I GAIN A PERCEPTION OF PRINCELY STATE
I had a visit from Prince Ernest, nominally one of congratulation on my
escape. I was never in my life so much at any man's mercy: he might
have fevered me to death with reproaches, and I expected them on
hearing his name pronounced at the door. I had forgotten the ways of
the world. For some minutes I listened guardedly to his affable talk.
My thanks for the honour done me were awkward, as if they came upon
reflection. The prince was particularly civil and cheerful. His
relative, he said, had written of me in high terms—the very highest,
declaring that I was blameless in the matter, and that, though he had
sent the horse back to my stables, he fully believed in the fine
qualities of the animal, and acknowledged his fault in making it a
cause of provocation. To all of which I assented with easy nods.
'Your Shakespeare, I think,' said the prince, 'has a scene of young
Frenchmen praising their horses. I myself am no stranger to the
enthusiasm: one could not stake life and honour on a nobler brute.
Pardon me if I state my opinion that you young Englishmen of to-day are
sometimes rather overbearing in your assumption of a superior knowledge
of horseflesh. We Germans in the Baltic provinces and in the Austrian
cavalry think we have a right to a remark or two; and if we have not
suborned the testimony of modern history, the value of our Hanoverian
troopers is not unknown to one at least of your Generals. However, the
odds are that you were right and Otto wrong, and he certainly put
himself in the wrong to defend his ground.'
I begged him to pass a lenient sentence upon fiery youth. He assured me
that he remembered his own. Our interchange of courtesies was cordially
commonplace: we walked, as it were, arm-in-arm on thin ice, rivalling
one another's gentlemanly composure. Satisfied with my discretion, the
prince invited me to the lake-palace, and then a week's shooting in
Styria to recruit. I thanked him in as clear a voice as I could
command:
'Your Highness, the mine flourishes, I trust?'
'It does; I think I may say it does,' he replied. 'There is always the
want of capital. What can be accomplished, in the present state of
affairs, your father performs, on the whole, well. You smile—but I mean
extraordinarily well. He has, with an accountant at his elbow, really
the genius of management. He serves me busily, and, I repeat, well. A
better employment for him than the direction of Court theatricals?'
'Undoubtedly it is.'
'Or than bestriding a bronze horse, personifying my good ancestor! Are
you acquainted with the Chancellor von Redwitz?'
'All I know of him, sir, is that he is fortunate to enjoy the
particular confidence of his master.'
'He has a long head. But, now, he is a disappointing man in action;
responsibility overturns him. He is the reverse of Roy, whose advice I
do not take, though I'm glad to set him running. Von Redwitz is in the
town. He shall call on you, and amuse an hour or so of your
convalescence.'
I confessed that I began to feel longings for society.
Prince Ernest was kind enough to quit me without unmasking. I had not
to learn that the simplest visits and observations of ruling princes
signify more than lies on the surface. Interests so highly personal as
theirs demand from them a decent insincerity.
Chancellor von Redwitz called on me, and amused me with secret
anecdotes of all the royal Houses of Germany, amusing chiefly through
the veneration he still entertained for them. The grave senior was
doing his utmost to divert one of my years. The immoralities of blue
blood, like the amours of the Gods, were to his mind tolerable, if not
beneficial to mankind, and he presumed I should find them toothsome.
