gown she rent off a
+flounce and tossed it on the floor.  'Take that,' she said, and for the
+first time directly faced Greisengesang.
+
+But the Chancellor held up his hands and turned away his head in agony.
+The grasp of the falling Baron had torn down the dainty fabric of the
+bodice; and--'O Highness!' cried Greisengesang, appalled, 'the terrible
+disorder of your toilette!'
+
+'Take up that flounce,' she said; 'the man may die.'
+
+Greisengesang turned in a flutter to the Baron, and attempted some
+innocent and bungling measures.  'He still breathes,' he kept saying.
+'All is not yet over; he is not yet gone.'
+
+'And now,' said she 'if that is all you can do, begone and get some
+porters; he must instantly go home.'
+
+'Madam,' cried the Chancellor, 'if this most melancholy sight were seen
+in town--O dear, the State would fall!' he piped.
+
+'There is a litter in the Palace,' she replied.  'It is your part to see
+him safe.  I lay commands upon you.  On your life it stands.'
+
+'I see it, dear Highness,' he jerked.  'Clearly I see it.  But how? what
+men?  The Prince's servants--yes.  They had a personal affection.  They
+will be true, if any.'
+
+'O, not them!' she cried.  'Take Sabra, my own man.'
+
+'Sabra!  The grand-mason?' returned the Chancellor, aghast.  'If he but
+saw this, he would sound the tocsin--we should all be butchered.'
+
+She measured the depth of her abasement steadily.  'Take whom you must,'
+she said, 'and bring the litter here.'
+
+Once she was alone she ran to the Baron, and with a sickening heart
+sought to allay the flux of blood.  The touch of the skin of that great
+charlatan revolted her to the toes; the wound, in her ignorant eyes,
+looked deathly; yet she contended with her shuddering, and, with more
+skill at least than the Chancellor's, staunched the welling injury.  An
+eye unprejudiced with hate would have admired the Baron in his swoon; he
+looked so great and shapely; it was so powerful a machine that lay
+arrested; and his features, cleared for the moment both of temper and
+dissimulation, were seen to be so purely modelled.  But it was not thus
+with Seraphina.  Her victim, as he lay outspread, twitching a little, his
+big chest unbared, fixed her with his ugliness; and her mind flitted for
+a glimpse to Otto.
+
+Rumours began to sound about the Palace of feet running and of voices
+raised; the echoes of the great arched staircase were voluble of some
+confusion; and then the gallery jarred with a quick and heavy tramp.  It
+was the Chancellor, followed by four of Otto's valets and a litter.  The
+servants, when they were admitted, stared at the dishevelled Princess and
+the wounded man; speech was denied them, but their thoughts were riddled
+with profanity.  Gondremark was bundled in; the curtains of the litter
+were lowered; the bearers carried it forth, and the Chancellor followed
+behind with a white face.
+
+Seraphina ran to the window.  Pressing her face upon the pane, she could
+see the terrace, where the lights contended; thence, the avenue of lamps
+that joined the Palace and town; and overhead the hollow night and the
+larger stars.  Presently the small procession issued from the Palace,
+crossed the parade, and began to thread the glittering alley: the
+swinging couch with its four porters, the much-pondering Chancellor
+behind.  She watched them dwindle with strange thoughts: her eyes fixed
+upon the scene, her mind still glancing right and left on the overthrow
+of her life and hopes.  There was no one left in whom she might confide;
+none whose hand was friendly, or on whom she dared to reckon for the
+barest loyalty.  With the fall of Gondremark, her party, her brief
+popularity, had fallen.  So she sat crouched upon the window-seat, her
+brow to the cool pane; her dress in tatters, barely shielding her; her
+mind revolving bitter thoughts.
+
+Meanwhile, consequences were fast mounting; and in the deceptive quiet of
+the night, downfall and red revolt were brewing.  The litter had passed
+forth between the iron gates and entered on the streets of the town.  By
+what flying panic, by what thrill of air communicated, who shall say? but
+the passing bustle in the Palace had already reached and re-echoed in the
+region of the burghers.  Rumour, with her loud whisper, hissed about the
+town; men left their homes without knowing why; knots formed along the
+boulevard; under the rare lamps and the great limes the crowd grew
+blacker.
+
+And now through the midst of that expectant company, the unusual sight of
+a closed litter was observed approaching, and trotting hard behind it
+that great dignitary Cancellarius Greisengesang.  Silence looked on as it
+went by; and as soon as it was passed, the whispering seethed over like a
+boiling pot.  The knots were sundered; and gradually, one following
+another, the whole mob began to form into a procession and escort the
+curtained litter.  Soon spokesmen, a little bolder than their mates,
+began to ply the Chancellor with questions.  Never had he more need of
+that great art of falsehood, by whose exercise he had so richly lived.
+And yet now he stumbled, the master passion, fear, betraying him.  He was
+pressed; he became incoherent; and then from the jolting litter came a
+groan.  In the instant hubbub and the gathering of the crowd as to a
+natural signal, the clear-eyed quavering Chancellor heard the catch of
+the clock before it strikes the hour of doom; and for ten seconds he
+forgot himself.  This shall atone for many sins.  He plucked a bearer by
+the sleeve.  'Bid the Princess flee.  All is lost,' he whispered.  And
+the next moment he was babbling for his life among the multitude.
+
+Five minutes later the wild-eyed servant burst into the armoury.  'All is
+lost!' he cried.  'The Chancellor bids you flee.'  And at the same time,
+looking through the window, Seraphina saw the black rush of the populace
+begin to invade the lamplit avenue.
+
+'Thank you, Georg,' she said.  'I thank you.  Go.'  And as the man still
+lingered, 'I bid you go,' she added.  'Save yourself.'
+
+Down by the private passage, and just some two hours later, Amalia
+Seraphina, the last Princess, followed Otto Johann Friedrich, the last
+Prince of Grunewald.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III--FORTUNATE MISFORTUNE
+
+
+CHAPTER I--PRINCESS CINDERELLA
+
+
+The porter, drawn by the growing turmoil, had vanished from the postern,
+and the door stood open on the darkness of the night.  As Seraphina fled
+up the terraces, the cries and loud footing of the mob drew nearer the
+doomed palace; the rush was like the rush of cavalry; the sound of
+shattering lamps tingled above the rest; and, overtowering all, she heard
+her own name bandied among the shouters.  A bugle sounded at the door of
+the guard-room; one gun was fired; and then with the yell of hundreds,
+Mittwalden Palace was carried at a rush.
+
+Sped by these dire sounds and voices, the Princess scaled the long
+garden, skimming like a bird the starlit stairways; crossed the Park,
+which was in that place narrow; and plunged upon the farther side into
+the rude shelter of the forest.  So, at a bound, she left the discretion
+and the cheerful lamps of Palace evenings; ceased utterly to be a
+sovereign lady; and, falling from the whole height of civilisation, ran
+forth into the woods, a ragged Cinderella.
+
+She went direct before her through an open tract of the forest, full of
+brush and birches, and where the starlight guided her; and, beyond that
+again, must thread the columned blackness of a pine grove joining
+overhead the thatch of its long branches.  At that hour the place was
+breathless; a horror of night like a presence occupied that dungeon of
+the wood; and she went groping, knocking against the boles--her ear,
+betweenwhiles, strained to aching and yet unrewarded.
+
+But the slope of the ground was upward, and encouraged her; and presently
+she issued on a rocky hill that stood forth above the sea of forest.  All
+around were other hill-tops, big and little; sable vales of forest
+between; overhead the open heaven and the brilliancy of countless stars;
+and along the western sky the dim forms of mountains.  The glory of the
+great night laid hold upon her; her eyes shone with stars; she dipped her
+sight into the coolness and brightness of the sky, as she might have
+dipped her wrist into a spring; and her heart, at that ethereal shock,
+began to move more soberly.  The sun that sails overhead, ploughing into
+gold the fields of daylight azure and uttering the signal to man's
+myriads, has no word apart for man the individual; and the moon, like a
+violin, only praises and laments our private destiny.  The stars alone,
+cheerful whisperers, confer quietly with each of us like friends; they
+give ear to our sorrows smilingly, like wise old men, rich in tolerance;
+and by their double scale, so small to the eye, so vast to the
+imagination, they keep before the mind the double character of man's
+nature and fate.
+
+There sat the Princess, beautifully looking upon beauty, in council with
+these glad advisers.  Bright like pictures, clear like a voice in the
+porches of her ear, memory re-enacted the tumult of the evening: the
+Countess and the dancing fan, the big Baron on his knees, the blood on
+the polished floor, the knocking, the swing of the litter down the avenue
+of lamps, the messenger, the cries of the charging mob; and yet all were
+far away and phantasmal, and she was still healingly conscious of the
+peace and glory of the night.  She looked towards Mittwalden; and above
+the hill-top, which already hid it from her view, a throbbing redness
+hinted of fire.  Better so: better so, that she should fall with tragic
+greatness, lit by a blazing palace!  She felt not a trace of pity for
+Gondremark or of concern for Grunewald: that period of her life was
+closed for ever, a wrench of wounded vanity alone surviving.  She had but
+one clear idea: to flee;--and another, obscure and half-rejected,
+although still obeyed: to flee in the direction of the Felsenburg.  She
+had a duty to perform, she must free Otto--so her mind said, very coldly;
+but her heart embraced the notion of that duty even with ardour, and her
+hands began to yearn for the grasp of kindness.
