CHAPTER I

MAJESTY

A Novel

by

LOUIS COUPERUS

Newly Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

With a Preface by Stephen McKenna

New York

Dodd, Mead and Company

1921

PREFACE

The betting-book in one of London's oldest and most famous clubs

contains a wager, with odds laid at one hundred sovereigns to ten, that

"within five years there will not remain two crowned heads in Europe."

The condition--"in the event of war between Great Britain and

Germany"--was imposed by the date of the wager, for one member was

venturing his hundred to ten at a moment when another was dining with

him to kill time before the British prime minister's ultimatum took

effect: the imperial German government had to deliver its reply before

midnight, by Greenwich time, or eleven o'clock, by Central European

reckoning.

Since the fourth of August, 1914, the King of the Hellenes, the Czar of

Bulgaria, the Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary, the German Kaiser and a

host of smaller princes have abdicated and sought asylum in countries

left neutral by the war; the Czar of All the Russias also abdicated, but

was executed without an opportunity of escape. Thus, though republican

and royalist may protest that the wager was too sanguine or too

pessimistic, the challenger must have taken credit for his prescience,

as three of the great powers and two of the lesser converted, one after

another, their half-divine sovereign into their wholly material scapegoat;

by no great special pleading he might claim that the bet was won in

spirit if not in fact when the morning of Armistice Day shewed monarchy

surviving only in Spain, Italy, Roumania and Greece, in the small

liberal kingdoms of Scandinavia and the Netherlands, in the minute

principality of Monaco, in the crowned republic of Great Britain and

Ireland and in the eternal anachronism of the Ottoman Empire. And the

time-limit of five years had been exceeded by only three months.

In the peaceful period, four times longer, between the publication of

_Majesty_ in 1894 and the outbreak of the Great War, historians were

kept hardly less busy with their record of fallen monarchs and

extinguished dynasties: King Humbert of Italy was assassinated in 1900;

King Alexander of Servia, with his queen, in 1903; King Carlos of

Portugal, with the heir-apparent, in 1908; and the Sultan Abdul Hamid

was deposed and imprisoned in 1909. Before the year 1894 no ruler of

note had removed himself or been removed since the assassination of the

Czar Alexander II in 1881; this study of "majesty" in its strength and,

still more, in its weakness was published at a time when even the

autocrat was more secure on his throne than at any period since "the

year of revolution," 1848.

If _Majesty_ is to be regarded as a _roman à clef_, there is a

temptation, after six and twenty years, to call Couperus 'prophetic:' to

call him that and nothing else is to turn blind eyes to the intuitive

understanding which is more precious than divination, to ignore, in one

book, the insight which illumines all and to overlook the quality which,

among all the chronicles of kings, penetrates beyond romance and makes

of _Majesty_ an essay in human psychology. So long as the fairy-tales of

childhood are woven about handsome princes and the fair-haired daughters

of kings, there is no danger that the setting of royalty will ever lose

its glamour; so long as "romantic" means primarily that which is

"strange," the writer of romance may bind his spell on all to whom

kings' houses and queens' gardens are an unfamiliar world; so long as

the picturesque and traditional hold sway, the sanction and titles of

kingship, the dignities and the procedure, the inhibitions and aloofness

of royalty will fascinate, whether they like it or not, all those in

whose veins there is no "golden drop" of blood royal. A romance of

kingship, alike in the hands of dramatist, melodramatist and sycophant,

is certain of commercial success.

The strength of this temptation is to be measured by the number of

novels written round the triumphs and intrigues of kings, their amours

and tragedies, their conflicts and disasters: King Cophetua and "King

Sun," Prince Hal and Richard the Second, Louis the Eleventh and Charles

the First, a king in hiding, a king in exile, a king in disguise; so

long as he is a king, he is a safe investment for the romantic writer.

But the weakness of those who succumb to this temptation is to be

measured by their failure to make kings live in literature. Those few

who survive beyond the brief term of ephemeral popularity survive more

by reason of their office than of themselves and Jan de Witt makes

little show beside Louis the Sixteenth; their robes are of so much

greater account than their persons that the feeblest German prince cuts

a more imposing figure than the strongest president of the Swiss

Confederation.

Those who stand out in despite of their romantic setting, the human,

perplexed Hamlets and vacillating, remorseful Richards, are inevitably

few; and few they are likely to remain so long as the frame outshines

the picture and the prince is labelled and left a celestial being apart,

or labelled and dragged into passing sentimental contrast with men less

exalted; it would seem that to regard a king first as a man and

afterwards as an hereditary office-holder was to waste his romantic

possibilities. This, nevertheless, is what Couperus has set himself to

do in _Majesty_; he presents his family of kings as a branch of the

human family; their dignity ceases to be stupefying when all are equally

high-born; they wear their uniforms and robes as other men wear the

conventional clothes of their trade; and, stripping them of their titles

and decorations, he paints his group of men and women who have been born

to rule, as others are born to till the soil; to marry for love or

reasons of state, as others marry for love or reasons of convenience; to

experience such emotions as are common to all men and to face the

special duties and dangers apportioned to their caste by the

organization of society:

_"... The Gothlandic family,"_ says Couperus, _"... lived [at

Altseeborgen] for four months, without palace-etiquette, in the greatest

simplicity. They formed a numerous family and there were always many

visitors. The king attended to state affairs in homely fashion at the

castle. His grandchildren would run into his room while he was

discussing important business with the prime minister.... He just patted

their flaxen curls and sent them away to play, with a caress.... From

all the courts of Europe, which were as one great family, different

members came from time to time to stay, bringing with them the

irrespective nuances of different nationality, something exotic in

accent and moral ideas, so far as this was not merged in their

cosmopolitanism."_

To this "one great family" the organization of society apportioned with

one hand special privileges and exemptions, with the other special

hardships and dangers. Revolution, to these professional rulers, was

what successful trade rivalry is to a store-keeper; assassination was a

daily risk to which store-keepers are commonly not exposed:

_"... Such is the life of rulers: the emperor lay dead, killed by a

simple pistol-shot; and the court chamberlain was very busy, the masters

of ceremonies unable to agree; the pomp of an imperial funeral was

prepared in all its intricacy; through all Europe sped the after-shudder

of fright; every newspaper was filled with telegrams and long

articles...._

_"All this was because of one shot from a fanatic, a martyr for the

people's rights._

_"The Empress Elizabeth stared with wide-open eyes at the fate that had

overtaken her. Not thus had she ever pictured to herself that it would

come, thus, so rudely, in the midst of that festivity and in the

presence of their royal guest...."_

It is to be understood, none the less, that she had always expected it

to come: assassination is one of the special risks attaching to majesty

at all times when one form of kingship or the whole institution of kings

is debated and criticized. _"When the intellectual developments or

culture of a race,"_ wrote Heine, in _The Citizen Kingdom in 1832,

"cease to accord with its old established institutions, the necessary

result is a combat in which the latter are overthrown. This is called a

revolution. Until this revolution is complete, so long as the reform of

these institutions does not agree at all points with the intellectual

development, the habits and the wants of the people, during this period

the national malady is not wholly cured and the ailing and agitated

people will often relapse into the weakness of exhaustion and at times

be subject to fits of burning fever. When this fever is upon them, they

tear the lightest bandages and the most healing lint from their old

wounds, throw the most benevolent and noble-hearted nurses out of window

and themselves roll about in agony, until at length they find themselves

in circumstances or adapt themselves to institutions that suit them

better."_

So much for the race, in the gripe of growing-pains; but what of the

nurses? How little benevolent or noble-hearted soever they be, nurses

are bound by the honour of their profession and by personal pride not to

forsake their patients. In one passage of _Majesty_ the crown-prince is

shaken by fundamental doubts of his own inherited right to rule; he

questions and analyses until he is brought to heel by his imperial

father who remembers that an excess of "victorious analysis" rotted the

intellectual foundations of the old order and prepared the way for the

logical French revolution. In another passage the boy realizes without

any qualification that he at least is unfitted for the burthen of empire

and that it is better to abdicate in favour of his brother or to commit

suicide than to play Atlas with a world that he cannot sustain; once

more, his imperial father silences any admission that his own flesh and

blood can be too degenerate for the task of majesty. And so, at the

moral sword-point, this hereditary nurse is held to the duty and

privilege of standing by an hereditary patient whom he cannot relieve

with "the most healing lint" and who may at any moment throw him out of

window.