Nay, he besought me to coincide in his excuses of a widely charming
young archduchess, for whom no estimable husband of a fitting rank
could anywhere be discovered, so she had to be bestowed upon an
archducal imbecile; and hence—and hence—Oh, certainly! Generous youth
and benevolent age joined hands of exoneration over her. The princess
of Satteberg actually married, under covert, a colonel of Uhlans at the
age of seventeen; the marriage was quashed, the colonel vanished, the
princess became the scandalous Duchess of Ilm-Ilm, and was surprised
one infamous night in the outer court of the castle by a soldier on
guard, who dragged her into the guard-room and unveiled her there, and
would have been summarily shot for his pains but for the locket on his
breast, which proved him to be his sovereign's son.—A perfect romance,
Mr. Chancellor. We will say the soldier son loved a delicate young
countess in attendance on the duchess. The countess spies the locket,
takes it to the duchess, is reprimanded, when behold! the locket opens,
and Colonel von Bein appears as in his blooming youth, in Lancer
uniform.—Young sir, your piece of romance has exaggerated history to
caricature. Romances are the destruction of human interest. The moment
you begin to move the individuals, they are puppets. 'Nothing but
poetry, and I say it who do not read it'—(Chancellor von Redwitz is the
speaker) 'nothing but poetry makes romances passable: for poetry is the
everlastingly and embracingly human. Without it your fictions are flat
foolishness, non-nourishing substance—a species of brandy and
gruel!—diet for craving stomachs that can support nothing solider, and
must have the weak stuff stiffened. Talking of poetry, there was an
independent hereditary princess of Leiterstein in love with a poet!—a
Leonora d'Este!—This was no Tasso. Nevertheless, she proposed to come
to nuptials. Good, you observe? I confine myself to the relation of
historical circumstances; in other words, facts; and of good or bad I
know not.'
Chancellor von Redwitz smoothed the black silk stocking of his crossed
leg, and set his bunch of seals and watch-key swinging. He resumed,
entirely to amuse me,
'The Princess Elizabeth of Leiterstein promised all the qualities which
the most solicitous of paternal princes could desire as a guarantee for
the judicious government of the territory to be bequeathed to her at
his demise. But, as there is no romance to be extracted from her story,
I may as well tell you at once that she did not espouse the poet.'
'On the contrary, dear Mr. Chancellor, I am interested in the princess.
Proceed, and be as minute as you please.'
'It is but a commonplace excerpt of secret historical narrative buried
among the archives of the Family, my good Mr. Richmond. The Princess
Elizabeth thoughtlessly pledged her hand to the young sonneteer. Of
course, she could not fulfil her engagement.'
'Why not?'
'You see, you are impatient for romance, young gentleman.'
'Not at all, Mr. Chancellor. I do but ask a question.'
'You fence. Your question was dictated by impatience.'
'Yes, for the facts and elucidations!
'For the romance, that is. You wish me to depict emotions.'
Hereupon this destroyer of temper embrowned his nostrils with snuff,
adding,—'I am unable to.'
'Then one is not to learn why the princess could not fulfil her
engagement?'
'Judged from the point of view of the pretender to the supreme honour
of the splendid alliance, the fault was none of hers. She overlooked
his humble, his peculiarly dubious, birth.'
'Her father interposed?'
'No.'
'The Family?'
'Quite inefficacious to arrest her determinations.'
'What then—what was in her way?'
'Germany.'
'What?'
'Great Germany, young gentleman. I should have premised that, besides
mental, she had eminent moral dispositions,—I might term it the
conscience of her illustrious rank. She would have raised the poet to
equal rank beside her had she possessed the power. She could and did
defy the Family, and subdue her worshipping father, the most noble
prince, to a form of paralysis of acquiescence—if I make myself
understood. But she was unsuccessful in her application for the
sanction of the Diet.'
'The Diet?'
'The German Diet. Have you not lived among us long enough to know that
the German Diet is the seat of domestic legislation for the princely
Houses of Germany? A prince or a princess may say, “I will this or
that.” The Diet says, “Thou shalt not”; pre-eminently, “Thou shalt not
mix thy blood with that of an impure race, nor with blood of
inferiors.” Hence, we have it what we see it, a translucent flood down
from the topmost founts of time. So we revere it. “Qua man and woman,”
the Diet says, by implication, “do as you like, marry in the ditches,
spawn plentifully. Qua prince and princess, No! Your nuptials are
nought. Or would you maintain them a legal ceremony, and be bound by
them, you descend, you go forth; you are no reigning sovereign, you are
a private person.” His Serene Highness the prince was thus prohibited
from affording help to his daughter. The princess was reduced to the
decision either that she, the sole child born of him in legal wedlock,
would render him qua prince childless, or that she would—in short,
would have her woman's way. The sovereignty of Leiterstein continued
uninterruptedly with the elder branch. She was a true princess.'
