'O yes, I follow that,' replied the young man, sadly chop-fallen 
over the nature of the information he had elicited; and then 
brightening up: 'Is it,' he ventured, 'is it for an arsenal that you 
have bought the farm?'

'We'll see about that,' the Prince answered, laughing.  'You must 
not be too zealous.  And in the meantime, if I were you, I would say 
nothing on the subject.'

'O, trust me, sir, for that,' cried Fritz, as he pocketed a crown.  
'And you've let nothing out; for I suspected - I might say I knew it 
- from the first.  And mind you, when a guide is required,' he 
added, 'I know all the forest paths.'

Otto rode away, chuckling.  This talk with Fritz had vastly 
entertained him; nor was he altogether discontented with his bearing 
at the farm; men, he was able to tell himself, had behaved worse 
under smaller provocation.  And, to harmonise all, the road and the 
April air were both delightful to his soul.

Up and down, and to and fro, ever mounting through the wooded 
foothills, the broad white high-road wound onward into Grunewald.  
On either hand the pines stood coolly rooted - green moss 
prospering, springs welling forth between their knuckled spurs; and 
though some were broad and stalwart, and others spiry and slender, 
yet all stood firm in the same attitude and with the same 
expression, like a silent army presenting arms.

The road lay all the way apart from towns and villages, which it 
left on either hand.  Here and there, indeed, in the bottom of green 
glens, the Prince could spy a few congregated roofs, or perhaps 
above him, on a shoulder, the solitary cabin of a woodman.  But the 
highway was an international undertaking and with its face set for 
distant cities, scorned the little life of Grunewald.  Hence it was 
exceeding solitary.  Near the frontier Otto met a detachment of his 
own troops marching in the hot dust; and he was recognised and 
somewhat feebly cheered as he rode by.  But from that time forth and 
for a long while he was alone with the great woods.

Gradually the spell of pleasure relaxed; his own thoughts returned, 
like stinging insects, in a cloud; and the talk of the night before, 
like a shower of buffets, fell upon his memory.  He looked east and 
west for any comforter; and presently he was aware of a cross-road 
coming steeply down hill, and a horseman cautiously descending.  A 
human voice or presence, like a spring in the desert, was now 
welcome in itself, and Otto drew bridle to await the coming of this 
stranger.  He proved to be a very red-faced, thick-lipped 
countryman, with a pair of fat saddle-bags and a stone bottle at his 
waist; who, as soon as the Prince hailed him, jovially, if somewhat 
thickly, answered.  At the same time he gave a beery yaw in the 
saddle.  It was clear his bottle was no longer full.

'Do you ride towards Mittwalden?' asked the Prince.

'As far as the cross-road to Tannenbrunn,' the man replied.  'Will 
you bear company?'

'With pleasure.  I have even waited for you on the chance,' answered 
Otto.

By this time they were close alongside; and the man, with the 
countryfolk instinct, turned his cloudy vision first of all on his 
companion's mount.  'The devil!' he cried.  'You ride a bonny mare, 
friend!'  And then, his curiosity being satisfied about the 
essential, he turned his attention to that merely secondary matter, 
his companion's face.  He started.  'The Prince!' he cried, 
saluting, with another yaw that came near dismounting him.  'I beg 
your pardon, your Highness, not to have recognised you at once.'

The Prince was vexed out of his self-possession.  'Since you know 
me,' he said, 'it is unnecessary we should ride together.  I will 
precede you, if you please.'  And he was about to set spur to the 
grey mare, when the half-drunken fellow, reaching over, laid his 
hand upon the rein.

'Hark you,' he said, 'prince or no prince, that is not how one man 
should conduct himself with another.  What!  You'll ride with me 
incog. and set me talking!  But if I know you, you'll preshede me, 
if you please!  Spy!'  And the fellow, crimson with drink and 
injured vanity, almost spat the word into the Prince's face.