Not even in thought may majesty abdicate: a prince inherits his

philosophy as he inherits his title.

_"Life is so simple,"_ proclaims the collectivist Zanti.

_"'As you picture it, but not in reality,' objected Herman._

_"Zanti looked at him angrily, stopped still, to be able to talk with

greater ease, and, passionately, violently, exclaimed:_

_"'And do you in reality find it better than I picture it? I do not,

sir, and I hope to turn my picture into reality. You and yours once,

ages ago, made your picture reality; now it is the turn of us others:

your reality has lasted long enough....'_

_"Othomar, haughtily, tried to say something in contradiction; the old

man, however, suddenly turned to him and, gently though roughly, with

his penetrating, fanatical voice which made Othomar shudder:_

_"'For you, sir, I feel pity!... Do you know why? Because the time will

come!... The hour will come. Perhaps it is very near. If it does not

come in your father's reign, it will come in your reign or your son's.

But come it will! And therefore I feel pity for you. For you will not

have enough love for your people. Not enough love to say to them, "I am

as all of you and nothing more. I will possess no more than any of you,

for I do not want abundance while you suffer need. I will not rule over

you, for I am only a human being like yourselves and no more human than

you." Are you more human? If you were more, then you would be entitled

to rule, yes, then, then.... See here, young man, you will never have so

much love for your people as to do all this, oh, and more still and

more! You will govern and possess abundance and wage war. But the time

will come! Therefore I have pity for you ... although I oughtn't to!'"_

The dead weight of inheritance, always a psychological fascination for

Couperus, becomes doubly fascinating when one generation after another

inherits an undwindling legacy of divine, ironic whim. As, in _The Books

of the Small Souls_ and in _Old People and the Things that Pass_, the

children and grandchildren are born with minds tainted by prenatal

memories, so, in _Majesty_, a prenatal influence has ordered the life

and determined the fate of an infant who first draws breath as Count of

Lycilia, eldest son of the Duke of Xara, himself crown-prince and eldest

son of the Emperor of Liparia. There is no escape, no lack of heirs to

the ironic inheritance: _"'If it's a son,'"_ says the empress mother, on

the morrow of her husband's assassination, _"'it will be a Duke of

Xara....'_

_"And then the Emperor of Liparia ... lost his self-restraint. In one

lightning-flash, one zig-zag of terror, he saw again his life as

crown-prince, he thought of his unborn son. What would become of this

child of fate? Would it be a repetition of himself, of his hesitation,

his melancholy and his despair?..."_

If _Majesty_ be a _roman à clef_, "this child of fate," with his father

and mother and sisters, had his short spell of hesitation, melancholy

and despair ended in 1918 by the revolver-shots of his gaolers. If

Othomar be not a portrait of the Czar Nicolas II., it is hard to believe

that the character was not suggested by him; though the Czar Alexander

III. died a natural death, he would seem to have supplied a parallel for

the Emperor Oscar, as Alexander II. supplied one for the liberal

emperor, Othomar XI. The fanatical Zanti has his model in Count Tolstoi;

and even the tragic romance of Prince von Lohe-Obkowitz has its

historical counterpart.

But the interest and value of the book do not lie in any fancied

resemblance, among the characters, to living or dead kings; the study of

Prince Othomar does not depend on any likeness to the Czar Nicolas II.;

Couperus succeeds or fails not as a court painter, but as a great

sympathetic and imaginative artist who does or does not create, in the

unfamiliar atmosphere of a court, first the collective life and spirit

of a caste long trained to formalize its life and suppress its emotions,

then a group of human characters who stand out compelling and vital

against the posturing, shadowy kings and queens of romance.

To the composition of _Majesty_ go the understanding and the historic

sense, the irony and tenderness that enable Couperus in later books to

draw with unfaltering touch his exquisite portraits of old age and

youth, of men and women, in their moments of solitude and in their

reactions upon one another. Few men have stepped so lightly and surely

across the confines of the centuries and the continents; his intuition

makes him equally at home in Alexandria and the Hague, with women and

men, in the second century and in the twentieth; and it is not benumbed

by the surface inhumanity of a court. When the Archduchess Valérie had

lost her lover, the crown-prince could not understand her being able to

talk as usual at dinner.

_"It irritated him, his want of penetration of the human heart: how

could he develop it? A future ruler ought to be able to see things at a

single glance.... And suddenly, perhaps merely because of his desire for

human knowledge, the thought arose within him that she was concealing

her emotions, that perhaps she was still suffering intensely, but that

she was pretending and bearing up: was she not a princess of the blood?

They all learnt that, they of the blood, to pretend, to bear up! It was

bred in their bones."_

Perhaps it was bred in his bones, perhaps it was his mere desire for

human knowledge that gave Couperus his penetration into the emotions

which they of the blood were taught to conceal. In none of his books has

he lavished more sympathy than in his painting of Prince Othomar's

vacillation and passionate good-will, his timidity and desperate

courage; nowhere has he used greater tenderness than in his sketch of

the chivalry and gratitude which did duty for love in the passionless

union of Valérie and the crown-prince.

STEPHEN MCKENNA.

LINCOLN'S INN, LONDON, 7 _October_, 1920.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

My first translation of _Majesty_ was written in collaboration with my

dear friend Ernest Dowson and published in the year 1895. A small

edition was sold by the London publisher to Messrs. D. Appleton &

Company and has long been out of print. Messrs. Appleton, with

characteristic generosity, have relinquished to the present publishers

any copyright which they had established in the book and have thus

enabled me to produce this new version. For even a translator's style

undergoes notable modifications in a quarter of a century; and I should

not have been satisfied to see this novel reissued in its earlier

English form. The story should not therefore be regarded as a mere

reprint.

Incidentally, when collating the old Teixeira-Dowson version with the

original, I was struck with the chaste and discreet appearance of the

Dutch as compared with the English edition, soiled as the latter was on

every page with a splash of capital letters. Is it some innate snobbery

or merely lack of intelligence or thought that induces English

writers--and for long myself among them--to dab a capital at the head of

such nouns as the "emperor," the "crown-prince," the "duke," the

"chancellor," "empire" and "state," nay, even the "major," the

"professor," the "doctor," or of such adjectives as "royal" and

"imperial"? If we are to write of the "Major" and the "Professor," why

not be still more lavish with our capitals and write of the

"Midshipman," the "Postmistress" and the "Postman"? Anyhow, I felt that

a suitable time had come to experiment with an innovation and I decided

to reduce my capital letters to a minimum and to affix them to titles

only when these were followed by the name. Even the Germans do not

distinguish their titles with capitals; they have the more logical habit

of beginning every substantive with a capital; and, in their murky

language, this habit has one advantage, that it assists the reader to

hunt the elusive verbs to their lair. The English have not this reason

nor this excuse.

My thanks are due not only to Messrs. Appleton but also to Mr. Stephen

McKenna, the most acceptable of our younger novelists, who in his

admiration for the elder craftsman, has volunteered to write a preface

to Louis Couperus' present masterpiece.

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.

VENTNOR, I.W., 1 _November_, 1920.

MAJESTY

CHAPTER I

1

Lipara, usually a city white as marble: long, white rows of villas on a

southern blue sea; endless, elegant esplanades on the front, with palms

whose green lacquer shimmered against an atmosphere of vivid blue ether.

But to-day there drifted above it, heavily, a sombre, grey sky, fraught

with storm and tragedy, like a leviathan in the firmament. And this grey

sky was full of mystery, full of destiny, of strange destiny: it

precipitated no thunder, but remained hanging over the city, merely

casting faint shadows over the brightness of its palaces, over the width

of its squares and streets, over the blue of its sea, its harbour, where

the ships, upright, still, anxious, raised their tall masts on high.

White, square, massive, amid the verdure of the Elizabeth Parks, in the

more intimate mystery of its own great plane-trees--the celebrated

plane-trees of Lipara, world-famed trees--stood the Imperial, the

emperor's palace, quasi-Moorish, with white, pointed arcades: it stood

as the civic crown of the capital, one great architectural jewel,

separated from the city, though standing in its very midst, by all that

park-like verdure.