'A true woman,' said I, thinking the sneer weighty.
The Chancellor begged me to recollect that he had warned me there was
no romance to be expected.
I bowed; and bowed during the remainder of the interview.
Chancellor von Redwitz had performed his mission. The hours of my
convalescence were furnished with food for amusement sufficient to
sustain a year's blockade; I had no further longing for society, but I
craved for fresh air intensely.
Did Ottilia know that this iron law, enforced with the might of a whole
empire, environed her, held her fast from any motion of heart and will?
I could not get to mind that the prince had hinted at the existence of
such a law. Yet why should he have done so? The word impossible, in
which he had not been sparing when he deigned to speak distinctly,
comprised everything. More profitable than shooting empty questions at
the sky was the speculation on his project in receiving me at the
palace, and that was dark. My father, who might now have helped me, was
off on duty again.
I found myself driving into Sarkeld with a sense of a whirlwind round
my head; wheels in multitudes were spinning inside, striking sparks for
thoughts. I met an orderly in hussar uniform of blue and silver,
trotting on his errand. There he was; and whether many were behind him
or he stood for the army in its might, he wore the trappings of an old
princely House that nestled proudly in the bosom of its great jealous
Fatherland. Previously in Sarkeld I had noticed members of the
diminutive army to smile down on them. I saw the princely arms and
colours on various houses and in the windows of shops. Emblems of a
small State, they belonged to the history of the Empire. The
Court-physician passed with a bit of ribbon in his buttonhole. A lady
driving in an open carriage encouraged me to salute her. She was the
wife of the Prince's Minister of Justice. Upon what foundation had I
been building?
A reflection of the ideas possessing me showed Riversley, my
undecorated home of rough red brick, in the middle of barren heaths. I
entered the palace, I sent my respects to the prince. In return, the
hour of dinner was ceremoniously named to me: ceremony damped the air.
I had been insensible to it before, or so I thought, the weight was now
so crushing. Arms, emblems, colours, liveries, portraits of princes and
princesses of the House, of this the warrior, that the seductress,
burst into sudden light. What had I to do among them?
The presence of the living members of the Family was an extreme
physical relief.
For the moment, beholding Ottilia, I counted her but as one of them.
She welcomed me without restraint.
We chattered pleasantly at the dinner-table.
'Ah! You missed our French troupe,' said the margravine.'
'Yes,' said I, resigning them to her. She nodded:
'And one very pretty little woman they had, I can tell you—for a
Frenchwoman.'
'You thought her pretty? Frenchwomen know what to do with their brains
and their pins, somebody has said.'
'And exceedingly well said, too. Where is that man Roy? Good things
always remind me of him.'
The question was addressed to no one in particular. The man happened to
be my father, I remembered. A second allusion to him was answered by
Prince Ernest:
'Roy is off to Croatia to enrol some dozens of cheap workmen. The
strength of those Croats is prodigious, and well looked after they
work. He will be back in three or four or more days.'
'You have spoilt a good man,' rejoined the margravine; 'and that
reminds me of a bad one—a cutthroat. Have you heard of that creature,
the princess's tutor? Happily cut loose from us, though! He has
published a book—a horror! all against Scripture and Divine right! Is
there any one to defend him now, I should like to ask?'
'I,' said Ottilia.
'Gracious me! you have not read the book?'
'Right through, dear aunt, with all respect to you.'
'It's in the house?'
'It is in my study.'
'Then I don't wonder! I don't wonder!' the margravine exclaimed.
'Best hear what the enemy has to say,' Prince Ernest observed.
'Excellently argued, papa, supposing that he be an enemy.'