A horrid confusion came over Otto.  He perceived that he had acted 
rudely, grossly presuming on his station.  And perhaps a little 
shiver of physical alarm mingled with his remorse, for the fellow 
was very powerful and not more than half in the possession of his 
senses.  'Take your hand from my rein,' he said, with a sufficient 
assumption of command; and when the man, rather to his wonder, had 
obeyed: 'You should understand, sir,' he added, 'that while I might 
be glad to ride with you as one person of sagacity with another, and 
so receive your true opinions, it would amuse me very little to hear 
the empty compliments you would address to me as Prince.'

'You think I would lie, do you?' cried the man with the bottle, 
purpling deeper.

'I know you would,' returned Otto, entering entirely into his self-
possession.  'You would not even show me the medal you wear about 
your neck.'  For he had caught a glimpse of a green ribbon at the 
fellow's throat.

The change was instantaneous: the red face became mottled with 
yellow: a thick-fingered, tottering hand made a clutch at the tell-
tale ribbon.  'Medal!' the man cried, wonderfully sobered.  'I have 
no medal.'

'Pardon me,' said the Prince.  'I will even tell you what that medal 
bears: a Phoenix burning, with the word LIBERTAS.'  The medallist 
remaining speechless, 'You are a pretty fellow,' continued Otto, 
smiling, 'to complain of incivility from the man whom you conspire 
to murder.'

'Murder!' protested the man.  'Nay, never that; nothing criminal for 
me!'

'You are strangely misinformed,' said Otto.  'Conspiracy itself is 
criminal, and ensures the pain of death.  Nay, sir, death it is; I 
will guarantee my accuracy.  Not that you need be so deplorably 
affected, for I am no officer.  But those who mingle with politics 
should look at both sides of the medal.'

'Your Highness . . . . ' began the knight of the bottle.

'Nonsense! you are a Republican,' cried Otto; 'what have you to do 
with highnesses?  But let us continue to ride forward.  Since you so 
much desire it, I cannot find it in my heart to deprive you of my 
company.  And for that matter, I have a question to address to you.  
Why, being so great a body of men - for you are a great body - 
fifteen thousand, I have heard, but that will be understated; am I 
right?'

The man gurgled in his throat.

'Why, then, being so considerable a party,' resumed Otto, 'do you 
not come before me boldly with your wants? - what do I say? with 
your commands?  Have I the name of being passionately devoted to my 
throne?  I can scarce suppose it.  Come, then; show me your 
majority, and I will instantly resign.  Tell this to your friends; 
assure them from me of my docility; assure them that, however they 
conceive of my deficiencies, they cannot suppose me more unfit to be 
a ruler than I do myself.  I am one of the worst princes in Europe; 
will they improve on that?'

'Far be it from me . . .' the man began.

'See, now, if you will not defend my government!' cried Otto.  'If I 
were you, I would leave conspiracies.  You are as little fit to be a 
conspirator as I to be a king.'

'One thing I will say out,' said the man.  'It is not so much you 
that we complain of, it's your lady.'

'Not a word, sir' said the Prince; and then after a moment's pause, 
and in tones of some anger and contempt: 'I once more advise you to 
have done with politics,' he added; 'and when next I see you, let me 
see you sober.  A morning drunkard is the last man to sit in 
judgment even upon the worst of princes.'

'I have had a drop, but I had not been drinking,' the man replied, 
triumphing in a sound distinction.  'And if I had, what then?  
Nobody hangs by me.  But my mill is standing idle, and I blame it on 
your wife.  Am I alone in that?  Go round and ask.  Where are the 
mills?  Where are the young men that should be working?  Where is 
the currency?  All paralysed.  No, sir, it is not equal; for I 
suffer for your faults - I pay for them, by George, out of a poor 
man's pocket.  And what have you to do with mine?  Drunk or sober, I 
can see my country going to hell, and I can see whose fault it is.  
And so now, I've said my say, and you may drag me to a stinking 
dungeon; what care I?  I've spoke the truth, and so I'll hold hard, 
and not intrude upon your Highness's society.'