+
+She rose, with a start of recollection, and plunged down the slope into
+the covert.  The woods received and closed upon her.  Once more, she
+wandered and hasted in a blot, uncheered, unpiloted.  Here and there,
+indeed, through rents in the wood-roof, a glimmer attracted her; here and
+there a tree stood out among its neighbours by some force of outline;
+here and there a brushing among the leaves, a notable blackness, a dim
+shine, relieved, only to exaggerate, the solid oppression of the night
+and silence.  And betweenwhiles, the unfeatured darkness would redouble
+and the whole ear of night appear to be gloating on her steps.  Now she
+would stand still, and the silence, would grow and grow, till it weighed
+upon her breathing; and then she would address herself again to run,
+stumbling, falling, and still hurrying the more.  And presently the whole
+wood rocked and began to run along with her.  The noise of her own mad
+passage through the silence spread and echoed, and filled the night with
+terror.  Panic hunted her: Panic from the trees reached forth with
+clutching branches; the darkness was lit up and peopled with strange
+forms and faces.  She strangled and fled before her fears.  And yet in
+the last fortress, reason, blown upon by these gusts of terror, still
+shone with a troubled light.  She knew, yet could not act upon her
+knowledge; she knew that she must stop, and yet she still ran.
+
+She was already near madness, when she broke suddenly into a narrow
+clearing.  At the same time the din grew louder, and she became conscious
+of vague forms and fields of whiteness.  And with that the earth gave
+way; she fell and found her feet again with an incredible shock to her
+senses, and her mind was swallowed up.
+
+When she came again to herself, she was standing to the mid-leg in an icy
+eddy of a brook, and leaning with one hand on the rock from which it
+poured.  The spray had wet her hair.  She saw the white cascade, the
+stars wavering in the shaken pool, foam flitting, and high overhead the
+tall pines on either hand serenely drinking starshine; and in the sudden
+quiet of her spirit she heard with joy the firm plunge of the cataract in
+the pool.  She scrambled forth dripping.  In the face of her proved
+weakness, to adventure again upon the horror of blackness in the groves
+were a suicide of life or reason.  But here, in the alley of the brook,
+with the kind stars above her, and the moon presently swimming into
+sight, she could await the coming of day without alarm.
+
+This lane of pine-trees ran very rapidly down-hill and wound among the
+woods; but it was a wider thoroughfare than the brook needed, and here
+and there were little dimpling lawns and coves of the forest, where the
+starshine slumbered.  Such a lawn she paced, taking patience bravely; and
+now she looked up the hill and saw the brook coming down to her in a
+series of cascades; and now approached the margin, where it welled among
+the rushes silently; and now gazed at the great company of heaven with an
+enduring wonder.  The early evening had fallen chill, but the night was
+now temperate; out of the recesses of the wood there came mild airs as
+from a deep and peaceful breathing; and the dew was heavy on the grass
+and the tight-shut daisies.  This was the girl's first night under the
+naked heaven; and now that her fears were overpast, she was touched to
+the soul by its serene amenity and peace.  Kindly the host of heaven
+blinked down upon that wandering Princess; and the honest brook had no
+words but to encourage her.
+
+At last she began to be aware of a wonderful revolution, compared to
+which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but the crack and flash of a
+percussion-cap.  The countenance with which the pines regarded her began
+insensibly to change; the grass too, short as it was, and the whole
+winding staircase of the brook's course, began to wear a solemn freshness
+of appearance.  And this slow transfiguration reached her heart, and
+played upon it, and transpierced it with a serious thrill.  She looked
+all about; the whole face of nature looked back, brimful of meaning,
+finger on lip, leaking its glad secret.  She looked up.  Heaven was
+almost emptied of stars.  Such as still lingered shone with a changed and
+waning brightness, and began to faint in their stations.  And the colour
+of the sky itself was the most wonderful; for the rich blue of the night
+had now melted and softened and brightened; and there had succeeded in
+its place a hue that has no name, and that is never seen but as the
+herald of morning.  'O!' she cried, joy catching at her voice, 'O! it is
+the dawn!'
+
+In a breath she passed over the brook, and looped up her skirts and
+fairly ran in the dim alleys.  As she ran, her ears were aware of many
+pipings, more beautiful than music; in the small dish-shaped houses in
+the fork of giant arms, where they had lain all night, lover by lover,
+warmly pressed, the bright-eyed, big-hearted singers began to awaken for
+the day.  Her heart melted and flowed forth to them in kindness.  And
+they, from their small and high perches in the clerestories of the wood
+cathedral, peered down sidelong at the ragged Princess as she flitted
+below them on the carpet of the moss and tassel.
+
+Soon she had struggled to a certain hill-top, and saw far before her the
+silent inflooding of the day.  Out of the East it welled and whitened;
+the darkness trembled into light; and the stars were extinguished like
+the street-lamps of a human city.  The whiteness brightened into silver,
+the silver warmed into gold, the gold kindled into pure and living fire;
+and the face of the East was barred with elemental scarlet.  The day drew
+its first long breath, steady and chill; and for leagues around the woods
+sighed and shivered.  And then, at one bound, the sun had floated up; and
+her startled eyes received day's first arrow, and quailed under the
+buffet.  On every side, the shadows leaped from their ambush and fell
+prone.  The day was come, plain and garish; and up the steep and solitary
+eastern heaven, the sun, victorious over his competitors, continued
+slowly and royally to mount.
+
+Seraphina drooped for a little, leaning on a pine, the shrill joy of the
+woodlands mocking her.  The shelter of the night, the thrilling and
+joyous changes of the dawn, were over; and now, in the hot eye of the
+day, she turned uneasily and looked sighingly about her.  Some way off
+among the lower woods, a pillar of smoke was mounting and melting in the
+gold and blue.  There, surely enough, were human folk, the
+hearth-surrounders.  Man's fingers had laid the twigs; it was man's
+breath that had quickened and encouraged the baby flames; and now, as the
+fire caught, it would be playing ruddily on the face of its creator.  At
+the thought, she felt a-cold and little and lost in that great
+out-of-doors.  The electric shock of the young sun-beams and the unhuman
+beauty of the woods began to irk and daunt her.  The covert of the house,
+the decent privacy of rooms, the swept and regulated fire, all that
+denotes or beautifies the home life of man, began to draw her as with
+cords.  The pillar of smoke was now risen into some stream of moving air;
+it began to lean out sideways in a pennon; and thereupon, as though the
+change had been a summons, Seraphina plunged once more into the labyrinth
+of the wood.
+
+She left day upon the high ground.  In the lower groves there still
+lingered the blue early twilight and the seizing freshness of the dew.
+But here and there, above this field of shadow, the head of a great
+outspread pine was already glorious with day; and here and there, through
+the breaches of the hills, the sun-beams made a great and luminous entry.
+Here Seraphina hastened along forest paths.  She had lost sight of the
+pilot smoke, which blew another way, and conducted herself in that great
+wilderness by the direction of the sun.  But presently fresh signs
+bespoke the neighbourhood of man; felled trunks, white slivers from the
+axe, bundles of green boughs, and stacks of firewood.  These guided her
+forward; until she came forth at last upon the clearing whence the smoke
+arose.  A hut stood in the clear shadow, hard by a brook which made a
+series of inconsiderable falls; and on the threshold the Princess saw a
+sun-burnt and hard-featured woodman, standing with his hands behind his
+back and gazing skyward.
+
+She went to him directly: a beautiful, bright-eyed, and haggard vision;
+splendidly arrayed and pitifully tattered; the diamond ear-drops still
+glittering in her ears; and with the movement of her coming, one small
+breast showing and hiding among the ragged covert of the laces.  At that
+ambiguous hour, and coming as she did from the great silence of the
+forest, the man drew back from the Princess as from something elfin.
+
+'I am cold,' she said, 'and weary.  Let me rest beside your fire.'
+
+The woodman was visibly commoved, but answered nothing.
+
+'I will pay,' she said, and then repented of the words, catching perhaps
+a spark of terror from his frightened eyes.  But, as usual, her courage
+rekindled brighter for the check.  She put him from the door and entered;
+and he followed her in superstitious wonder.
+
+Within, the hut was rough and dark; but on the stone that served as
+hearth, twigs and a few dry branches burned with the brisk sounds and all
+the variable beauty of fire.  The very sight of it composed her; she
+crouched hard by on the earth floor and shivered in the glow, and looked
+upon the eating blaze with admiration.  The woodman was still staring at
+his guest: at the wreck of the rich dress, the bare arms, the bedraggled
+laces and the gems.  He found no word to utter.
+
+'Give me food,' said she,--'here, by the fire.'
+
+He set down a pitcher of coarse wine, bread, a piece of cheese, and a
+handful of raw onions.  The bread was hard and sour, the cheese like
+leather; even the onion, which ranks with the truffle and the nectarine
+in the chief place of honour of earth's fruits, is not perhaps a dish for
+princesses when raw.  But she ate, if not with appetite, with courage;
+and when she had eaten, did not disdain the pitcher.  In all her life
+before, she had not tasted of gross food nor drunk after another; but a
+brave woman far more readily accepts a change of circumstances than the
+bravest man.  All that while, the woodman continued to observe her
+furtively, many low thoughts of fear and greed contending in his eyes.
+She read them clearly, and she knew she must begone.
+
+Presently she arose and offered him a florin.
+
+'Will that repay you?' she asked.
+
+But here the man found his tongue.  'I must have more than that,' said
+he.
+
+'It is all I have to give you,' she returned, and passed him by serenely.