'An enemy as much as the fox is the enemy of the poultry-yard, and the
hound is the enemy of the fox!' said the margravine.
'I take your illustration, auntie,' said Ottilia. 'He is the enemy of
chickens, and only does not run before the numbers who bark at him. My
noble old Professor is a resolute truth-seeker: he raises a light to
show you the ground you walk on. How is it that you, adoring heroes as
you do, cannot admire him when he stands alone to support his view of
the truth! I would I were by him! But I am, whenever I hear him
abused.'
'I daresay you discard nothing that the wretch has taught you!'
'Nothing! nothing!' said Ottilia, and made my heart live.
The grim and taciturn Baroness Turckems, sitting opposite to her,
sighed audibly.
'Has the princess been trying to convert you?' the margravine asked
her.
'Trying? no, madam. Reading? yes.'
'My good Turckems! you do not get your share of sleep?'
'It is her Highness the princess who despises sleep.'
'See there the way with your free-thinkers! They commence by treading
under foot the pleasantest half of life, and then they impose their bad
habits on their victims. Ottilia! Ernest! I do insist upon having
lights extinguished in the child's apartments by twelve o'clock at
midnight.'
'Twelve o'clock is an extraordinary latitude for children,' said
Ottilia, smiling.
The prince, with a scarce perceptible degree of emphasis, said,
'Women born to rule must be held exempt from nursery restrictions.'
Here the conversation opened to let me in. More than once the
margravine informed me that I was not the equal of my father.
'Why,' said she, 'why can't you undertake this detestable coal-mine,
and let your father disport himself?'
I suggested that it might be because I was not his equal. She
complimented me for inheriting a spark of Roy's brilliancy.
I fancied there was a conspiracy to force me back from my pretensions
by subjecting me to the contemplation of my bare self and actual
condition. Had there been, I should have suffered from less measured
strokes. The unconcerted design to humiliate inferiors is commonly
successfuller than conspiracy.
The prince invited me to smoke with him, and talked of our gradual
subsidence in England to one broad level of rank through the
intermixture by marriage of our aristocracy, squirearchy, and
merchants.
'Here it is not so,' he said; 'and no democratic rageings will make it
so. Rank, with us, is a principle. I suppose you have not read the
Professor's book? It is powerful—he is a powerful man. It can do no
damage to the minds of persons destined by birth to wield
authority—none, therefore, to the princess. I would say to you—avoid
it. For those who have to carve their way, it is bad. You will enter
your Parliament, of course? There you have a fine career.'
He asked me what I had made of Chancellor von Redwitz.
I perceived that Prince Ernest could be cool and sagacious in repairing
what his imprudence or blindness had left to occur: that he must have
enlightened his daughter as to her actual position, and was most
dexterously and devilishly flattering her worldly good sense by letting
it struggle and grow, instead of opposing her. His appreciation of her
intellect was an idolatry; he really confided in it, I knew; and this
reacted upon her. Did it? My hesitations and doubts, my fantastic
raptures and despair, my loss of the power to appreciate anything at
its right value, revealed the madness of loving a princess.
There were preparations for the arrival of an important visitor. The
margravine spoke of him emphatically. I thought it might be her
farcically pompous way of announcing my father's return, and looked
pleased, I suppose, for she added, 'Do you know Prince Hermann? He
spends most of his time in Eberhardstadt. He is cousin of the King, a
wealthy branch; tant soit peu philosophe, a ce qu'on dit; a traveller.
They say he has a South American complexion. I knew him a boy; and his
passion is to put together what Nature has unpieced, bones of fishes
and animals. Il faut passer le temps. He adores the Deluge. Anything
antediluvian excites him. He can tell us the “modes” of those days;
and, if I am not very much misinformed, he still expects us to show him
the very latest of these. Happily my milliner is back from Paris. Ay,
and we have fossils in our neighbourhood, though, on my honour, I don't
know where—somewhere; the princess can guide him, and you can help at
the excavations. I am told he would go through the crust of earth for
the backbone of an idio—ilio-something-saurus.'