And the miller reined up and, clumsily enough, saluted.

'You will observe, I have not asked your name,' said Otto.  'I wish 
you a good ride,' and he rode on hard.  But let him ride as he 
pleased, this interview with the miller was a chokepear, which he 
could not swallow.  He had begun by receiving a reproof in manners, 
and ended by sustaining a defeat in logic, both from a man whom he 
despised.  All his old thoughts returned with fresher venom.  And by 
three in the afternoon, coming to the cross-roads for Beckstein, 
Otto decided to turn aside and dine there leisurely.  Nothing at 
least could be worse than to go on as he was going.

In the inn at Beckstein he remarked, immediately upon his entrance, 
an intelligent young gentleman dining, with a book in front of him.  
He had his own place laid close to the reader, and with a proper 
apology, broke ground by asking what he read.

'I am perusing,' answered the young gentleman, 'the last work of the 
Herr Doctor Hohenstockwitz, cousin and librarian of your Prince here 
in Grunewald - a man of great erudition and some lambencies of wit.'

'I am acquainted,' said Otto, 'with the Herr Doctor, though not yet 
with his work.'

'Two privileges that I must envy you,' replied the young man 
politely: 'an honour in hand, a pleasure in the bush.'

'The Herr Doctor is a man much respected, I believe, for his 
attainments?' asked the Prince.

'He is, sir, a remarkable instance of the force of intellect,' 
replied the reader.  'Who of our young men know anything of his 
cousin, all reigning Prince although he be?  Who but has heard of 
Doctor Gotthold?  But intellectual merit, alone of all distinctions, 
has its base in nature.'

'I have the gratification of addressing a student - perhaps an 
author?' Otto suggested.

The young man somewhat flushed.  'I have some claim to both 
distinctions, sir, as you suppose,' said he; 'there is my card.  I 
am the licentiate Roederer, author of several works on the theory 
and practice of politics.'

'You immensely interest me,' said the Prince; 'the more so as I 
gather that here in Grunewald we are on the brink of revolution.  
Pray, since these have been your special studies, would you augur 
hopefully of such a movement?'

'I perceive,' said the young author, with a certain vinegary twitch, 
'that you are unacquainted with my opuscula.  I am a convinced 
authoritarian.  I share none of those illusory, Utopian fancies with 
which empirics blind themselves and exasperate the ignorant.  The 
day of these ideas is, believe me, past, or at least passing.'

'When I look about me - ' began Otto.

'When you look about you,' interrupted the licentiate, 'you behold 
the ignorant.  But in the laboratory of opinion, beside the studious 
lamp, we begin already to discard these figments.  We begin to 
return to nature's order, to what I might call, if I were to borrow 
from the language of therapeutics, the expectant treatment of 
abuses.  You will not misunderstand me,' he continued: 'a country in 
the condition in which we find Grunewald, a prince such as your 
Prince Otto, we must explicitly condemn; they are behind the age.  
But I would look for a remedy not to brute convulsions, but to the 
natural supervenience of a more able sovereign.  I should amuse you, 
perhaps,' added the licentiate, with a smile, 'I think I should 
amuse you if I were to explain my notion of a prince.  We who have 
studied in the closet, no longer, in this age, propose ourselves for 
active service.  The paths, we have perceived, are incompatible.  I 
would not have a student on the throne, though I would have one near 
by for an adviser.  I would set forward as prince a man of a good, 
medium understanding, lively rather than deep; a man of courtly 
manner, possessed of the double art to ingratiate and to command; 
receptive, accommodating, seductive.  I have been observing you 
since your first entrance.  Well, sir, were I a subject of Grunewald 
I should pray heaven to set upon the seat of government just such 
another as yourself.'

'The devil you would!' exclaimed the Prince.

The licentiate Roederer laughed most heartily.  'I thought I should 
astonish you,' he said.  'These are not the ideas of the masses.'

'They are not, I can assure you,' Otto said.