+
+Yet her heart trembled, for she saw his hand stretched forth as if to
+arrest her, and his unsteady eyes wandering to his axe.  A beaten path
+led westward from the clearing, and she swiftly followed it.  She did not
+glance behind her.  But as soon as the least turning of the path had
+concealed her from the woodman's eyes, she slipped among the trees and
+ran till she deemed herself in safety.
+
+By this time the strong sunshine pierced in a thousand places the
+pine-thatch of the forest, fired the red boles, irradiated the cool
+aisles of shadow, and burned in jewels on the grass.  The gum of these
+trees was dearer to the senses than the gums of Araby; each pine, in the
+lusty morning sunlight, burned its own wood-incense; and now and then a
+breeze would rise and toss these rooted censers, and send shade and
+sun-gem flitting, swift as swallows, thick as bees; and wake a brushing
+bustle of sounds that murmured and went by.
+
+On she passed, and up and down, in sun and shadow; now aloft on the bare
+ridge among the rocks and birches, with the lizards and the snakes; and
+anon in the deep grove among sunless pillars.  Now she followed wandering
+wood-paths, in the maze of valleys; and again, from a hill-top, beheld
+the distant mountains and the great birds circling under the sky.  She
+would see afar off a nestling hamlet, and go round to avoid it.  Below,
+she traced the course of the foam of mountain torrents.  Nearer hand, she
+saw where the tender springs welled up in silence, or oozed in green
+moss; or in the more favoured hollows a whole family of infant rivers
+would combine, and tinkle in the stones, and lie in pools to be a
+bathing-place for sparrows, or fall from the sheer rock in rods of
+crystal.  Upon all these things, as she still sped along in the bright
+air, she looked with a rapture of surprise and a joyful fainting of the
+heart; they seemed so novel, they touched so strangely home, they were so
+hued and scented, they were so beset and canopied by the dome of the blue
+air of heaven.
+
+At length, when she was well weary, she came upon a wide and shallow
+pool.  Stones stood in it, like islands; bulrushes fringed the coast; the
+floor was paved with the pine needles; and the pines themselves, whose
+roots made promontories, looked down silently on their green images.  She
+crept to the margin and beheld herself with wonder, a hollow and
+bright-eyed phantom, in the ruins of her palace robe.  The breeze now
+shook her image; now it would be marred with flies; and at that she
+smiled; and from the fading circles, her counterpart smiled back to her
+and looked kind.  She sat long in the warm sun, and pitied her bare arms
+that were all bruised and marred with falling, and marvelled to see that
+she was dirty, and could not grow to believe that she had gone so long in
+such a strange disorder.
+
+Then, with a sigh, she addressed herself to make a toilette by that
+forest mirror, washed herself pure from all the stains of her adventure,
+took off her jewels and wrapped them in her handkerchief, re-arranged the
+tatters of her dress, and took down the folds of her hair.  She shook it
+round her face, and the pool repeated her thus veiled.  Her hair had
+smelt like violets, she remembered Otto saying; and so now she tried to
+smell it, and then shook her head, and laughed a little, sadly, to
+herself.
+
+The laugh was returned upon her in a childish echo.
+
+She looked up; and lo! two children looking on,--a small girl and a yet
+smaller boy, standing, like playthings, by the pool, below a spreading
+pine.  Seraphina was not fond of children, and now she was startled to
+the heart.
+
+'Who are you?' she cried hoarsely.
+
+The mites huddled together and drew back; and Seraphina's heart
+reproached her that she should have frightened things so quaint and
+little, and yet alive with senses.  She thought upon the birds and looked
+again at her two visitors; so little larger and so far more innocent.  On
+their clear faces, as in a pool, she saw the reflection of their fears.
+With gracious purpose she arose.
+
+'Come,' she said, 'do not be afraid of me,' and took a step towards them.
+
+But alas! at the first moment, the two poor babes in the wood turned and
+ran helter-skelter from the Princess.
+
+The most desolate pang was struck into the girl's heart.  Here she was,
+twenty-two--soon twenty-three--and not a creature loved her; none but
+Otto; and would even he forgive?  If she began weeping in these woods
+alone, it would mean death or madness.  Hastily she trod the thoughts out
+like a burning paper; hastily rolled up her locks, and with terror
+dogging her, and her whole bosom sick with grief, resumed her journey.
+
+Past ten in the forenoon, she struck a high-road, marching in that place
+uphill between two stately groves, a river of sunlight; and here, dead
+weary, careless of consequences, and taking some courage from the human
+and civilised neighbourhood of the road, she stretched herself on the
+green margin in the shadow of a tree.  Sleep closed on her, at first with
+a horror of fainting, but when she ceased to struggle, kindly embracing
+her.  So she was taken home for a little, from all her toils and sorrows,
+to her Father's arms.  And there in the meanwhile her body lay exposed by
+the highwayside, in tattered finery; and on either hand from the woods
+the birds came flying by and calling upon others, and debated in their
+own tongue this strange appearance.
+
+The sun pursued his journey; the shadow flitted from her feet, shrank
+higher and higher, and was upon the point of leaving her altogether, when
+the rumble of a coach was signalled to and fro by the birds.  The road in
+that part was very steep; the rumble drew near with great deliberation;
+and ten minutes passed before a gentleman appeared, walking with a sober
+elderly gait upon the grassy margin of the highway, and looking
+pleasantly around him as he walked.  From time to time he paused, took
+out his note-book and made an entry with a pencil; and any spy who had
+been near enough would have heard him mumbling words as though he were a
+poet testing verses.  The voice of the wheels was still faint, and it was
+plain the traveller had far outstripped his carriage.
+
+He had drawn very near to where the Princess lay asleep, before his eye
+alighted on her; but when it did he started, pocketed his note-book, and
+approached.  There was a milestone close to where she lay; and he sat
+down on that and coolly studied her.  She lay upon one side, all curled
+and sunken, her brow on one bare arm, the other stretched out, limp and
+dimpled.  Her young body, like a thing thrown down, had scarce a mark of
+life.  Her breathing stirred her not.  The deadliest fatigue was thus
+confessed in every language of the sleeping flesh.  The traveller smiled
+grimly.  As though he had looked upon a statue, he made a grudging
+inventory of her charms: the figure in that touching freedom of
+forgetfulness surprised him; the flush of slumber became her like a
+flower.
+
+'Upon my word,' he thought, 'I did not think the girl could be so pretty.
+And to think,' he added, 'that I am under obligation not to use one word
+of this!'  He put forth his stick and touched her; and at that she awoke,
+sat up with a cry, and looked upon him wildly.
+
+'I trust your Highness has slept well,' he said, nodding.
+
+But she only uttered sounds.
+
+'Compose yourself,' said he, giving her certainly a brave example in his
+own demeanour.  'My chaise is close at hand; and I shall have, I trust,
+the singular entertainment of abducting a sovereign Princess.'
+
+'Sir John!' she said, at last.
+
+'At your Highness's disposal,' he replied.
+
+She sprang to her feet.  'O!' she cried, 'have you come from Mittwalden?'
+
+'This morning,' he returned, 'I left it; and if there is any one less
+likely to return to it than yourself, behold him!'
+
+'The Baron--' she began, and paused.
+
+'Madam,' he answered, 'it was well meant, and you are quite a Judith; but
+after the hours that have elapsed, you will probably be relieved to hear
+that he is fairly well.  I took his news this morning ere I left.  Doing
+fairly well, they said, but suffering acutely.  Hey?--acutely.  They
+could hear his groans in the next room.'
+
+'And the Prince,' she asked, 'is anything known of him?'
+
+'It is reported,' replied Sir John, with the same pleasurable
+deliberation, 'that upon that point your Highness is the best authority.'
+
+'Sir John,' she said eagerly, 'you were generous enough to speak about
+your carriage.  Will you, I beseech you, will you take me to the
+Felsenburg?  I have business there of an extreme importance.'
+
+'I can refuse you nothing,' replied the old gentleman, gravely and
+seriously enough.  'Whatever, madam, it is in my power to do for you,
+that shall be done with pleasure.  As soon as my chaise shall overtake
+us, it is yours to carry you where you will.  But,' added he, reverting
+to his former manner, 'I observe you ask me nothing of the Palace.'
+
+'I do not care,' she said.  'I thought I saw it burning.'
+
+'Prodigious!' said the Baronet.  'You thought?  And can the loss of forty
+toilettes leave you cold?  Well, madam, I admire your fortitude.  And the
+state, too?  As I left, the government was sitting,--the new government,
+of which at least two members must be known to you by name: Sabra, who
+had, I believe, the benefit of being formed in your employment--a
+footman, am I right?--and our old friend the Chancellor, in something of
+a subaltern position.  But in these convulsions the last shall be first,
+and the first last.'
+
+'Sir John,' she said, with an air of perfect honesty, 'I am sure you mean
+most kindly, but these matters have no interest for me.'
+
+The Baronet was so utterly discountenanced that he hailed the appearance
+of his chaise with welcome, and, by way of saying something, proposed
+that they should walk back to meet it.  So it was done; and he helped her
+in with courtesy, mounted to her side, and from various receptacles (for
+the chaise was most completely fitted out) produced fruits and truffled
+liver, beautiful white bread, and a bottle of delicate wine.  With these
+he served her like a father, coaxing and praising her to fresh exertions;
+and during all that time, as though silenced by the laws of hospitality,
+he was not guilty of the shadow of a sneer.  Indeed his kindness seemed
+so genuine that Seraphina was moved to gratitude.