I scrutinized Prince Hermann as rarely my observation had dwelt on any
man. He had the German head, wide, so as seemingly to force out the
ears; honest, ready, interested eyes in conversation; parched lips; a
rather tropically-coloured skin; and decidedly the manners of a
gentleman to all, excepting his retinue of secretaries, valets, and
chasseurs—his 'blacks,' he called them. They liked him. One could not
help liking him.
'You study much?' he addressed the princess at table.
She answered: 'I throw aside books, now you have come to open the earth
and the sea.'
From that time the topics started on every occasion were theirs; the
rest of us ran at their heels, giving tongue or not.
To me Prince Hermann was perfectly courteous. He had made English
friends on his travels; he preferred English comrades in adventure to
any other: thought our East Indian empire the most marvellous thing the
world had seen, and our Indian Government cigars very smokeable upon
acquaintance. When stirred, he bubbled with anecdote. 'Not been there,'
was his reply to the margravine's tentatives for gossip of this and
that of the German Courts. His museum, hunting, and the Opera absorbed
and divided his hours. I guessed his age to be mounting forty. He
seemed robust; he ate vigorously. Drinking he conscientiously performed
as an accompanying duty, and was flushed after dinner, burning for
tobacco and a couch for his length. Then he talked of the littleness of
Europe and the greatness of Germany; logical postulates fell in
collapse before him. America to America, North and South; India to
Europe. India was for the land with the largest sea-board. Mistress of
the Baltic, of the North Sea and the East, as eventually she must be,
Germany would claim to take India as a matter of course, and find an
outlet for the energies of the most prolific and the toughest of the
races of mankind,—the purest, in fact, the only true race, properly so
called, out of India, to which it would return as to its source, and
there create an empire magnificent in force and solidity, the actual
wedding of East and West; an empire firm on the ground and in the blood
of the people, instead of an empire of aliens, that would bear
comparison to a finely fretted cotton-hung palanquin balanced on an
elephant's back, all depending on the docility of the elephant (his
description of Great Britain's Indian Empire). 'And mind me,' he said,
'the masses of India are in character elephant all over, tail to
proboscis! servile till they trample you, and not so stupid as they
look. But you've done wonders in India, and we can't forget it. Your
administration of Justice is worth all your battles there.'
This was the man: a milder one after the evaporation of his wine in
speech, and peculiarly moderate on his return, exhaling sandal-wood, to
the society of the ladies.
Ottilia danced with Prince Hermann at the grand Ball given in honour of
him. The wives and daughters of the notables present kept up a buzz of
comment on his personal advantages, in which, I heard it said, you saw
his German heart, though he had spent the best years of his life
abroad. Much court was paid to him by the men. Sarkeld visibly
expressed satisfaction. One remark, 'We shall have his museum in the
town!' left me no doubt upon the presumed object of his visit: it was
uttered and responded to with a depth of sentiment that showed how
lively would be the general gratitude toward one who should exhilarate
the place by introducing cases of fish-bones.
So little did he think of my presence, that returning from a ride one
day, he seized and detained the princess's hand. She frowned with
pained surprise, but unresistingly, as became a young gentlewoman's
dignity. Her hand was rudely caught and kept in the manner of a
boisterous wooer—a Harry the Fifth or lusty Petruchio. She pushed her
horse on at a bound. Prince Hermann rode up head to head with her
gallantly, having now both hands free of the reins, like an Indian
spearing the buffalo—it was buffalo courtship; and his shout of
rallying astonishment at her resistance, 'What? What?' rang wildly to
heighten the scene, she leaning constrained on one side and he bending
half his body's length; a strange scene for me to witness.