The empress, Elizabeth of Liparia, sat in the private drawing-room of

her apartments in the right wing; she sat with a lady-in-waiting, the

Countess Hélène of Thesbia. The windows were open; they opened on the

park; the famous plane-trees rose there, knotty with age,

wide-spreading, anxious, motionless with their trimmed leaves, between

which a dull-green twilight shimmered upon the lawns which ran into the

distance, rolling softly and smoothly, like tight-stretched velvet, into

an endless violet vista, with just here or there the one strident white

patch of a statue.

A great silence buzzed its strange sound of stillness indoors from the

park; it buzzed around the empress. She sat smiling; she listened to

Hélène reading aloud; she tried to listen, she did not always

understand. A nervous dread haunted her, surrounded her, as with an

invisible net of meshes, unbreakable. This dread was for her husband,

her children, her elder son, her daughters, her younger boy. This dread

crept along the carpet beneath her feet; it hung from the ceiling above

her head, stole round about her through the whole room. This dread was

in the park: it came from afar, from the violet vistas; it swept over

the lawns and climbed in through the open windows; it fell from the

trees, it fell from the sky, the grey, thunder-laden sky. This dread

trembled through Liparia, through the whole of Liparia, through the

whole empire; it trembled in, in to the empress, enveloping her whole

being....

Then Elizabeth drew a deep breath and smiled. Hélène had looked up to

her at a certain sentence with a light stress of voice and eyes,

pointing the dialogue of the novel; this made the empress smile and she

listened afresh. The anxiety smouldered in her, but she extinguished it

with abounding acquiescence, acquiescence in what was to happen, in what

must happen.

The novel which Hélène was reading was _Daniële Cortis_, a work that was

in vogue at court because the Princess Thera had liked it. The countess

read carefully and with great expression; the rhythm of the Italian came

from her lips with the elegance of very pointed Venetian glass, flowery

and transparent. And the empress wondered that Hélène could read so

beautifully and that she did not seem to feel the anxiety which

nevertheless stole about everywhere, like a spectre.

There was a knock at the door leading from the anteroom; a flunkey

opened the door; a lady-in-waiting appeared between the hangings and

curtseyed:

"His highness Prince Herman," she announced in a voice that hesitated a

little, as though she knew that this hour of the afternoon was almost

sacred to the empress.

"Ask the prince to come in," replied the empress: her voice, with all

its haughtiness, sounded kind and attractive and sympathetic. "We have

been expecting the prince so long...."

The door remained open, the lady-in-waiting disappeared, the flunkey

waited at the hangings, motionless, for the prince to come. His firm

tread sounded, approaching quickly, through the anteroom; and he made a

pleasant entrance, with friendliness in his healthy, red face and the

joy of meeting in his large grey eyes, with their gleaming black pupils.

The flunkey closed the door behind him.

"Aunt!"

The prince stepped towards the empress with both hands outstretched. She

had risen, as had Hélène, and she moved a step towards him; she took his

two hands and allowed him to kiss her heartily on both cheeks.

Hélène curtseyed.

"Countess of Thesbia," said the prince, bowing.

"So you have come at last!" said the empress, with jesting discontent.

She shook her head, but could not but look kindly at his pleasant,

handsome, healthy face. "Why did you not telegraph for certain when you

were coming? Then Othomar would have gone to the station, but now...."

She shrugged her shoulders with a smile of regret, as much as to say

that now it could not be helped that his reception had only been _tel

quel_....

"But, aunt," said Herman--the tone of his voice implied that he would

never have demanded this of Othomar--"I have been excellently received:

General Ducardi, Leoni, Fasti, our worthy minister and Siridsen...."

"Othomar will be sorry all the same," said the empress. "He is out

driving now with Thera. Thera is driving her new bays. I can't

understand why they went; it is sure to rain!"

The empress resumed her seat, with an anxious look at the weather

outside; the prince and Hélène likewise sat down. A cross-fire of

enquiries after the two families was kindled between the empress and her

nephew; they had not seen each other for months. There was much to be

discussed; the times were full of disaster; and the empress showed a

long telegram which the emperor had sent from Altara about the

inundations. Her fingers shook as they held the message.

She was still a woman of remarkable beauty, in spite of her grown-up

children. But the charm of her beauty was apparent to very few. In

public that beauty acquired a hardness as of a cameo: fine, clear-cut

lines; great, cold, brown eyes, without expression; a cold, closed

mouth; before people her slender figure assumed something stiff and

automatic; she even showed herself thus before the more intimate circles

of the court. But when she was seen, as now, in the seclusion of her own

drawing-room, with no one except her nephew, whom she loved almost as

much as her own children, and one little lady-in-waiting whom she

spoilt, then, in spite of the dread which she repressed deep down in her

heart, she became another woman. In her simple grey silk--she was in

slight mourning for a relation--what was stiff and automatic in her

figure changed into a gracious suppleness of carriage and movement, as

spontaneous as the other was studied; the cameo of her face became

animated; a look almost of melancholy came into her eyes; and, above

all, a laugh about that cold, hard mouth was as a gleam of sympathy that

rendered her unrecognizable to one who had seen her for the first time

cold, stiff and austere.

Prince Herman of Gothland was the second son of her sister, the Queen of

Gothland. A tall, sturdy lad in his undress uniform as a naval

lieutenant, with the healthy, Teutonic fairness of the house of

Gothland: a firm neck, broad shoulders, the swelling chest of an

athlete, the determined quickness of movement of a lively nature, more

than sufficient intelligence in his large grey eyes with the black

pupils and with now and then a single pleasant, soft note in his

baritone voice, a note that caused a momentary slight surprise and

rendered him attractive when it sounded gently in the midst of his

virility. And now that he sat there, easily, simply, pleasantly and yet

with a certain dignity that did not permit him an absolute excess of

joviality; now that he spoke, with his sweet voice, of his father, his

mother, his brothers and sisters and asked after his uncle, the Emperor

Oscar of Liparia, asked after Othomar, Thera: now, yes, now he aroused

in the empress a delicate feeling of family affection, something of a

secret bond of blood, a very solid support of relationship amid the

isolation of their respective grandeurs, the grandeurs of Liparia and

Gothland. Yonder, at the other side of Europe, far, far away from her

and yet so near through the magnetism of this delicate feeling, she felt

Gothland lying as one vast plain of love, whither she could allow her

thoughts to wander. She was no longer giddy with melancholy and dread in

that she was so high together with those whom she loved, her husband and

her children, for she was not high alone: in her highness she leant

against another highness, Liparia against Gothland, Gothland against

Liparia. It brought moist tears to her eyes, it brought a melancholy

that was like happiness clinging to her breath. The spectre of dread had

disappeared. She could have embraced her nephew; she would have liked to

tell him all this: his mere presence gave her this feeling, a feeling of

comfort and of strength; she had not known it for months.

2

The door was opened; the flunkey stood stiff and upright, with a fixed

look that stared straight before him, in the shadow of the hangings.

Princess Thera and Othomar entered. The princess went up gaily and

kindly to her cousin, they kissed; Othomar also embraced Herman, with a

single word. But, in comparison with the natural utterances of the

empress and of Thera, this single word of the Duke of Xara sounded

studied and smilingly cold, not intimate, and carried a needless air of

etiquette. It failed to conceal a translucent insincerity, a transparent

show that made no effort to simulate affection, but seemed quite simply

what at this moment it could not but seem, a greeting of feigned

kindness between two cousins of the same age. Prince Herman was

accustomed to this: there was no intimacy between him and Othomar; and

this was the more striking when they saw each other for the first time

after several months; it affected the empress keenly, disagreeably.

The conversation again turned upon the inundations in the north. The

empress showed her children the latest telegram, the same that she had

shown to Herman; it mentioned fresh disasters: still more villages swept

away, towns harassed by the swollen and overflowing rivers, after a

month of rain that had resembled the Flood. It had caused the emperor to

proceed three days ago to the northern provinces; but they at court were

now every moment expecting his orders that the crown-prince should

replace him there, as he himself was returning to Lipara because of the

cabinet crisis.

The crown-prince discussed all this a little coldly and formally. He was

a young man of twenty-one, slender and of short stature, very slightly

built, with delicate, melancholy features and dull, black eyes, that

generally stared straight before him; a young moustache tinted his upper

lip as with a stripe of Indian ink. He had a way of drooping his head a

little on his chest and then looking up from under his eyelids; he

generally sat very quiet; his hands, which were small and broad but

delicate, rested evenly upon his knees; and he had a trick of carrying

his left hand to his eyes and then--he was a little short-sighted--just

peering at his ring. He was tightly girt in the blue-and-white uniform

of a captain in the lancers, the uniform which he generally wore in

public: its silver frogs lent a certain breadth to his slenderness; on

his right wrist he wore a narrow, dull-gold bracelet.