+
+'Sir John,' she said, 'you hate me in your heart; why are you so kind to
+me?'
+
+'Ah, my good lady,' said he, with no disclaimer of the accusation, 'I
+have the honour to be much your husband's friend, and somewhat his
+admirer.'
+
+'You!' she cried.  'They told me you wrote cruelly of both of us.'
+
+'Such was the strange path by which we grew acquainted,' said Sir John.
+'I had written, madam, with particular cruelty (since that shall be the
+phrase) of your fair self.  Your husband set me at liberty, gave me a
+passport, ordered a carriage, and then, with the most boyish spirit,
+challenged me to fight.  Knowing the nature of his married life, I
+thought the dash and loyalty he showed delightful.  "Do not be afraid,"
+says he; "if I am killed, there is nobody to miss me."  It appears you
+subsequently thought of that yourself.  But I digress.  I explained to
+him it was impossible that I could fight!  "Not if I strike you?" says
+he.  Very droll; I wish I could have put it in my book.  However, I was
+conquered, took the young gentleman to my high favour, and tore up my
+bits of scandal on the spot.  That is one of the little favours, madam,
+that you owe your husband.'
+
+Seraphina sat for some while in silence.  She could bear to be misjudged
+without a pang by those whom she contemned; she had none of Otto's
+eagerness to be approved, but went her own way straight and head in air.
+To Sir John, however, after what he had said, and as her husband's
+friend, she was prepared to stoop.
+
+'What do you think of me?' she asked abruptly.
+
+'I have told you already,' said Sir John: 'I think you want another glass
+of my good wine.'
+
+'Come,' she said, 'this is unlike you.  You are not wont to be afraid.
+You say that you admire my husband: in his name, be honest.'
+
+'I admire your courage,' said the Baronet.  'Beyond that, as you have
+guessed, and indeed said, our natures are not sympathetic.'
+
+'You spoke of scandal,' pursued Seraphina.  'Was the scandal great?'
+
+'It was considerable,' said Sir John.
+
+'And you believed it?' she demanded.
+
+'O, madam,' said Sir John, 'the question!'
+
+'Thank you for that answer!' cried Seraphina.  'And now here, I will tell
+you, upon my honour, upon my soul, in spite of all the scandal in this
+world, I am as true a wife as ever stood.'
+
+'We should probably not agree upon a definition,' observed Sir John.
+
+'O!' she cried, 'I have abominably used him--I know that; it is not that
+I mean.  But if you admire my husband, I insist that you shall understand
+me: I can look him in the face without a blush.'
+
+'It may be, madam,' said Sir John; 'nor have I presumed to think the
+contrary.'
+
+'You will not believe me?' she cried.  'You think I am a guilty wife?
+You think he was my lover?'
+
+'Madam,' returned the Baronet, 'when I tore up my papers, I promised your
+good husband to concern myself no more with your affairs; and I assure
+you for the last time that I have no desire to judge you.'
+
+'But you will not acquit me!  Ah!' she cried, '_he_ will--he knows me
+better!'
+
+Sir John smiled.
+
+'You smile at my distress?' asked Seraphina.
+
+'At your woman's coolness,' said Sir John.  'A man would scarce have had
+the courage of that cry, which was, for all that, very natural, and I
+make no doubt quite true.  But remark, madam--since you do me the honour
+to consult me gravely--I have no pity for what you call your distresses.
+You have been completely selfish, and now reap the consequence.  Had you
+once thought of your husband, instead of singly thinking of yourself, you
+would not now have been alone, a fugitive, with blood upon your hands,
+and hearing from a morose old Englishman truth more bitter than scandal.'
+
+'I thank you,' she said, quivering.  'This is very true.  Will you stop
+the carriage?'
+
+'No, child,' said Sir John, 'not until I see you mistress of yourself.'
+
+There was a long pause, during which the carriage rolled by rock and
+woodland.
+
+'And now,' she resumed, with perfect steadiness, 'will you consider me
+composed?  I request you, as a gentleman, to let me out.'
+
+'I think you do unwisely,' he replied.  'Continue, if you please, to use
+my carriage.'
+
+'Sir John,' she said, 'if death were sitting on that pile of stones, I
+would alight!  I do not blame, I thank you; I now know how I appear to
+others; but sooner than draw breath beside a man who can so think of me,
+I would--O!' she cried, and was silent.
+
+Sir John pulled the string, alighted, and offered her his hand; but she
+refused the help.
+
+The road had now issued from the valleys in which it had been winding,
+and come to that part of its course where it runs, like a cornice, along
+the brow of the steep northward face of Grunewald.  The place where they
+had alighted was at a salient angle; a bold rock and some wind-tortured
+pine-trees overhung it from above; far below the blue plains lay forth
+and melted into heaven; and before them the road, by a succession of bold
+zigzags, was seen mounting to where a tower upon a tall cliff closed the
+view.
+
+'There,' said the Baronet, pointing to the tower, 'you see the
+Felsenburg, your goal.  I wish you a good journey, and regret I cannot be
+of more assistance.'
+
+He mounted to his place and gave a signal, and the carriage rolled away.
+
+Seraphina stood by the wayside, gazing before her with blind eyes.  Sir
+John she had dismissed already from her mind: she hated him, that was
+enough; for whatever Seraphina hated or contemned fell instantly to
+Lilliputian smallness, and was thenceforward steadily ignored in thought.
+And now she had matter for concern indeed.  Her interview with Otto,
+which she had never yet forgiven him, began to appear before her in a
+very different light.  He had come to her, still thrilling under recent
+insult, and not yet breathed from fighting her own cause; and how that
+knowledge changed the value of his words!  Yes, he must have loved her!
+this was a brave feeling--it was no mere weakness of the will.  And she,
+was she incapable of love?  It would appear so; and she swallowed her
+tears, and yearned to see Otto, to explain all, to ask pity upon her
+knees for her transgressions, and, if all else were now beyond the reach
+of reparation, to restore at least the liberty of which she had deprived
+him.
+
+Swiftly she sped along the highway, and, as the road wound out and in
+about the bluffs and gullies of the mountain, saw and lost by glimpses
+the tall tower that stood before and above her, purpled by the mountain
+air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--TREATS OF A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE
+
+
+When Otto mounted to his rolling prison he found another occupant in a
+corner of the front seat; but as this person hung his head and the
+brightness of the carriage lamps shone outward, the Prince could only see
+it was a man.  The Colonel followed his prisoner and clapped-to the door;
+and at that the four horses broke immediately into a swinging trot.
+
+'Gentlemen,' said the Colonel, after some little while had passed, 'if we
+are to travel in silence, we might as well be at home.  I appear, of
+course, in an invidious character; but I am a man of taste, fond of books
+and solidly informing talk, and unfortunately condemned for life to the
+guard-room.  Gentlemen, this is my chance: don't spoil it for me.  I have
+here the pick of the whole court, barring lovely woman; I have a great
+author in the person of the Doctor--'
+
+'Gotthold!' cried Otto.
+
+'It appears,' said the Doctor bitterly, 'that we must go together.  Your
+Highness had not calculated upon that.'
+
+'What do you infer?' cried Otto; 'that I had you arrested?'
+
+'The inference is simple,' said the Doctor.
+
+'Colonel Gordon,' said the Prince, 'oblige me so far, and set me right
+with Herr von Hohenstockwitz.'
+
+'Gentlemen,' said the Colonel, 'you are both arrested on the same warrant
+in the name of the Princess Seraphina, acting regent, countersigned by
+Prime Minister Freiherr von Gondremark, and dated the day before
+yesterday, the twelfth.  I reveal to you the secrets of the
+prison-house,' he added.
+
+'Otto,' said Gotthold, 'I ask you to pardon my suspicions.'
+
+'Gotthold,' said the Prince, 'I am not certain I can grant you that.'
+
+'Your Highness is, I am sure, far too magnanimous to hesitate,' said the
+Colonel.  'But allow me: we speak at home in my religion of the means of
+grace: and I now propose to offer them.'  So saying, the Colonel lighted
+a bright lamp which he attached to one side of the carriage, and from
+below the front seat produced a goodly basket adorned with the long necks
+of bottles.  '_Tu spem reducis_--how does it go, Doctor?' he asked gaily.
+'I am, in a sense, your host; and I am sure you are both far too
+considerate of my embarrassing position to refuse to do me honour.
+Gentlemen, I drink to the Prince!'
+
+'Colonel,' said Otto, 'we have a jovial entertainer.  I drink to Colonel
+Gordon.'
+
+Thereupon all three took their wine very pleasantly; and even as they did
+so, the carriage with a lurch turned into the high-road and began to make
+better speed.
+
+All was bright within; the wine had coloured Gotthold's cheek; dim forms
+of forest trees, dwindling and spiring, scarves of the starry sky, now
+wide and now narrow, raced past the windows, through one that was left
+open the air of the woods came in with a nocturnal raciness; and the roll
+of wheels and the tune of the trotting horses sounded merrily on the ear.
+Toast followed toast; glass after glass was bowed across and emptied by
+the trio; and presently there began to fall upon them a luxurious spell,
+under the influence of which little but the sound of quiet and
+confidential laughter interrupted the long intervals of meditative
+silence.
+
+'Otto,' said Gotthold, after one of these seasons of quiet, 'I do not ask
+you to forgive me.  Were the parts reversed, I could not forgive you.'