They proceeded with old Schwartz at their heels doglike. It became a
question for me whether I should follow in the bitter track, and
further the question whether I could let them escape from sight. They
wound up the roadway, two figures and one following, now dots against
the sky, now a single movement in the valley, now concealed, buried
under billows of forest, making the low noising of the leaves an
intolerable whisper of secresy, and forward I rushed again to see them
rounding a belt of firs or shadowed by rocks, solitary on shorn fields,
once more dipping to the forest, and once more emerging, vanishing.
When I had grown sure of their reappearance from some point of view or
other, I spied for them in vain. My destiny, whatever it might be,
fluttered over them; to see them seemed near the knowing of it, and not
to see them, deadly. I galloped, so intent on the three in the
distance, that I did not observe a horseman face toward me, on the
road: it was Prince Hermann. He raised his hat; I stopped short, and he
spoke:
'Mr. Richmond, permit me to apologize to you. I have to congratulate
you, it appears. I was not aware.—However, the princess has done me the
favour to enlighten me. How you will manage, I can't guess, but that is
not my affair. I am a man of honour; and, on my honour, I conceived
that I was invited here to decide, as my habit is, on the spot, if I
would, or if I would not. I speak clearly to you, no doubt. There could
be no hesitation in the mind of a man of sense. My way is prompt and
blunt; I am sorry I gave you occasion to reflect on it. There! I have
been deceived—deceived myself, let's say. Sharp methods play the devil
with you now and then. To speak the truth,—perhaps you won't care to
listen to it,—family arrangements are the best; take my word for it,
they are the best. And in the case of princesses of the Blood!—Why,
look you, I happen to be suitable. It's a matter of chance, like your
height, complexion, constitution. One is just what one is born to be,
eh? You have your English notions, I my German; but as a man of the
world in the bargain, and “gentleman,” I hope, I should say, that to
take a young princess's fancy, and drag her from her station is not—of
course, you know that the actual value of the title goes if she steps
down? Very well. But enough said; I thought I was in a clear field. We
are used to having our way cleared for us, nous autres. I will not
detain you.'
We saluted gravely, and I rode on at a mechanical pace, discerning by
glimpses the purport of what I had heard, without drawing warmth from
it. The man's outrageously royal way of wooing, in contempt of minor
presences and flimsy sentiment, made me jealous of him, notwithstanding
his overthrow.
I was in the mood to fall entirely into my father's hands, as I did by
unbosoming myself to him for the first time since my heart had been
under the charm. Fresh from a rapid course of travel, and with the
sense of laying the prince under weighty obligations, he made light of
my perplexity, and at once delivered himself bluntly: 'She plights her
hand to you in the presence of our good Peterborough.' His plans were
shaped on the spot. 'We start for England the day after to-morrow to
urge on the suit, Richie. Our Peterborough is up at the chateau. The
Frau Feldmarschall honours him with a farewell invitation: you have a
private interview with the princess at midnight in the library, where
you are accustomed to read, as a student of books should, my boy at a
touch of the bell, or mere opening of the door, I see that Peterborough
comes to you. It will not be a ceremony, but a binding of you both by
your word of honour before a ghostly gentleman.' He informed me that
his foresight had enlisted and detained Peterborough for this
particular moment and identical piece of duty, which seemed possible,
and in a singular manner incited me to make use of Peterborough. For
the princess still denied me the look of love's intelligence, she
avoided me, she still kept to the riddle, and my delicacy went so far
that I was restrained from writing. I agreed with my father that we
could not remain in Germany; but how could I quit the field and fly to
England on such terms? I composed the flattest letter ever written,
requesting the princess to meet me about midnight in the library, that
I might have the satisfaction of taking my leave of her; and this done,
my spirits rose, and it struck me my father was practically wise, and I
looked on Peterborough as an almost supernatural being. If Ottilia
refused to come, at least I should know my fate. Was I not bound in
manly honour to be to some degree adventurous?