"This is the first letter," said the empress. "Read it out, Thera...."

The princess took the letter. The emperor wrote:

"It is heartrending to see all this and to be able to do so little. The

whole district south of the Zanthos, from Altara to Lycilia, is one

expanse of water; where villages stood there now float the remains of

bridges and houses, trees, accumulations of roofs, dead cattle, carts

and household furniture and, as we were going along the Therezia Dyke,

which--God be praised!--still stands firm at Altara, a cluster of

corpses was slowly washed straight before our feet in one gigantic

embrace of death...."

The crown-prince had suddenly turned pale; he remained sitting in his

usual attitude, peering at his ring, with the trick that was his habit.

Thera read on. When the crown-prince looked up he met his mother's eyes.

She nodded to him with her eyelids, unseen by the others, who were

listening to the letter; he smiled--a smile full of heartbreaking

melancholy--and answered her with the same invisible quiver of the

eyelids; it was as though he understood that gentle greeting and drew a

scrap of comfort from it for a mysterious, silent sorrow that depressed

him within himself, that lay on his breast like an oppression of the

breath, like a nightmare in his waking life.

But Prince Herman was already talking about the ministerial crisis: it

was momentarily expected that the authoritative government, rendered

powerless, since the new elections, in the house of deputies with its

majority of constitutionals, would proffer its resignation to the

emperor. The question, as always, was that of a revision of the

constitution, which the constitutionals desired and the

authoritatives--taking the side of the emperor--opposed. The Empress

Elizabeth heaved a sigh of fatigue: how often had not this question of a

revision of the constitution, which in Liparia always meant an extension

of the constitution and a restriction of the imperial authority, come

looming up during their twenty years' reign as a personal attack upon

her husband! Resembling his long line of Liparian ancestors,

hereditarily autocratic, Oscar could never forgive his father, Othomar

XI., for allowing a constitution to be passed in his more liberal reign.

And now, at this crisis, it was no small thing that they were asking,

the constitutionals. The house of peers, hereditary and authoritative,

the emperor's own body, which cancelled every proposal of a too

constitutional character sent up from the house of deputies, was no

longer to stand above them, hereditary and therefore, because of its

hereditary nature, invariably authoritative: they wanted to make it

elective! Even Othomar XI., with his modern ideas in favour of a

constitution, would never have suffered this attack upon one of the most

ancient institutions of the empire, an attack which would shake Liparia

to its foundations....

While Herman was debating this, casually, his words lightly touching

this all-important question, it seemed to Othomar as though he were

turning giddy. A world passed through his head, rushing with rapid

clouds through his imagination; and out of these clouds visions loomed

up before him, pale-red, quick as lightning, terrible as a kind of

apocalypse, the universe ending in a dynamite explosion. Out of these

clouds there flashed up for an instant a scene, a recollection of the

history of his imperial inheritance: an emperor of Liparia murdered

centuries ago by one of his favourites at a court festival. Revolutions

in other countries of Europe, the French revolution, flickered up with a

blood-red reflection; the strikes in the quick-silver mines of the

eastern provinces grinned at him out of them, out of the clouds, the

world of clouds storming through his thoughts.... And so many more, so

many more, all so rapid, with the rapidity of their lightning-flashes;

he could not grasp them, the ruddy lightning-flashes; it all just

flickered through him and then away: it flickered away, far away!... And

it seemed strange to him that he was sitting there, in his mother's

drawing-room, with the stately park swarming behind the plate-glass

windows, with tints of old, medieval gold-leather, now, in the lowered

gleam of the sun-rays; with his mother opposite him, so sweet, so

daintily gentle in the intimacy of this short, uninterrupted meeting:

his cousin talking and his sister replying and the little

lady-in-waiting listening with a smile.... How strange to sit like this,

so easily, so peacefully, so serenely, in the seclusion of their palace,

as though Liparia were not shaking like an old, crazy tower!... Yes,

they were talking about the crisis, Herman and Thera, but what did

talking amount to? Words, nothing but words! Why this endless stringing

together of words, beautiful, empty words, which a sovereign is obliged

to string together and then utter to his subjects, now on this occasion,

now on that? No, no, they were not in his province, speeches! For what,

after all, were they supposed to express, this or that? What was right,

what was just, what was right and just for their empire, this or that?

How could one know, how could one be certain, how could one avoid

hesitating, seeking, groping, blind-folded? Even if he had a thousand

eyes all over the empire, would he be able to see everything that might

happen? And, if he were omniscient, would he always be able to know what

would be right? The constitution: was it good for a country to have a

constitution or not? In Russia: was it good in Russia? A republic: would

a republic be better? And who was right? Was his father right in wanting

to reign as an absolute monarch, with his hereditary house of peers, in

which he, Othomar, now recalled his admission, as Duke of Xara, at his

eighteenth year, with the ducal crown and the robes and chain of the

order of the Imperial Orb? Or was the house of deputies right? Would it

be a good thing to place a restriction upon absolute sovereignty? It was

difficult to decide.... The inundations: "It is heartrending to see all

this and to be able to do so little.... An expanse of water all the way

to Lycilia, a cluster of corpses in the embrace of death...."

It lightened.

Dull, heavy rumblings rolled through the sky; thick drops fell hard as

liquid hail upon the leaves of the plane-trees; the whole park seemed to

shiver, dreading the threatening cloud-burst. Hélène rose and closed the

open window.

Then Othomar heard a strange sound: Syria.... Had they ceased talking of

the house of peers? Syria, Syria....

"The king and queen were to have come next week, but they have now

postponed their visit," said the empress.

"Because of the inundations," added Thera. "They are going to

Constantinople first. I only wish they would remain with the sultan...."

"This visit seems to me at least to be something of an infliction," said

Herman, laughing. "And how long do they stay, aunt?"

The empress raised her shoulders to say that she did not know: the

approaching visit of the King and Queen of Syria pleased neither her nor

the emperor, but it was not to be avoided.... However, not wishing to

say much on this subject before Hélène, she replied:

"All the court festivities are now postponed, as you know, Herman,

because of these terrible disasters. You will have a quiet time, my boy.

You had better go with Othomar to Count Myxila's this evening...."

Count Myxila, the imperial chancellor, was that day keeping his sixtieth

birthday. He was the emperor's principal favourite. That morning he had

been to the empress to receive her congratulations. The crown-prince

was, by the emperor's desire, to appear for a moment at the reception in

the chancellor's palace.

Prince Herman glanced at Othomar enquiringly, as though expecting a word

from him too.

"Of course," the Duke of Zara hastened to say. "Myxila will reckon on

seeing Herman...."

3

When, at half-past ten in the evening, Othomar and Herman returned from

the chancellor's palace in a downpour of rain, it was known among the

empress' entourage also that the government had resigned; the princes

had met the ministers at Count Myxila's; the crisis had thrilled through

the outward ceremonial of the reception like a threatening shudder of

fever. Also there was a telegram from the emperor for the Duke of Xara:

"I wish your imperial highness to proceed to Altara to-morrow.

"OSCAR."

The telegram did not come as a surprise, but was the natural

consequence of the resignation of the government and of the emperor's

return, for the emperor did not wish to leave the scene of the disasters

without the consolation that the heir-apparent was about to replace him.

After a moment spent with the empress, Othomar withdrew to his own

apartments. He sent for his equerry, Prince Dutri, and consulted with

him shortly and in a few words, after which the equerry hurried away

with much ado. In his dressing-room Othomar found his valet, Andro, who

had been warned by one of the chamberlains and was already busily

packing up.

"Don't pack too much," he said, as the valet rose respectfully from the

trunk before which he was kneeling. "It would only be in the way...."

So soon as he had said this, he failed to see the reason. Nor did the

valet seem to take any notice of it: kneeling down again before the

trunk, he continued to pack what he thought fit. It would be quite right

as Andro was doing it, thought Othomar.

And he flung himself into a chair in his study. One of the windows was

open; a single standard lamp in a corner gave a dim light. The furious

downpour raged outside; a humid whiff of wet leaves drifted indoors.