+
+'Well,' said Otto, 'it is a phrase we use.  I do forgive you, but your
+words and your suspicions rankle; and not yours alone.  It is idle,
+Colonel Gordon, in view of the order you are carrying out, to conceal
+from you the dissensions of my family; they have gone so far that they
+are now public property.  Well, gentlemen, can I forgive my wife?  I can,
+of course, and do; but in what sense?  I would certainly not stoop to any
+revenge; as certainly I could not think of her but as one changed beyond
+my recognition.'
+
+'Allow me,' returned the Colonel.  'You will permit me to hope that I am
+addressing Christians?  We are all conscious, I trust, that we are
+miserable sinners.'
+
+'I disown the consciousness,' said Gotthold.  'Warmed with this good
+fluid, I deny your thesis.'
+
+'How, sir?  You never did anything wrong? and I heard you asking pardon
+but this moment, not of your God, sir, but of a common fellow-worm!' the
+Colonel cried.
+
+'I own you have me; you are expert in argument, Herr Oberst,' said the
+Doctor.
+
+'Begad, sir, I am proud to hear you say so,' said the Colonel.  'I was
+well grounded indeed at Aberdeen.  And as for this matter of forgiveness,
+it comes, sir, of loose views and (what is if anything more dangerous) a
+regular life.  A sound creed and a bad morality, that's the root of
+wisdom.  You two gentlemen are too good to be forgiving.'
+
+'The paradox is somewhat forced,' said Gotthold.
+
+'Pardon me, Colonel,' said the Prince; 'I readily acquit you of any
+design of offence, but your words bite like satire.  Is this a time, do
+you think, when I can wish to hear myself called good, now that I am
+paying the penalty (and am willing like yourself to think it just) of my
+prolonged misconduct?'
+
+'O, pardon me!' cried the Colonel.  'You have never been expelled from
+the divinity hall; you have never been broke.  I was: broke for a neglect
+of military duty.  To tell you the open truth, your Highness, I was the
+worse of drink; it's a thing I never do now,' he added, taking out his
+glass.  'But a man, you see, who has really tasted the defects of his own
+character, as I have, and has come to regard himself as a kind of blind
+teetotum knocking about life, begins to learn a very different view about
+forgiveness.  I will talk of not forgiving others, sir, when I have made
+out to forgive myself, and not before; and the date is like to be a long
+one.  My father, the Reverend Alexander Gordon, was a good man, and
+damned hard upon others.  I am what they call a bad one, and that is just
+the difference.  The man who cannot forgive any mortal thing is a green
+hand in life.'
+
+'And yet I have heard of you, Colonel, as a duellist,' said Gotthold.
+
+'A different thing, sir,' replied the soldier.  'Professional etiquette.
+And I trust without unchristian feeling.'
+
+Presently after the Colonel fell into a deep sleep and his companions
+looked upon each other, smiling.
+
+'An odd fish,' said Gotthold.
+
+'And a strange guardian,' said the Prince.  'Yet what he said was true.'
+
+'Rightly looked upon,' mused Gotthold, 'it is ourselves that we cannot
+forgive, when we refuse forgiveness to our friend.  Some strand of our
+own misdoing is involved in every quarrel.'
+
+'Are there not offences that disgrace the pardoner?' asked Otto.  'Are
+there not bounds of self-respect?'
+
+'Otto,' said Gotthold, 'does any man respect himself?  To this poor waif
+of a soldier of fortune we may seem respectable gentlemen; but to
+ourselves, what are we unless a pasteboard portico and a deliquium of
+deadly weaknesses within?'
+
+'I? yes,' said Otto; 'but you, Gotthold--you, with your interminable
+industry, your keen mind, your books--serving mankind, scorning pleasures
+and temptations!  You do not know how I envy you.'
+
+'Otto,' said the Doctor, 'in one word, and a bitter one to say: I am a
+secret tippler.  Yes, I drink too much.  The habit has robbed these very
+books, to which you praise my devotion, of the merits that they should
+have had.  It has spoiled my temper.  When I spoke to you the other day,
+how much of my warmth was in the cause of virtue? how much was the fever
+of last night's wine?  Ay, as my poor fellow-sot there said, and as I
+vaingloriously denied, we are all miserable sinners, put here for a
+moment, knowing the good, choosing the evil, standing naked and ashamed
+in the eye of God.'
+
+'Is it so?' said Otto.  'Why, then, what are we?  Are the very best--'
+
+'There is no best in man,' said Gotthold.  'I am not better, it is likely
+I am not worse, than you or that poor sleeper.  I was a sham, and now you
+know me: that is all.'
+
+'And yet it has not changed my love,' returned Otto softly.  'Our
+misdeeds do not change us.  Gotthold, fill your glass.  Let us drink to
+what is good in this bad business; let us drink to our old affection;
+and, when we have done so, forgive your too just grounds of offence, and
+drink with me to my wife, whom I have so misused, who has so misused me,
+and whom I have left, I fear, I greatly fear, in danger.  What matters it
+how bad we are, if others can still love us, and we can still love
+others?'
+
+'Ay!' replied the Doctor.  'It is very well said.  It is the true answer
+to the pessimist, and the standing miracle of mankind.  So you still love
+me? and so you can forgive your wife?  Why, then, we may bid conscience
+"Down, dog," like an ill-trained puppy yapping at shadows.'
+
+The pair fell into silence, the Doctor tapping on his empty glass.
+
+The carriage swung forth out of the valleys on that open balcony of
+high-road that runs along the front of Grunewald, looking down on
+Gerolstein.  Far below, a white waterfall was shining to the stars from
+the falling skirts of forest, and beyond that, the night stood naked
+above the plain.  On the other hand, the lamp-light skimmed the face of
+the precipices, and the dwarf pine-trees twinkled with all their needles,
+and were gone again into the wake.  The granite roadway thundered under
+wheels and hoofs; and at times, by reason of its continual winding, Otto
+could see the escort on the other side of a ravine, riding well together
+in the night.  Presently the Felsenburg came plainly in view, some way
+above them, on a bold projection of the mountain, and planting its bulk
+against the starry sky.
+
+'See, Gotthold,' said the Prince, 'our destination.'
+
+Gotthold awoke as from a trance.
+
+'I was thinking,' said he, 'if there is any danger, why did you not
+resist?  I was told you came of your free will; but should you not be
+there to help her?'
+
+The colour faded from the Prince's cheeks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--PROVIDENCE VON ROSEN: ACT THE LAST
+IN WHICH SHE GALLOPS OFF
+
+
+When the busy Countess came forth from her interview with Seraphina, it
+is not too much to say that she was beginning to be terribly afraid.  She
+paused in the corridor and reckoned up her doings with an eye to
+Gondremark.  The fan was in requisition in an instant; but her disquiet
+was beyond the reach of fanning.  'The girl has lost her head,' she
+thought; and then dismally, 'I have gone too far.'  She instantly decided
+on secession.  Now the _Mons Sacer_ of the Frau von Rosen was a certain
+rustic villa in the forest, called by herself, in a smart attack of
+poesy, Tannen Zauber, and by everybody else plain Kleinbrunn.
+
+Thither, upon the thought, she furiously drove, passing Gondremark at the
+entrance to the Palace avenue, but feigning not to observe him; and as
+Kleinbrunn was seven good miles away, and in the bottom of a narrow dell,
+she passed the night without any rumour of the outbreak reaching her; and
+the glow of the conflagration was concealed by intervening hills.  Frau
+von Rosen did not sleep well; she was seriously uneasy as to the results
+of her delightful evening, and saw herself condemned to quite a lengthy
+sojourn in her deserts and a long defensive correspondence, ere she could
+venture to return to Gondremark.  On the other hand, she examined, by way
+of pastime, the deeds she had received from Otto; and even here saw cause
+for disappointment.  In these troublous days she had no taste for landed
+property, and she was convinced, besides, that Otto had paid dearer than
+the farm was worth.  Lastly, the order for the Prince's release fairly
+burned her meddling fingers.
+
+All things considered, the next day beheld an elegant and beautiful lady,
+in a riding-habit and a flapping hat, draw bridle at the gate of the
+Felsenburg, not perhaps with any clear idea of her purpose, but with her
+usual experimental views on life.  Governor Gordon, summoned to the gate,
+welcomed the omnipotent Countess with his most gallant bearing, though it
+was wonderful how old he looked in the morning.
+
+'Ah, Governor,' she said, 'we have surprises for you, sir,' and nodded at
+him meaningly.
+
+'Eh, madam, leave me my prisoners,' he said; 'and if you will but join
+the band, begad, I'll be happy for life.'
+
+'You would spoil me, would you not?' she asked.
+
+'I would try, I would try,' returned the Governor, and he offered her his
+arm.
+
+She took it, picked up her skirt, and drew him close to her.  'I have
+come to see the Prince,' she said.  'Now, infidel! on business.  A
+message from that stupid Gondremark, who keeps me running like a courier.
+Do I look like one, Herr Gordon?' And she planted her eyes in him.
+
+'You look like an angel, ma'am,' returned the Governor, with a great air
+of finished gallantry.
+
+The Countess laughed.  'An angel on horseback!' she said.  'Quick work.'
+
+'You came, you saw, you conquered,' flourished Gordon, in high good
+humour with his own wit and grace.  'We toasted you, madam, in the
+carriage, in an excellent good glass of wine; toasted you fathom deep;
+the finest woman, with, begad, the finest eyes in Grunewald.  I never saw
+the like of them but once, in my own country, when I was a young fool at
+College: Thomasina Haig her name was.  I give you my word of honour, she
+was as like you as two peas.'