So I reasoned in exclamations, being, to tell truth, tired of seeming
to be what I was not quite, of striving to become what I must have
divined that I never could quite attain to. So my worthier, or ideal,
self fell away from me. I was no longer devoted to be worthy of a
woman's love, but consenting to the plot to entrap a princess. I was
somewhat influenced, too, by the consideration, which I regarded as a
glimpse of practical wisdom, that Prince Ernest was guilty of cynical
astuteness in retaining me as his guest under manifold disadvantages.
Personal pride stood up in arms, and my father's exuberant spirits
fanned it. He dwelt loudly on his services to the prince, and his own
importance and my heirship to mighty riches. He made me almost believe
that Prince Ernest hesitated about rejecting me; nor did it appear
altogether foolish to think so, or why was I at the palace? I had no
head for reflections.
My father diverted me by levelling the whole battery of his comic mind
upon Peterborough, who had a heap of manuscript, directed against
heretical German theologians, to pack up for publication in his more
congenial country: how different, he ejaculated, from this nest—this
forest of heresy, where pamphlets and critical essays were issued
without let or hindrance, and, as far as he could see, no general
reprobation of the Press, such as would most undoubtedly, with one
voice, hail any strange opinions in our happy land at home! Whether he
really understood the function my father prepared him for, I cannot
say. The invitation to dine and pass a night at the lake-palace
flattered him immensely.
We went up to the chateau to fetch him.
A look of woe was on Peterborough's countenance when we descended at
the palace portals: he had forgotten his pipe.
'You shall smoke one of the prince's,' my father said. Peterborough
remarked to me,—'We shall have many things to talk over in England.'
'No tobacco allowed on the premises at Riversley, I'm afraid,' said I.
He sighed, and bade me jocosely to know that he regarded tobacco as
just one of the consolations of exiles and bachelors.
'Peterborough, my good friend, you are a hero!' cried my father. 'He
divorces tobacco to marry!'
'Permit me,' Peterborough interposed, with an ingenuous pretension to
subtle waggery, in itself very comical,—'permit me; no legitimate union
has taken place between myself and tobacco!'
'He puts an end to the illegitimate union between himself and tobacco
that he may marry according to form!' cried my father.
We entered the palace merrily, and presently Peterborough, who had worn
a studious forehead in the midst of his consenting laughter, observed,
'Well, you know, there is more in that than appears on the surface.'
His sweet simpleton air of profundity convulsed me. I handed my father
the letter addressed to the princess to entrust it to the charge of one
of the domestics, thinking carelessly at the time that Ottilia now
stood free to make appointments and receive communications, and
moreover that I was too proud to condescend to subterfuge, except this
minor one, in consideration for her, of making it appear that my
father, and not I, was in communication with her. My fit of laughter
clung. I dressed chuckling. The margravine was not slow to notice and
comment on my hilarious readiness.
'Roy,' she said, 'you have given your son spirit. One sees he has your
blood when you have been with him an hour.'
'The season has returned, if your Highness will let it be Spring,' said
my father.
'Far fetched!—from the Lower Danube!' she ejaculated in mock scorn to
excite his sprightliness, and they fell upon a duologue as good as wit
for the occasion.
Prince Hermann had gone. His departure was mentioned with the ordinary
commonplaces of regret. Ottilia was unembarrassed, both in speaking of
him and looking at me. We had the Court physician and his wife at
table, Chancellor von Redwitz and his daughter, and General Happenwyll,
chief of the prince's contingent, a Prussian at heart, said to be a
good officer on the strength of a military book of some sort that he
had full leisure to compose. The Chancellor's daughter and Baroness
Turckems enclosed me.
I was questioned by the baroness as to the cause of my father's
unexpected return. 'He is generally opportune,' she remarked.
'He goes with me to England,' I said.
'Oh! he goes,' said she; and asked why we were honoured with the
presence of Mr. Peterborough that evening. There had always been a
smouldering hostility between her and my father.
To my surprise, the baroness spoke of Ottilia by her name.