The prince was tired, too tired to summon Andro to pull off his tight

patent-leather boots. He was wearing the white-and-gold uniform of a

colonel of the throne-guards, the imperial body-guard; the chain of the

order of the Imperial Orb hung round his neck; other decorations studded

his breast. The reception at the imperial chancellor's still whirled

before his eyes; in his brain buzzed, mingling with the rain, the

inevitable conversations about the crisis, the government, the house of

peers. He saw himself the crown-prince, always the crown-prince, always

too condescending, too affable, not sufficiently natural, not simple,

not easy like Herman; and he saw Herman moving easily through the rooms

of the chancellor's palace, asking quite simply to be introduced to the

ladies, now by Count Myxila and again by an equerry. And he envied his

cousin, who was a second son. Herman did not cause the atmosphere around

him to freeze at once, as did he, with the cold imperial look of his

crown-princedom.

He saw the ministers, the ministers who were about to retire, each with

his own interests at heart instead of those of Liparia. He suspected

this from their humble attitudes before him, the crown-prince, when he

had spoken to all of them.... He felt that they were only playing a

part, that there was much in them that they did not allow to transpire;

and he suddenly asked himself why, why this should all be so, why so

much show, nothing but show.... And he was suffering now, deep in his

breast; the tightness of his uniform, loaded with decorations, oppressed

him....

He saw old Countess Myxila and some other ladies, whom he had seen

curtseying amid the crackling of their trains and the sudden downward

glitter of their diamonds, whom he had seen flushing with pleasure

because the Duke of Xara had taken notice of them. And the wife also of

the court-marshal, the Duchess of Yemena, who had so long been absent

from court in voluntary exile at her estate in Vaza: he saw her

approaching on Prince Dutri's arm. For he did not know her: years ago,

when she was at court, he was a boy of fifteen, undergoing a strict

military education, seldom with the empress and never at the court

festivals; he had never seen the duchess at that time.

Now, in the twilight of that one lamp, with the weather raging outside,

he saw her once more and she became as it were transparent in the lines

of the rain; she looked strange, seen through the rain, as through a

curtain of wet muslin. A tall woman, voluptuously formed, half-naked

under the white radiance of her diamond necklace, that was how she

approached him: her hair blue-black with a gleam in it, her face a

little pale under a thin bloom of rose powder; she came nearer, slowly,

hesitating, in her yellow-gold figured satin, edged with heavy sable;

she bowed before him, with a deep, reverential curtsey before the

imperial presence: her head sank upon her breast, the tiara in her black

hair shot forth rays, her whole stature curved down as with one

serpentine line of grace in the material of gleaming gold that shone

about her bosom and seemed to break over the thick folds of her train

with a filagree of light. He had spoken to her. She rose from the

billows of her reverential grace; she replied, he forgot what; her eyes

sparkled upon his like black stars. She had made an impression upon him.

He thought it was because he had heard her much spoken of as a woman

with a life full of passion, a thing that was a riddle to him. His

education had been military and strictly chaste, his youth had remained

uncorrupted by the easy morals of the court, perhaps because his

parents, after a long and secret separation, known to none but

themselves, had come together again from a need of family-life and

mutual support; the Empress Elizabeth had forgiven the Emperor Oscar and

submitted to his infidelities as inevitable. Round about him Othomar had

never had occasion to observe the life of the senses. At the university

of Altara, where he had studied, he had never taken part, except

officially, in the diversions of the students; he had always remained

the crown-prince, not from haughtiness, but because he was unable to do

otherwise, from lack of ease and tact.

And something in the duchess had made an impression on him, as of a

thing unknown. He felt in this woman, who curtseyed so deeply before him

with her sphinx-like smile, a world of emotion and knowledge which he

did not possess; he had felt poor in comparison with her, small and

insignificant. What was it that she possessed and he not? Was it a

riddle of the soul? Were there such things, soul-enigmas, and was it

worth while to try to fathom them? Such a woman as she, was she not

quite different from his mother and sisters? Or did his equerries, among

themselves, speak of his sisters too as they spoke of the duchess? And

this life of passion, this life of love for so many, was that then the

truth? Did they not slander her, the equerries, or at least did they not

make truth seem different from what it was, as they always did in

everything, as if the truth must always be made to seem other to a

prince than to a subject?

He felt tired. And he sat on, striving in vain to drive from him the

whirl of the strange figures of that reception seen through a

transparency of rain. Before him, as though in his room, they all walked

through one another: the ministers, the equerries, Count Myxila and the

duchess....

A knock, a chamberlain:

"Prince Herman is asking whether he may intrude on your highness for a

minute."

He nodded yes. After a moment Prince Herman entered.

"You are always welcome, Herman," said Othomar; and his voice sounded

cold in spite of himself.

"I have come to ask you something," said Herman of Gothland. "I should

much like to go with you to Altara to-morrow; but I want to be certain

that you don't mind. I would not have asked it of my own accord, if my

aunt hadn't spoken of it. What do you think?"

Othomar looked at Herman; Othomar did not like his cool voice:

"If you do so out of sympathy, because you happen to be at Lipara, by

all means," he began....

"Let me tell you once more: I am doing this chiefly because of ... your

mother."

His voice sounded very emphatic.

"Do it for her then," replied Othomar, gently. "It will give me great

pleasure if you go with me for my mother's sake."

Herman realized that he had been unnecessarily cool and emphatic. He was

sorry. The empress had asked him to accompany Othomar. He had hesitated

at first, knowing that there was a lack of sympathy between Othomar and

him. Then he had yielded, but had not known how to ask Othomar. His

usual ease of manner had forsaken him, as it always did in Othomar's

presence.

"Very well, then," Herman stammered, awkwardly.

Othomar put out his hand:

"I understand your intention perfectly. Mamma would like you to go too,

because she will then be sure that there is some one with me whom I can

trust in everything. Isn't that it?"

Herman pressed his hand:

"Yes," he said, pleased, contented, feeling no annoyance that Othomar

had had the best of the conversation, delighted that his cousin took it

like this. "Yes, just so; that's how it is. Don't let me detain you now:

it's late. Good-night...."

"Good-night...."

Herman went. It was still pouring with rain. Othomar sat down again; the

chill of the rainy night pressed coldly into the room and fell upon his

shoulders. But he remained staring motionlessly at the tips of his

boots.

Andro entered softly:

"Does your highness wish me to...."

Othomar nodded. The valet first closed the window and drew the blind and

then knelt before the prince, who, with a gesture of fatigue, put out

his foot to him and rested the heel of his boot on the man's knee.

4

The downpour ceased during the night; but it was raining again in the

morning. It was seven o'clock; a sultry moisture covered the colossal

glass roof of the station, as though it had been breathed upon from end

to end. The special train stood waiting; the engine gave short, powerful

snorts, like a discontented, tired beast. A great multitude, a buzzing

accumulation of vague people filled the glass hall; a detachment of

infantry--two files, to right and left; the uniforms, dark-red and

pale-grey; above, a faint glitter of bayonets--drew two long stripes of

colour diagonally through the sombre station, cut the crowd into two and

kept a broad space clear in front of the imperial waiting-room.

Dissatisfaction hovered over the crowd; angry glances flashed; rough

words crackled sharply through the air, mingled with curses; a

contemptuous laugh sounded in a corner.

There was a long wait; then a cheer was heard outside: the prince had

arrived in front of the station. The waiting-room became filled with

uniforms, glistening faintly in the morning light; brief sentences were

exchanged in a low voice.

Othomar entered with Herman and the Marquis of Dazzara, the governor of

the capital, the highest military authority, whose rich uniform stood

out against the simpler ones of the others, even against those of the

princes; they were followed by adjutants, Liparian and Gothland

equerries, aides-de-camp. The mayor of the town and the managing

director of the railway stepped towards Othomar and saluted him; the

mayor stumbled through long phrases before the two princes.

"Why wasn't the approach to the platform closed to the public?" asked

General Ducardi of the director, after the adjutant-general had glanced

at the platform through the lace curtains, curious about the humming

outside.

The director shrugged his shoulders:

"That was our first intention; it was done in that way when the emperor

left," he replied. "But a special message was received from the

Imperial, urgently requesting us not to shut off the platform; it was

the Duke of Xara's wish."

"And how about all those soldiers?"

"By command of the governor of the capital. An aide-de-camp came and

told us that a detachment of infantry was coming as a guard-of-honour."

"Was that aide-de-camp also from the Imperial?"