+
+'And so you were merry in the carriage?' asked the Countess, gracefully
+dissembling a yawn.
+
+'We were; we had a very pleasant conversation; but we took perhaps a
+glass more than that fine fellow of a Prince has been accustomed to,'
+said the Governor; 'and I observe this morning that he seems a little off
+his mettle.  We'll get him mellow again ere bedtime.  This is his door.'
+
+'Well,' she whispered, 'let me get my breath.  No, no; wait.  Have the
+door ready to open.'  And the Countess, standing like one inspired, shook
+out her fine voice in 'Lascia ch'io pianga'; and when she had reached the
+proper point, and lyrically uttered forth her sighings after liberty, the
+door, at a sign, was flung wide open, and she swam into the Prince's
+sight, bright-eyed, and with her colour somewhat freshened by the
+exercise of singing.  It was a great dramatic entrance, and to the
+somewhat doleful prisoner within the sight was sunshine.
+
+'Ah, madam,' he cried, running to her--'you here!'
+
+She looked meaningly at Gordon; and as soon as the door was closed she
+fell on Otto's neck.  'To see you here!' she moaned and clung to him.
+
+But the Prince stood somewhat stiffly in that enviable situation, and the
+Countess instantly recovered from her outburst.
+
+'Poor child,' she said, 'poor child!  Sit down beside me here, and tell
+me all about it.  My heart really bleeds to see you.  How does time go?'
+
+'Madam,' replied the Prince, sitting down beside her, his gallantry
+recovered, 'the time will now go all too quickly till you leave.  But I
+must ask you for the news.  I have most bitterly condemned myself for my
+inertia of last night.  You wisely counselled me; it was my duty to
+resist.  You wisely and nobly counselled me; I have since thought of it
+with wonder.  You have a noble heart.'
+
+'Otto,' she said, 'spare me.  Was it even right, I wonder?  I have
+duties, too, you poor child; and when I see you they all melt--all my
+good resolutions fly away.'
+
+'And mine still come too late,' he replied, sighing.  'O, what would I
+not give to have resisted?  What would I not give for freedom?'
+
+'Well, what would you give?' she asked; and the red fan was spread; only
+her eyes, as if from over battlements, brightly surveyed him.
+
+'I?  What do you mean?  Madam, you have some news for me,' he cried.
+
+'O, O!' said madam dubiously.
+
+He was at her feet.  'Do not trifle with my hopes,' he pleaded.  'Tell
+me, dearest Madame von Rosen, tell me!  You cannot be cruel: it is not in
+your nature.  Give?  I can give nothing; I have nothing; I can only plead
+in mercy.'
+
+'Do not,' she said; 'it is not fair.  Otto, you know my weakness.  Spare
+me.  Be generous.'
+
+'O, madam,' he said, 'it is for you to be generous, to have pity.'  He
+took her hand and pressed it; he plied her with caresses and appeals.
+The Countess had a most enjoyable sham siege, and then relented.  She
+sprang to her feet, she tore her dress open, and, all warm from her
+bosom, threw the order on the floor.
+
+'There!' she cried.  'I forced it from her.  Use it, and I am ruined!'
+And she turned away as if to veil the force of her emotions.
+
+Otto sprang upon the paper, read it, and cried out aloud.  'O, God bless
+her!' he said, 'God bless her.'  And he kissed the writing.
+
+Von Rosen was a singularly good-natured woman, but her part was now
+beyond her.  'Ingrate!' she cried; 'I wrung it from her, I betrayed my
+trust to get it, and 'tis she you thank!'
+
+'Can you blame me?' said the Prince.  'I love her.'
+
+'I see that,' she said.  'And I?'
+
+'You, Madame von Rosen?  You are my dearest, my kindest, and most
+generous of friends,' he said, approaching her.  'You would be a perfect
+friend, if you were not so lovely.  You have a great sense of humour, you
+cannot be unconscious of your charm, and you amuse yourself at times by
+playing on my weakness; and at times I can take pleasure in the comedy.
+But not to-day: to-day you will be the true, the serious, the manly
+friend, and you will suffer me to forget that you are lovely and that I
+am weak.  Come, dear Countess, let me to-day repose in you entirely.'
+
+He held out his hand, smiling, and she took it frankly.  'I vow you have
+bewitched me,' she said; and then with a laugh, 'I break my staff!' she
+added; 'and I must pay you my best compliment.  You made a difficult
+speech.  You are as adroit, dear Prince, as I am--charming.'  And as she
+said the word with a great curtsey, she justified it.
+
+'You hardly keep the bargain, madam, when you make yourself so
+beautiful,' said the Prince, bowing.
+
+'It was my last arrow,' she returned.  'I am disarmed.  Blank cartridge,
+_O mon Prince_!  And now I tell you, if you choose to leave this prison,
+you can, and I am ruined.  Choose!'
+
+'Madame von Rosen,' replied Otto, 'I choose, and I will go.  My duty
+points me, duty still neglected by this Featherhead.  But do not fear to
+be a loser.  I propose instead that you should take me with you, a bear
+in chains, to Baron Gondremark.  I am become perfectly unscrupulous: to
+save my wife I will do all, all he can ask or fancy.  He shall be filled;
+were he huge as leviathan and greedy as the grave, I will content him.
+And you, the fairy of our pantomime, shall have the credit.'
+
+'Done!' she cried.  'Admirable!  Prince Charming no longer--Prince
+Sorcerer, Prince Solon!  Let us go this moment.  Stay,' she cried,
+pausing.  'I beg dear Prince, to give you back these deeds.  'Twas you
+who liked the farm--I have not seen it; and it was you who wished to
+benefit the peasants.  And, besides,' she added, with a comical change of
+tone, 'I should prefer the ready money.'
+
+Both laughed.  'Here I am, once more a farmer,' said Otto, accepting the
+papers, 'but overwhelmed in debt.'
+
+The Countess touched a bell, and the Governor appeared.
+
+'Governor,' she said, 'I am going to elope with his Highness.  The result
+of our talk has been a thorough understanding, and the _coup d'etat_ is
+over.  Here is the order.'
+
+Colonel Gordon adjusted silver spectacles upon his nose.  'Yes,' he said,
+'the Princess: very right.  But the warrant, madam, was countersigned.'
+
+'By Heinrich!' said von Rosen.  'Well, and here am I to represent him.'
+
+'Well, your Highness,' resumed the soldier of fortune, 'I must
+congratulate you upon my loss.  You have been cut out by beauty, and I am
+left lamenting.  The Doctor still remains to me: _probus_, _doctus_,
+_lepidus_, _jucundus_: a man of books.'
+
+'Ay, there is nothing about poor Gotthold,' said the Prince.
+
+'The Governor's consolation?  Would you leave him bare?' asked von Rosen.
+
+'And, your Highness,' resumed Gordon, 'may I trust that in the course of
+this temporary obscuration, you have found me discharge my part with
+suitable respect and, I may add, tact?  I adopted purposely a
+cheerfulness of manner; mirth, it appeared to me, and a good glass of
+wine, were the fit alleviations.'
+
+'Colonel,' said Otto, holding out his hand, 'your society was of itself
+enough.  I do not merely thank you for your pleasant spirits; I have to
+thank you, besides, for some philosophy, of which I stood in need.  I
+trust I do not see you for the last time; and in the meanwhile, as a
+memento of our strange acquaintance, let me offer you these verses on
+which I was but now engaged.  I am so little of a poet, and was so ill
+inspired by prison bars, that they have some claim to be at least a
+curiosity.'
+
+The Colonel's countenance lighted as he took the paper; the silver
+spectacles were hurriedly replaced.  'Ha!' he said, 'Alexandrines, the
+tragic metre.  I shall cherish this, your Highness, like a relic; no more
+suitable offering, although I say it, could be made. "_Dieux de l'immense
+plaine et des vastes forets_."  Very good,' he said, 'very good indeed!
+"_Et du geolier lui-meme apprendre des lecons_."  Most handsome, begad!'
+
+'Come, Governor,' cried the Countess, 'you can read his poetry when we
+are gone.  Open your grudging portals.'
+
+'I ask your pardon,' said the Colonel.  'To a man of my character and
+tastes, these verses, this handsome reference--most moving, I assure you.
+Can I offer you an escort?'
+
+'No, no,' replied the Countess.  'We go incogniti, as we arrived.  We
+ride together; the Prince will take my servant's horse.  Hurry and
+privacy, Herr Oberst, that is all we seek.' And she began impatiently to
+lead the way.
+
+But Otto had still to bid farewell to Dr. Gotthold; and the Governor
+following, with his spectacles in one hand and the paper in the other,
+had still to communicate his treasured verses, piece by piece, as he
+succeeded in deciphering the manuscript, to all he came across; and still
+his enthusiasm mounted.  'I declare,' he cried at last, with the air of
+one who has at length divined a mystery, 'they remind me of Robbie
+Burns!'
+
+But there is an end to all things; and at length Otto was walking by the
+side of Madame von Rosen, along that mountain wall, her servant following
+with both the horses, and all about them sunlight, and breeze, and flying
+bird, and the vast regions of the air, and the capacious prospect:
+wildwood and climbing pinnacle, and the sound and voice of mountain
+torrents, at their hand: and far below them, green melting into sapphire
+on the plains.
