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Prince Otto

by Robert Louis Stevenson

December, 1995  [Etext #372]


*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Prince Otto, by R. L. Stevenson*
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Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1905 edition.  Scanned and 
proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk






PRINCE OTTO - A ROMANCE




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 fishpond,' 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, alborious, 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 out-spread 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, Heir 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.'






End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Prince Otto, by Stevenson