"No, from the governor's palace...."

Ducardi shrugged his shoulders; an angry growl fluttered his great, grey

moustache. He walked straight up to the crown-prince:

"Is your highness aware that there is a detachment of infantry outside?"

he said, interrupting the mayor's long sentences.

The governor heard him and drew nearer.

"A detachment?... No," said Othomar, in astonishment.

"Did your highness not command it, then?" Ducardi continued.

"I? No," Othomar repeated.

The governor bowed low; the general's loud, gruff voice unnerved him.

"I thought," said the governor, urbanely, but mumbling, stammering--and

he tried to be at once humble before the prince and haughty towards the

general--"I thought it would be well to safeguard your highness against

possible ... possible unpleasantness, especially as your highness

desired ... desired that the platform should remain open to the

public...."

Othomar looked out as Ducardi had done; he saw the infantry drawn up and

the crowd behind; angry, murmuring, drab, threatening:

"But, excellency," he said, aloud, to the governor, "in that case it

would have been better to shut off the platform entirely. This is quite

wrong. The police would have been sufficient to prevent any crowding."

"I was afraid of ... of unpleasantness, highness. Troubled times, the

people so discontented," he whispered, fearing to be overheard by the

equerries.

"Quite wrong," repeated Othomar, angrily, nervously excited. "Let the

infantry march off."

"That's out of the question now," Ducardi hastened to say, with an

unhappy smile. "You understand that that can't be done."

The conversation had been carried on aside, in a half-whispering tone;

yet everybody seemed to listen. All eyes were gazing on the group

surrounding the princes; the others were silent.

"Then let us prolong this regrettable situation as little as possible;

we may as well go," said Othomar; and his voice quivered high, young and

nervous in his clear throat.

The doors were opened; Othomar, in his hurry, stepped out first; the

equerries and aides-de-camp did not follow him at once, as they had to

make way for Prince Herman, who happened to be a little behind. Herman

hurried up to Othomar; the others followed.

The princes made a movement of the head to left and right as though to

bow; but their eyes met the fixed, round eyes of the soldiers, who had

presented arms with a flash; they saluted and walked on to their

compartment a little quickly, with an unpleasant feeling in their backs.

Under the colossal glass roof of the station, behind the files of

soldiers, the crowd stood as still as death, for the humming had almost

ceased; there was no curse nor scornful word heard, but also no cheer,

no loud, loyal hurrah sweet to the ears of princes.

And the faces of those vague people, separated by uniforms and bayonets

from their future ruler, remained gazing fixedly with dull, hostile

eyes, with firmly-closed lips, full of forced restraint, as though to

stare him out of existence in the imperial compartment.

The princes waved their hands from the windows to the dignitaries, who

stood on the platform bowing, saluting. The engine whistled, shrieked,

tore the close atmosphere of humidity under the dome; the train left the

station, drove into the early morning, which was lighter outside the

glass roof, glided as it were over the rainy town upon viaducts, with

canals, streets, squares beneath it; farther on, the pinnacles and

spires of the palaces and churches; the two marble towers of the

cathedral, with the doves nestling in the renascence tracery of the

lace-work of its steeples, standing out pale-white against the sky,

which was now turning blue; then, in the centre of the town--green and

wide, one oasis--the Elizabeth Parks, the white mass of the Imperial

and, behind that, the gigantic bend of the quays, the harbour with its

forest of masts, the oval curve of the horizon of the sea, all wet,

glittering, raining in the distance.

Othomar looked sombrely before him. Herman smiled to him:

"Come, don't think about it any more," he advised him, adding with a

laugh, "Our poor governor has had his appetite spoilt for to-day."

General Ducardi muttered an inward curse:

"Monstrously stupid," Herman heard him mumbling.

"I wanted to show them," said Othomar, suddenly.... He had intended to

say, "that I am not afraid of them." He threw a glance around him, saw

the eyes of Prince Dutri, his equerry, fixed upon him like a basilisk's

and let his voice change from proud to faint-hearted; sadly he

concluded, "that I love them and trust them so completely. Why need it

have happened like this?..."

His voice had sounded faint, to please Prince Dutri; but it displeased

the general. He first glanced aside at his crown-prince and then at the

Prince of Gothland; he drew a comparison; his eye continued to rest

appreciatively, in soldierly approval, on the smart naval lieutenant,

broad and strong, sitting with his hands on his thighs, bending forward

a little, looking back at the white capital as it receded before his

eyes through the slanting rainbeams....

* * * * *

After four hours' travelling, Novi, in the province of Xara. The train

stops; the princes and their suite alight, consult clocks, watches. They

express surprise, they walk up and down the platform for half an hour,

for an hour. Prince Herman engages in a busy conversation with the

station-master. It is still raining.

At last the special from Altara is signalled. The train glides in and

stops; the Emperor Oscar alights from the imperial compartment. He is

followed by generals and aides-de-camp: their uniforms, the emperor's

included, have lost something of their smartness and hang in tired

creases from their shoulders, like clothes worn a long time. The

emperor, still young, broad and sturdy and only just turning grey, walks

with a firm step; he embraces his son, his nephew, brusquely, hastily.

The imperial party disappear into the waiting-room; Ducardi and one of

the Gothlandic officers follow them. The interview, however, is a short

one: in ten minutes they reappear on the platform; brief words and

handshakes are exchanged; the emperor steps back into his compartment,

the crown-prince into his. The prince's train waits until his father's

passes it--a last wave of the hand--then it too steams away....

Care lies like a cloud upon Othomar's forehead. He remembers his

father's words: in a desperate condition, our fine old city. The

Therezia Dyke may be giving way; so little energy in the municipal

council; thousands of people without a roof to cover them, fleeing,

spending the night in churches, in public buildings. And his last word:

"Send some of them to St. Ladislas...."

Othomar reflects; all are silent about him, depressed by the after-sound

of the emperor's words, which have painted the disaster anew, brought it

afresh before their eyes: the eyes of Ducardi, who knows himself to be

more ready with sword in war than with sympathy in cases of inundation;

the eyes of Dutri, still filled with the mundane glamour of the

incomparable capital. Some part of their self-concentration falls

silent; a thought of what they are about to see crosses their minds.

And Othomar reflects. What shall he do, what can he do? Is it not too

much that is asked of him? Can he, _can_ he combat the stress of the

waters?

"Oh, this rain, this rain!" he mutters, secretly clenching his fist.

Five hours' more travelling. The towers of the city, the crenulated

outline and Titanic plateaus of St. Ladislas, with its bastions, shoot

up on the horizon, shift to one side when approached. The train stops,

in the open country, at a little halting-place; the princes know that

the Central Station is flooded; the whole railway-management has been

transferred to this halt. And suddenly they stand in the presence of the

smooth, green, watery expanse of the Zanthos, which has spread itself

into one sea of water, broad and even, hardly rippled, like a wrath

appeased. A punt is waiting and carries them through ruins of houses,

through floating household goods. A dead horse catches on to the punt; a

musty odour of damp decay hovers about. At an over-turned house, men in

a punt are busied fishing up a corpse; it hangs on their boat-hooks with

slack arms and long, wet hair, the pallid, dead head drooping backwards;

it is a woman. Herman sees Othomar's lips quiver.

Now they float through a street of tall, deserted houses in a poor

suburb. This part has been flooded for days. They alight in a square;

the people are there; they cheer. Louder and louder they cheer, moved by

the sight of their prince, who has come across the water to save them. A

group of students shout, call out his name and cheer and wave their

coloured caps.

Othomar shakes hands with the mayor, the minister for waterways, the

governor of Altara and other dignitaries. His heart is full; he feels a

sob welling up from his breast.

From among the group of students one steps forward, a big, tall lad:

"Highness!" he cries. "May we be your guard-of-honour?"

Etiquette hardly exists here, though the dignitaries look angry.

Othomar, remembering his own student days, not yet so long ago, presses

the student's hand; Prince Herman does the same; and the students grow

excited and once more shout and clamour:

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Othomar for ever! Gothland for ever!"