+
+They walked at first in silence; for Otto's mind was full of the delight
+of liberty and nature, and still, betweenwhiles, he was preparing his
+interview with Gondremark.  But when the first rough promontory of the
+rock was turned, and the Felsenburg concealed behind its bulk, the lady
+paused.
+
+'Here,' she said, 'I will dismount poor Karl, and you and I must ply our
+spurs.  I love a wild ride with a good companion.'
+
+As she spoke, a carriage came into sight round the corner next below them
+in the order of the road.  It came heavily creaking, and a little ahead
+of it a traveller was soberly walking, note-book in hand.
+
+'It is Sir John,' cried Otto, and he hailed him.
+
+The Baronet pocketed his note-book, stared through an eye-glass, and then
+waved his stick; and he on his side, and the Countess and the Prince on
+theirs, advanced with somewhat quicker steps.  They met at the re-entrant
+angle, where a thin stream sprayed across a boulder and was scattered in
+rain among the brush; and the Baronet saluted the Prince with much
+punctilio.  To the Countess, on the other hand, he bowed with a kind of
+sneering wonder.
+
+'Is it possible, madam, that you have not heard the news?' he asked.
+
+'What news?' she cried.
+
+'News of the first order,' returned Sir John: 'a revolution in the State,
+a Republic declared, the palace burned to the ground, the Princess in
+flight, Gondremark wounded--'
+
+'Heinrich wounded?' she screamed.
+
+'Wounded and suffering acutely,' said Sir John.  'His groans--'
+
+There fell from the lady's lips an oath so potent that, in smoother
+hours, it would have made her hearers jump.  She ran to her horse,
+scrambled to the saddle, and, yet half seated, dashed down the road at
+full gallop.  The groom, after a pause of wonder, followed her.  The rush
+of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage horses over the verge
+of the steep hill; and still she clattered further, and the crags echoed
+to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of her.  At
+the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a cry and
+escaped death by a hand's-breadth.  But the Countess wasted neither
+glance nor thought upon the incident.  Out and in, about the bluffs of
+the mountain wall, she fled, loose-reined, and still the groom toiled in
+her pursuit.
+
+'A most impulsive lady!' said Sir John.  'Who would have thought she
+cared for him?'  And before the words were uttered, he was struggling in
+the Prince's grasp.
+
+'My wife! the Princess?  What of her?'
+
+'She is down the road,' he gasped.  'I left her twenty minutes back.'
+
+And next moment, the choked author stood alone, and the Prince on foot
+was racing down the hill behind the Countess.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--BABES IN THE WOOD
+
+
+While the feet of the Prince continued to run swiftly, his heart, which
+had at first by far outstripped his running, soon began to linger and
+hang back.  Not that he ceased to pity the misfortune or to yearn for the
+sight of Seraphina; but the memory of her obdurate coldness awoke within
+him, and woke in turn his own habitual diffidence of self.  Had Sir John
+been given time to tell him all, had he even known that she was speeding
+to the Felsenburg, he would have gone to her with ardour.  As it was, he
+began to see himself once more intruding, profiting, perhaps, by her
+misfortune, and now that she was fallen, proffering unloved caresses to
+the wife who had spurned him in prosperity.  The sore spots upon his
+vanity began to burn; once more, his anger assumed the carriage of a
+hostile generosity; he would utterly forgive indeed; he would help, save,
+and comfort his unloving wife; but all with distant self-denial, imposing
+silence on his heart, respecting Seraphina's disaffection as he would the
+innocence of a child.  So, when at length he turned a corner and beheld
+the Princess, it was his first thought to reassure her of the purity of
+his respect, and he at once ceased running and stood still.  She, upon
+her part, began to run to him with a little cry; then, seeing him pause,
+she paused also, smitten with remorse; and at length, with the most
+guilty timidity, walked nearly up to where he stood.
+
+'Otto,' she said, 'I have ruined all!'
+
+'Seraphina!' he cried with a sob, but did not move, partly withheld by
+his resolutions, partly struck stupid at the sight of her weariness and
+disorder.  Had she stood silent, they had soon been locked in an embrace.
+But she too had prepared herself against the interview, and must spoil
+the golden hour with protestations.
+
+'All!' she went on, 'I have ruined all!  But, Otto, in kindness you must
+hear me--not justify, but own, my faults.  I have been taught so cruelly;
+I have had such time for thought, and see the world so changed.  I have
+been blind, stone-blind; I have let all true good go by me, and lived on
+shadows.  But when this dream fell, and I had betrayed you, and thought I
+had killed--'  She paused.  'I thought I had killed Gondremark,' she said
+with a deep flush, 'and I found myself alone, as you said.'
+
+The mention of the name of Gondremark pricked the Princes generosity like
+a spur.  'Well,' he cried, 'and whose fault was it but mine?  It was my
+duty to be beside you, loved or not.  But I was a skulker in the grain,
+and found it easier to desert than to oppose you.  I could never learn
+that better part of love, to fight love's battles.  But yet the love was
+there.  And now when this toy kingdom of ours has fallen, first of all by
+my demerits, and next by your inexperience, and we are here alone
+together, as poor as Job and merely a man and a woman--let me conjure you
+to forgive the weakness and to repose in the love.  Do not mistake me!'
+he cried, seeing her about to speak, and imposing silence with uplifted
+hand.  'My love is changed; it is purged of any conjugal pretension; it
+does not ask, does not hope, does not wish for a return in kind.  You may
+forget for ever that part in which you found me so distasteful, and
+accept without embarrassment the affection of a brother.'
+
+'You are too generous, Otto,' she said.  'I know that I have forfeited
+your love.  I cannot take this sacrifice.  You had far better leave me.
+O, go away, and leave me to my fate!'
+
+'O no!' said Otto; 'we must first of all escape out of this hornet's
+nest, to which I led you.  My honour is engaged.  I said but now we were
+as poor as Job; and behold! not many miles from here I have a house of my
+own to which I will conduct you.  Otto the Prince being down, we must try
+what luck remains to Otto the Hunter.  Come, Seraphina; show that you
+forgive me, and let us set about this business of escape in the best
+spirits possible.  You used to say, my dear, that, except as a husband
+and a prince, I was a pleasant fellow.  I am neither now, and you may
+like my company without remorse.  Come, then; it were idle to be
+captured.  Can you still walk?  Forth, then,' said he, and he began to
+lead the way.
+
+A little below where they stood, a good-sized brook passed below the
+road, which overleapt it in a single arch.  On one bank of that
+loquacious water a foot-path descended a green dell.  Here it was rocky
+and stony, and lay on the steep scarps of the ravine; here it was choked
+with brambles; and there, in fairy haughs, it lay for a few paces evenly
+on the green turf.  Like a sponge, the hillside oozed with well-water.
+The burn kept growing both in force and volume; at every leap it fell
+with heavier plunges and span more widely in the pool.  Great had been
+the labours of that stream, and great and agreeable the changes it had
+wrought.  It had cut through dykes of stubborn rock, and now, like a
+blowing dolphin, spouted through the orifice; along all its humble
+coasts, it had undermined and rafted-down the goodlier timber of the
+forest; and on these rough clearings it now set and tended primrose
+gardens, and planted woods of willow, and made a favourite of the silver
+birch.  Through all these friendly features the path, its human acolyte,
+conducted our two wanderers downward,--Otto before, still pausing at the
+more difficult passages to lend assistance; the Princess following.  From
+time to time, when he turned to help her, her face would lighten upon
+his--her eyes, half desperately, woo him.  He saw, but dared not
+understand.  'She does not love me,' he told himself, with magnanimity.
+'This is remorse or gratitude; I were no gentleman, no, nor yet a man, if
+I presumed upon these pitiful concessions.'
+
+Some way down the glen, the stream, already grown to a good bulk of
+water, was rudely dammed across, and about a third of it abducted in a
+wooden trough.  Gaily the pure water, air's first cousin, fleeted along
+the rude aqueduct, whose sides and floor it had made green with grasses.
+The path, bearing it close company, threaded a wilderness of briar and
+wild-rose.  And presently, a little in front, the brown top of a mill and
+the tall mill-wheel, spraying diamonds, arose in the narrows of the glen;
+at the same time the snoring music of the saws broke the silence.
+
+The miller, hearing steps, came forth to his door, and both he and Otto
+started.
+
+'Good-morning, miller,' said the Prince.  'You were right, it seems, and
+I was wrong.  I give you the news, and bid you to Mittwalden.  My throne
+has fallen--great was the fall of it!--and your good friends of the
+Phoenix bear the rule.'
+
+The red-faced miller looked supreme astonishment.  'And your Highness?'
+he gasped.
+
+'My Highness is running away,' replied Otto, 'straight for the frontier.'
+
+'Leaving Grunewald?' cried the man.  'Your father's son?  It's not to be
+permitted!'
+
+'Do you arrest us, friend?' asked Otto, smiling.
+
+'Arrest you?  I?' exclaimed the man.  'For what does your Highness take
+me?  Why, sir, I make sure there is not a man in Grunewald would lay
+hands upon you.'
+
+'O, many, many,' said the Prince; 'but from you, who were bold with me in
+my greatness, I should even look for aid in my distress.'
+
+The miller became the colour of beetroot.  'You may say so indeed,' said
+he.  'And meanwhile, will you and your lady step into my house.'
+
+'We have not time for that,' replied the Prince; 'but if you would oblige
+us with a cup of wine without here, you will give a pleasure and a
+service, both in one.'