'Ottilia must have mountain air. These late hours destroy her
complexion. Active exercise by day and proper fatigue by night
time—that is my prescription.'
'The princess,' I replied, envying Peterborough, who was placed on one
side of her, 'will benefit, I am sure, from mountain air. Does she read
excessively? The sea—'
'The sea I pronounce bad for her—unwholesome,' returned the baroness.
'It is damp.'
I laughed.
'Damp,' she reiterated. 'The vapours, I am convinced, affect mind and
body. That excursion in the yacht did her infinite mischief. The
mountains restored her. They will again, take my word for it. Now take
you my word for it, they will again. She is not too strong in
constitution, but in order to prescribe accurately one must find out
whether there is seated malady. To ride out in the night instead of
reposing! To drive on and on, and not reappear till the night of the
next day—I ask you, is it sensible? Does it not approach mania?'
'The princess—?' said I.
'Ottilia has done that.'
'Baroness, can I believe you?—and alone?'
A marvellous twinkle of shuffle appeared in the small slate-coloured
eyes I looked at under their roofing of thick black eyebrows.
'Alone,' she said. 'That is, she was precautious to have her giant to
protect her from violence. There you have a glimmering of reason in
her; and all of it that I can see.'
'Old Schwartz is a very faithful servant,' said I, thinking that she
resembled the old Warhead in visage.
'A dog's obedience to the master's whims you call faithfulness! Hem!'
The baroness coughed dryly.
I whispered: 'Does Prince Ernest—is he aware?'
'You are aware,' retorted the baroness, 'that what a man idolizes he
won't see flaw in. Remember, I am something here, or I am nothing.'
The enigmatical remark was received by me decorously as a piece of
merited chastisement. Nodding with gravity, I expressed regrets that
the sea did not please her, otherwise I could have offered her a yacht
for a cruise. She nodded stiffly. Her mouth shut up a smile, showing
more of the door than the ray. The dinner, virtually a German supper,
ended in general conversation on political affairs, preceded and
supported by a discussion between the Prussian-hearted General and the
Austrian-hearted margravine. Prince Ernest, true to his view that
diplomacy was the weapon of minor sovereigns, held the balance, with
now a foot in one scale, now in the other; a politic proceeding, so
long as the rival powers passively consent to be weighed.
We trifled with music, made our bow to the ladies, and changed garments
for the smoking-room. Prince Ernest smoked his one cigar among guests.
The General, the Chancellor, and the doctor, knew the signal for
retirement, and rose simultaneously with the discharge of his cigar-end
in sparks on the unlit logwood pile. My father and Mr. Peterborough
kept their chairs.
There was, I felt with relief, no plot, for nothing had been definitely
assented to by me. I received Prince Ernest's proffer of his hand, on
making my adieux to him, with a passably clear conscience.
I went out to the library. A man came in for orders; I had none to
give. He saw that the shutters were fixed and the curtains down,
examined my hand-lamp, and placed lamps on the reading-desk and
mantel-piece. Bronze busts of sages became my solitary companions. The
room was long, low and dusky, voluminously and richly hung with
draperies at the farther end, where a table stood for the prince to jot
down memoranda, and a sofa to incline him to the relaxation of
romance-reading. A door at this end led to the sleeping apartments of
the West wing of the palace. Where I sat the student had ranges of
classical volumes in prospect and classic heads; no other decoration to
the walls. I paced to and fro and should have flung myself on the sofa
but for a heap of books there covered from dust, perhaps concealed,
that the yellow Parisian volumes, of which I caught sight of some new
dozen, might not be an attraction to the eyes of chance-comers. At the
lake-palace the prince frequently gave audience here. He had said to
me, when I stated my wish to read in the library, 'You keep to the
classical department?' I thought it possible he might not like the
coloured volumes to be inspected; I had no taste for a perusal of them.
I picked up one that fell during my walk, and flung it back, and
disturbed a heap under cover, for more fell, and there I let them lie.
Ottilia did not keep me waiting.