Behind this square the city is perceived to be in distress, a silent

distress from yet greater danger threatening: the old coronation-city,

the city of learning and tradition, the sombre monument of the middle

ages; she looks grey compared with white Lipara, which lies laughing

yonder and is beautiful with new marble on her blue sea, but which does

not love her sovereigns so well as she does, the dethroned capital, with

her gigantic Romanesque cathedral, where the sacred imperial crown with

the cross of St. Ladislas is pressed on the temples of every emperor of

Liparia. Though her masters are faithless to her and have for centuries

lived in their white Imperial over yonder and no longer in the old

castellated fortress of the country's patron saint, she, the old city,

the mother of the country, remains faithful to them with her maternal

love and not because of her oath, but because of her blood, of her

heart, of all her life, which is her old tradition....

* * * * *

But, like his father, Othomar was not this time to go to the Castle of

St. Ladislas: the fortress lay too high and too far from the town, too

far from the scene of disasters. Open carriages stood in waiting; they

stepped in, the students flung themselves on horseback; the princes were

to take up their residence in the palace of the cardinal-archbishop, the

primate of Liparia, in the Episcopal, which, together with the cathedral

and the Old Palace, formed one colossal, ancient, grey mass, a town in

itself, the very heart of the city.

They rode quickly on. The people cheered; they look upon them as a train

of deliverers who, they thought, would at last bring them safety.

Between the departure of the emperor and the arrival of the prince a

depression had reigned which, at the sight of Othomar, changed into

morbid enthusiasm.

It became suddenly dark, but not through the sun's setting--it was only

five o'clock in the month of March in the south--it became dark because

of the clouds, the ships in the sky carrying in their tense,

bowl-shaped, giant sails water which already was beginning to trickle

down again in drops. Under that grey sky the cheering of the people rose

in a minor key, when suddenly, as though the swollen clouds were

bursting open with one rent, a flood dashed down in a solitary,

perpendicular sheet of water.

Othomar was sitting with Herman and Ducardi in the first carriage.

"Would not your highness prefer to have the carriage closed?" asked the

old general, helping the prince on with his cape.

Othomar hesitated; he had no time to answer the general; the crowd

increased, became thicker, cheered; and he bowed in acknowledgement,

saluted, nodded. The heavy rain clattered straight down. The hard

rainbeams ran down the princes' and the general's necks, down their

backs, soaked their knees. The crowd stood sheltered under an irregular

roof of umbrellas, as though grouped under wet, black stars, filled the

narrow streets of the old city, pressed in between the outriders and the

carriage: the coachman had to drive more slowly.

"Won't you have the carriage shut?" Herman repeated after Ducardi.

Othomar still hesitated. Then--and he himself thought his words a little

theatrical and did not know how they would sound--he answered aloud:

"No, do not let us be afraid of the water; they have all suffered from

the water here."

But Ducardi looked at him; he felt something quiver inside him for his

prince....

The carriage remained open. In one of the landaus following, Prince

Dutri looked round furiously to see how much longer the Duke of Xara

meant to let himself be saturated with rain and his suite with him. In

the narrow, high streets near the cathedral they had to drive almost at

a walking-pace, right through the cheering of the crowding populace.

Soaked to the skin, the Crown-prince of Liparia with his following

arrived at the cardinal-archbishop's; they left a trail of water behind

them on the staircases and in the corridors of the Episcopal.

5

In changed uniforms, a short dinner with the high prelate; a few canons

and minor ecclesiastics sit down with them. The room is large and

sombre, barely lighted with a feeble glimmer of candles; the silver

gleams dully on the dressers of old black oak; the frescoes on the

walls--sacred subjects--are barely distinguishable. A silent haste

quickens the jaws; the conversation is conducted in an undertone; the

servants, in their dark livery, move as though on tiptoe. The cardinal,

on either side of whom the princes are seated, is tall and thin, with a

refined, ascetic face and the steel-blue eyes of an enthusiast; his

voice issues from low down in his throat, like that of an oracle; he

says something of the Lord's will and makes a submissive gesture with

both hands, the fingers lightly outspread, as Jesus does in the old

pictures. One of the priests, the cardinal's private secretary, a young

man with a round, pink face and soft, white hands, laughs rather loudly

at a joke of Prince Dutri, who, sitting next to him, tells a story about

a countess in Lipara whom they both know. The cardinal casts a stern

glance at the frivolous secretary.

After the hurried dinner, the princes and their suite ride into the town

on horseback, cheered wherever they go. The water already mounts close

to the cathedral and the Archiepiscopal Palace. Groups of men, women and

children, sobbing, flow towards the prince, as he rides across the dark

squares; they carry torches about him, as the gas is not everywhere

lighted; the ruddy flares look strange, romantic, over the ancient dark

mass of the walls and are reflected with long streaks of blood in the

water lying in the narrow alleys. A large house of many storeys and rows

of little windows appears to have suddenly gone under: a sudden

mysterious pressure of water, filtering from the foundations through the

masonry of the cellars, making its treacherous way through the least

crack or crevice. The inhabitants save themselves in skiffs, which pass

with little red lights through the black, watery town; a child cries at

the top of its voice. They are poor people there in hundreds, living,

packed as in boxes. The princes alight and step into a boat and are

rowed to the spot; it becomes known who they are; they themselves help

an old woman with three children, all wet to the waist, to climb on to a

raft; they themselves give them money, shout instructions to them. And

they point to the old fortress of St. Ladislas as a refuge....

But a cry arises, farther on, a cry at first not clearly perceived in

the darkness of the evening, then at last distinctly audible:

"The Therezia Dyke! The Therezia Dyke!..."

The princes want to go there; it is not possible on horseback; the only

way is in boats. Prince Herman himself grasps the sculls; in the next

boat Dutri declares to Von Fest, one of the Gothlandic equerries, that,

taken all round, he thinks Venice more comfortable....

"The Therezia Dyke! The Therezia Dyke!..."

The dyke lies like the black back of a great, long beast just outside

the town, on the left bank of the Zanthos, and protects the whole St.

Therezia district, the eastern portion of the city, which stands

tolerably high, from the river, which generally overflows in springtime.

The boats glide over the water-streets; a landing is possible in the

Therezia Square; lanterns are burning; torches flare, ruddy

scintillations dart over the water. The square is large and wide; the

houses stand black round about it and surround it in the night with

their irregular lines of gables and chimneys, with the massive pile of

the church of St. Therezia, whose steeples are lost in the dark sky; in

the centre of the square rises a great equestrian statue of a Liparian

emperor, gigantic in motionless bronze, stretching one arm, sword in

hand, over the petty swarming of the crowd.

Othomar and Herman have sent their three equerries, Dutri, Leoni and Von

Fest, for whom horses have been found and saddled, to the dyke, which

protects a whole suburb of villas, factories and the St. Therezia

railway-station against the waters of the Zanthos, which has already

poured its right bank over the country and is drowning it. The princes

stand in the middle of the square on the steps of the pedestal of the

statue; they would have liked to go on farther, but the mayor himself

has begged them to stay where they are: farther on mortal danger

threatens at every moment.... All that could be done has been done;

there is nothing more to do but wait.

Quarters of an hour, half-hours, pass. This waiting for terrible news

calms them; they hope afresh. The officers ride to and fro; the villas

and factories yonder are deserted: a whole town lies empty, forsaken.

Prince Dutri, turning his horse, which he has ridden out of breath,

assures them that the embankment will hold firm; after he has spoken

with the princes, he is surrounded: it is the occupiers of the villas,

the manufacturers, who overwhelm him with questions, fortified by the

self-assurance of the imperial equerry. Dutri gallops off once more.

Now the doors of the church are opened wide, quite wide; at the end of

the vista, between the pillars, the tiny lights glitter on the altar; a

procession files out slowly: a mitred bishop, priests, acolytes, singing

and carrying banners and swinging clouds of smoke from their censers;

behind the upraised crucifix, the relics of St. Therezia, in their

antique shrine of medieval gold and crystal and precious stones, round

or roughly cut; it is borne under a canopy and in the shimmering gleam

of candles it glitters and sparkles like a sacred jewel, like a

constellation, across that sombre square, through that black night of

disaster; flicker the giant emeralds, glitters the precious chased gold

and before the Most Holy the crowded populace draws back on either side

and falls upon its knees. This is the fifth time to-day that the

procession goes its round, that the reliquary is borne on high, to

exorcize the calamity. It passes the statue, the princes kneel down; the

Latin of the chant, the gleam of the relics in their shrine, the cloud

of the incense pass over them with the blessing of the bishop....

The procession has brought stillness to the square, but a murmur now

approaches as from afar.... The crowd seems to surge as though in one

wave, nobody is now kneeling; the very procession is broken up and

confused. Through the throng rushes the report: the dyke has given

way!...