+
+The miller once more coloured to the nape.  He hastened to bring forth
+wine in a pitcher and three bright crystal tumblers.  'Your Highness must
+not suppose,' he said, as he filled them, 'that I am an habitual drinker.
+The time when I had the misfortune to encounter you, I was a trifle
+overtaken, I allow; but a more sober man than I am in my ordinary, I do
+not know where you are to look for; and even this glass that I drink to
+you (and to the lady) is quite an unusual recreation.'
+
+The wine was drunk with due rustic courtesies; and then, refusing further
+hospitality, Otto and Seraphina once more proceeded to descend the glen,
+which now began to open and to be invaded by the taller trees.
+
+'I owed that man a reparation,' said the Prince; 'for when we met I was
+in the wrong and put a sore affront upon him.  I judge by myself,
+perhaps; but I begin to think that no one is the better for a
+humiliation.'
+
+'But some have to be taught so,' she replied.
+
+'Well, well,' he said, with a painful embarrassment.  'Well, well.  But
+let us think of safety.  My miller is all very good, but I do not pin my
+faith to him.  To follow down this stream will bring us, but after
+innumerable windings, to my house.  Here, up this glade, there lies a
+cross-cut--the world's end for solitude--the very deer scarce visit it.
+Are you too tired, or could you pass that way?'
+
+'Choose the path, Otto.  I will follow you,' she said.
+
+'No,' he replied, with a singular imbecility of manner and appearance,
+'but I meant the path was rough.  It lies, all the way, by glade and
+dingle, and the dingles are both deep and thorny.'
+
+'Lead on,' she said.  'Are you not Otto the Hunter?'
+
+They had now burst across a veil of underwood, and were come into a lawn
+among the forest, very green and innocent, and solemnly surrounded by
+trees.  Otto paused on the margin, looking about him with delight; then
+his glance returned to Seraphina, as she stood framed in that silvan
+pleasantness and looking at her husband with undecipherable eyes.  A
+weakness both of the body and mind fell on him like the beginnings of
+sleep; the cords of his activity were relaxed, his eyes clung to her.
+'Let us rest,' he said; and he made her sit down, and himself sat down
+beside her on the slope of an inconsiderable mound.
+
+She sat with her eyes downcast, her slim hand dabbling in grass, like a
+maid waiting for love's summons.  The sound of the wind in the forest
+swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away
+and away in the distance into fainting whispers.  Nearer hand, a bird out
+of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes.  All this seemed but
+a halting prelude to speech.  To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of
+nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent.
+The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses,
+the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride and its kindly
+adversary.
+
+'Seraphina,' he said at last, 'it is right you should know one thing: I
+never . . .'  He was about to say 'doubted you,' but was that true?  And,
+if true, was it generous to speak of it?  Silence succeeded.
+
+'I pray you, tell it me,' she said; 'tell it me, in pity.'
+
+'I mean only this,' he resumed, 'that I understand all, and do not blame
+you.  I understand how the brave woman must look down on the weak man.  I
+think you were wrong in some things; but I have tried to understand it,
+and I do.  I do not need to forget or to forgive, Seraphina, for I have
+understood.'
+
+'I know what I have done,' she said.  'I am not so weak that I can be
+deceived with kind speeches.  I know what I have been--I see myself.  I
+am not worth your anger, how much less to be forgiven!  In all this
+downfall and misery, I see only me and you: you, as you have been always;
+me, as I was--me, above all!  O yes, I see myself: and what can I think?'
+
+'Ah, then, let us reverse the parts!' said Otto.  'It is ourselves we
+cannot forgive, when we deny forgiveness to another--so a friend told me
+last night.  On these terms, Seraphina, you see how generously _I_ have
+forgiven myself.  But am not I to be forgiven?  Come, then, forgive
+yourself--and me.'
+
+She did not answer in words, but reached out her hand to him quickly.  He
+took it; and as the smooth fingers settled and nestled in his, love ran
+to and fro between them in tender and transforming currents.
+
+'Seraphina,' he cried, 'O, forget the past!  Let me serve and help you;
+let me be your servant; it is enough for me to serve you and to be near
+you; let me be near you, dear--do not send me away.'  He hurried his
+pleading like the speech of a frightened child.  'It is not love,' he
+went on; 'I do not ask for love; my love is enough . . .'
+
+'Otto!' she said, as if in pain.
+
+He looked up into her face.  It was wrung with the very ecstasy of
+tenderness and anguish; on her features, and most of all in her changed
+eyes, there shone the very light of love.
+
+'Seraphina?' he cried aloud, and with a sudden, tuneless voice,
+'Seraphina?'
+
+'Look round you at this glade,' she cried, 'and where the leaves are
+coming on young trees, and the flowers begin to blossom.  This is where
+we meet, meet for the first time; it is so much better to forget and to
+be born again.  O what a pit there is for sins--God's mercy, man's
+oblivion!'
+
+'Seraphina,' he said, 'let it be so, indeed; let all that was be merely
+the abuse of dreaming; let me begin again, a stranger.  I have dreamed,
+in a long dream, that I adored a girl unkind and beautiful; in all things
+my superior, but still cold, like ice.  And again I dreamed, and thought
+she changed and melted, glowed and turned to me.  And I--who had no merit
+but a love, slavish and unerect--lay close, and durst not move for fear
+of waking.'
+
+'Lie close,' she said, with a deep thrill of speech.
+
+So they spake in the spring woods; and meanwhile, in Mittwalden
+Rath-haus, the Republic was declared.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL POSTSCRIPT TO COMPLETE THE STORY
+
+
+The reader well informed in modern history will not require details as to
+the fate of the Republic.  The best account is to be found in the memoirs
+of Herr Greisengesang (7 Bande: Leipzig), by our passing acquaintance the
+licentiate Roederer.  Herr Roederer, with too much of an author's
+licence, makes a great figure of his hero--poses him, indeed, to be the
+centre-piece and cloud-compeller of the whole.  But, with due allowance
+for this bias, the book is able and complete.
+
+The reader is of course acquainted with the vigorous and bracing pages of
+Sir John (2 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown).  Sir
+John, who plays but a tooth-comb in the orchestra of this historical
+romance, blows in his own book the big bassoon.  His character is there
+drawn at large; and the sympathy of Landor has countersigned the
+admiration of the public.  One point, however, calls for explanation; the
+chapter on Grunewald was torn by the hand of the author in the palace
+gardens; how comes it, then, to figure at full length among my more
+modest pages, the Lion of the caravan?  That eminent literatus was a man
+of method; 'Juvenal by double entry,' he was once profanely called; and
+when he tore the sheets in question, it was rather, as he has since
+explained, in the search for some dramatic evidence of his sincerity,
+than with the thought of practical deletion.  At that time, indeed, he
+was possessed of two blotted scrolls and a fair copy in double.  But the
+chapter, as the reader knows, was honestly omitted from the famous
+'Memoirs on the various Courts of Europe.'  It has been mine to give it
+to the public.
+
+Bibliography still helps us with a further glimpse of our characters.  I
+have here before me a small volume (printed for private circulation: no
+printer's name; n.d.), 'Poesies par Frederic et Amelie.'  Mine is a
+presentation copy, obtained for me by Mr. Bain in the Haymarket; and the
+name of the first owner is written on the fly-leaf in the hand of Prince
+Otto himself.  The modest epigraph--'Le rime n'est pas riche'--may be
+attributed, with a good show of likelihood, to the same collaborator.  It
+is strikingly appropriate, and I have found the volume very dreary.
+Those pieces in which I seem to trace the hand of the Princess are
+particularly dull and conscientious.  But the booklet had a fair success
+with that public for which it was designed; and I have come across some
+evidences of a second venture of the same sort, now unprocurable.  Here,
+at least, we may take leave of Otto and Seraphina--what do I say? of
+Frederic and Amelie--ageing together peaceably at the court of the wife's
+father, jingling French rhymes and correcting joint proofs.
+
+Still following the book-lists, I perceive that Mr. Swinburne has
+dedicated a rousing lyric and some vigorous sonnets to the memory of
+Gondremark; that name appears twice at least in Victor Hugo's
+trumpet-blasts of patriot enumeration; and I came latterly, when I
+supposed my task already ended, on a trace of the fallen politician and
+his Countess.  It is in the 'Diary of J. Hogg Cotterill, Esq.' (that very
+interesting work).  Mr. Cotterill, being at Naples, is introduced (May
+27th) to 'a Baron and Baroness Gondremark--he a man who once made a
+noise--she still beautiful--both witty.  She complimented me much upon my
+French--should never have known me to be English--had known my uncle, Sir
+John, in Germany--recognised in me, as a family trait, some of his _grand
+air_ and studious courtesy--asked me to call.'  And again (May 30th),
+'visited the Baronne de Gondremark--much gratified--a most _refined_,
+_intelligent_ woman, quite of the old school, now, _helas_! extinct--had
+read my _Remarks on Sicily_--it reminds her of my uncle, but with more of
+grace--I feared she thought there was less energy--assured no--a softer
+style of presentation, more of the _literary grace_, but the same firm
+grasp of circumstance and force of thought--in short, just Buttonhole's
+opinion.  Much encouraged.  I have a real esteem for this patrician
+lady.'  The acquaintance lasted some time; and when Mr. Cotterill left in
+the suite of Lord Protocol, and, as he is careful to inform us, in
+Admiral Yardarm's flag-ship, one of his chief causes of regret is to
+leave 'that most _spirituelle_ and sympathetic lady, who already regards
+me as a younger brother.'
+
+
+
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