They do not yet believe it; but suddenly from above the fort of St.

Ladislas, which spreads its ramparts about the castle, a shot thunders

out and vibrates over the black city and shakes through the black sky as

though its rebound were breaking against the lowering clouds. A second

shot thunders after it, as with giant cymbals of catastrophe, a third

... the whole town knows that the Zanthos has broken the dyke.

The whole square is in confused motion, like a swarm of ants; troops of

tardy fugitives still come thronging in, poor ones now and indigent, who

had not been able to fly earlier, who had been still hoping; through the

crush Prince Dutri, panting, cursing, on horseback, terror in his eyes,

strives to reach the statue; the distant murmur as of a sea comes nearer

and nearer. Men scatter along the streets, on foot or in boats; the

disordered procession, with the glitter of its reliquary, seeming to

reel on the billows of a human sea, scatters towards the church.

"Is not even the square safe?" asks Othomar.

He can hardly speak, his chest seems cramped as it were with iron, his

eyes fill with tears, an immense despair of impotence and pity suffuses

his soul.

The mayor shakes his head:

"The square lies lower than the suburbs, highness; you cannot remain

here. For God's sake go back to the Episcopal in a boat!..."

But the princes insist on remaining, though the murmur grows louder and

louder.

"Go into the church in that case, highnesses: that is the only safe

place left," the mayor beseeches. "I beg you, for God's sake!"

The square is already swept clean, the torch-bearers lead the princes to

the steps of the church; the Zanthos comes billowing on, like a soft

thunder skimming the ground.

Inside the church the organ sounds; they sing, they pray all through the

night. And the whole night long everything outside remains chaotically

black, gently murmuring....

When the first dawn pales over the sky, which begins in the distance to

assume tints of rose and grey, faint opal and mother-of-pearl, Othomar

and Herman and the equerries emerge on the steps of the church.

The square stands under water; the houses rise out of the water; the

statue of Othomar III. waves its bronze arm and sword over a lake that

ripples in the morning breeze.

From the Therezia Square to the Cathedral Square everything lies under

water.

6

"TO HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY THE EMPRESS OF LIPARIA

"THE EPISCOPAL,

"ALTARA,

"--_March_, 18--.

"MY ADORED MOTHER,

"Your letter reproaches me with not writing to you two days ago, without

delay; forgive me, for my thoughts have so constantly been full of you.

But I felt so tired yesterday, after a busy day, and I lacked the

strength to write to you in the evening. Let me tell you now of my

experiences.

"You describe to me the terrible impression produced at Lipara by the

telegram from here about the breach in the Therezia Dyke and how none

slept at the Imperial. We too were up all night, in St. Therezia's

Church. No such fearful inundation has been remembered for fifty years;

at the time of that which my father remembers in his childhood, the

Therezia Square was not flooded and the water only came as far, they

say, as the great iron-factory.

"How can I describe to you what I felt that night, while we were hoping

and waiting, hoping in turn that God and His Holy Mother would ward off

this disaster from us and waiting for the catastrophe to burst forth! We

stood on the pedestal of the equestrian statue, unable to do anything

more. Oh, that impotence about me, that impotence within me! I kept on

asking myself what I was there for, if I could do nothing to help my

people. Never before, dearest Mother, have I felt this feeling of

impotence, of inability to counteract the inevitable, so possess my

soul, until it was wholly filled with despair; but neither have I ever

so thoroughly realized that everything in life has its two sides, that

the greatest disaster has not only its black shadow but also its bright

side, for never, never have I felt so strongly and utterly, through my

despair, the love for our people, a thing that I did not yet know could

exist in our hearts as a truth, as I then felt it quivering all through

me; and this love gave me an immense melancholy at the thought that all

of them, the millions of souls of our empire, will never know, or, if

they did know, believe that I loved them so, loved them as though my own

blood ran in their veins. Nor do I wish to deceive myself and I well

know that I should never have this feeling at Lipara, but I have it

here, in our ancient city, which gives us all her sympathy. I feel here

that I myself am more of a Slav, like our Altarians, than a Latin, like

our southerners in Lipara and Thracyna; I feel here that I am of their

blood, a thing that I do not feel yonder.

"No doubt much has been said and written in the papers about the want of

tact of the Marquis of Dazzara, with his foolish guard-of-honour at the

station at our departure; be that as it may, I felt great sadness in the

train to think that, in spite of their having come to see me leave, they

did not seem to love me. I know you will again disapprove of this as

false sensitiveness on my part, but I cannot help it, my dear Mother: I

am like that, I am hypersensitive to sympathy in general and to the

utterances of our people in particular. And for that reason too I love

the people here, very simply and childishly perhaps, because they show

that they love me: enthusiasm everywhere, genuine, unaffected enthusiasm

wherever we go; and yet what are we able to do for them, except give

them money! I find this sympathy among the lowest: workmen and labourers

whom I had never seen before to my knowledge and to whom I could only

speak three or four words of comfort--and I can never find much else to

say, it is always the same--and among the soldiers, although they must

feel instinctively, in spite of never seeing me except in uniform, that

I am no soldier at heart; and also among the students, the priests, the

civic authorities and the higher functionaries. Yesterday we went round

everywhere, to all the places appointed as refuges: not only the

barracks and shops and factories, but even some of the rooms at the

law-courts, two of the theatres and the prison, poor souls! And also St.

Ladislas. From the Round Tower we had a view of the surrounding country:

towards the east there was nothing but water and water, like a sea. My

heart felt as though screwed tight into my breast.

"We went to the university also. I remembered most of the professors

from two years ago, when I was here as an undergraduate.

"It was a terrible scene outside the town. Oh, Mamma, there were

hundreds, there were thousands of corpses, laid out side by side on a

meadow, as in a mortuary, before the burial, for identification! I saw

harrowing scenes, my heart was torn asunder: troops of relations who

sought or who, sobbing, had found. A terrible air of woe filled the

whole atmosphere. I felt sick and turned quite pale, it required all my

energy to prevent myself from fainting, but Herman put his arm through

mine and supported me as well as he was able without ostentation, while

a couple of doctors from among the group of physicians to whom I was

speaking gave me something to smell. Oh, Mamma, it was a terrible

spectacle, all those pallid, shapeless, swollen corpses, on the green

grass, and, above, the sky, which had become deep blue again!

"I have informed the municipal council, in accordance with your wish and

my father's, that you are each of you presenting a personal donation of

a million florins and I presented my own at the same time. The whole

world seems in sympathy with us; money is flowing in from every side,

but the damage is like a pit that cannot be filled up. As you say, the

donation of our Syrian friends is truly princely and oriental.

"What more have I to tell you? I really do not know; my brain is

confused with a nightmare of ghastly visions and I have difficulty in

thinking logically. But I promise you, my dear Mother, to do what I can

and to do it with all my might; and all I ask is that you will send me a

single word to tell me that you are not too dissatisfied with your boy.

"As my father desires, I will stay here another week; it seems to do the

people good to see us, they love us so. They were enraptured when it was

announced that after my departure you and Thera were coming to Altara.

You with your soft hand will be able to do so much that we have omitted.

How they do love us here! And why are we not always at St. Ladislas?

Though the fortress is sombre, it is bright with their sympathy.

"But do not let me write to you so poetically in these distressful days,

in which we should be practical. Herman's society does me a deal of good

and I can do more when he is by my side. General Ducardi is a fine,

indefatigable fellow, as always. The others have all been very willing

and practical; and, if I may be allowed respectfully to differ from my

Father, I am inclined to think that the municipal council does what it

can. It is true, an English engineer told me that with better

precautions and a more thorough supervision the Therezia Dyke would

perhaps have held out; however, I don't know.

"Herman will accompany me on my journey through the provinces. We shall

go to Lycilia and Vaza and so far as possible to the lowlands. These are

of course in the worst case.

"I have just received the telegrams: the Marquis of Dazzara dismissed

and the Duke of Mena-Doni--I don't like that man--governor of the

capital! Lipara under martial law! And will my father succeed in

preserving our house of peers by this dissolution of the house of

deputies?

"Dearest Mother, his eminence has just sent to ask me to receive him. I

do not want to keep him waiting and therefore close my letter hurriedly;

with a fond embrace, I am, with fondest and most respectful love,

"your own boy,

"OTHOMAR."