'Or rather,' distinguished the licentiate, 'not to-day.  The time 
will come, however, when these ideas shall prevail.'

'You will permit me, sir, to doubt it,' said Otto.

'Modesty is always admirable,' chuckled the theorist.  'But yet I 
assure you, a man like you, with such a man as, say, Doctor Gotthold 
at your elbow, would be, for all practical issues, my ideal ruler.'

At this rate the hours sped pleasantly for Otto.  But the licentiate 
unfortunately slept that night at Beckstein, where he was, being 
dainty in the saddle and given to half stages.  And to find a convoy 
to Mittwalden, and thus mitigate the company of his own thoughts, 
the Prince had to make favour with a certain party of wood-merchants 
from various states of the empire, who had been drinking together 
somewhat noisily at the far end of the apartment.

The night had already fallen when they took the saddle.  The 
merchants were very loud and mirthful; each had a face like a 
nor'west moon; and they played pranks with each others' horses, and 
mingled songs and choruses, and alternately remembered and forgot 
the companion of their ride.  Otto thus combined society and 
solitude, hearkening now to their chattering and empty talk, now to 
the voices of the encircling forest.  The starlit dark, the faint 
wood airs, the clank of the horse-shoes making broken music, 
accorded together and attuned his mind.  And he was still in a most 
equal temper when the party reached the top of that long hill that 
overlooks Mittwalden.

Down in the bottom of a bowl of forest, the lights of the little 
formal town glittered in a pattern, street crossing street; away by 
itself on the right, the palace was glowing like a factory.

Although he knew not Otto, one of the wood-merchants was a native of 
the state.  'There,' said he, pointing to the palace with his whip, 
'there is Jezebel's inn.'

'What, do you call it that?' cried another, laughing.

'Ay, that's what they call it,' returned the Grunewalder; and he 
broke into a song, which the rest, as people well acquainted with 
the words and air, instantly took up in chorus.  Her Serene Highness 
Amalia Seraphina, Princess of Grunewald, was the heroine, Gondremark 
the hero of this ballad.  Shame hissed in Otto's ears.  He reined up 
short and sat stunned in the saddle; and the singers continued to 
descend the hill without him.

The song went to a rough, swashing, popular air; and long after the 
words became inaudible the swing of the music, rising and falling, 
echoed insult in the Prince's brain.  He fled the sounds.  Hard by 
him on his right a road struck towards the palace, and he followed 
it through the thick shadows and branching alleys of the park.  It 
was a busy place on a fine summer's afternoon, when the court and 
burghers met and saluted; but at that hour of the night in the early 
spring it was deserted to the roosting birds.  Hares rustled among 
the covert; here and there a statue stood glimmering, with its 
eternal gesture; here and there the echo of an imitation temple 
clattered ghostly to the trampling of the mare.  Ten minutes brought 
him to the upper end of his own home garden, where the small stables 
opened, over a bridge, upon the park.  The yard clock was striking 
the hour of ten; so was the big bell in the palace bell-tower; and, 
farther off, the belfries of the town.  About the stable all else 
was silent but the stamping of stalled horses and the rattle of 
halters.  Otto dismounted; and as he did so a memory came back to 
him: a whisper of dishonest grooms and stolen corn, once heard, long 
forgotten, and now recurring in the nick of opportunity.  He crossed 
the bridge, and, going up to a window, knocked six or seven heavy 
blows in a particular cadence, and, as he did so, smiled.  Presently 
a wicket was opened in the gate, and a man's head appeared in the 
dim starlight.

'Nothing to-night,' said a voice.

'Bring a lantern,' said the Prince.

'Dear heart a' mercy!' cried the groom.  'Who's that?'

'It is I, the Prince,' replied Otto.  'Bring a lantern, take in the 
mare, and let me through into the garden.'

The man remained silent for a while, his head still projecting 
through the wicket.

'His Highness!' he said at last.  'And why did your Highness knock 
so strange?'

'It is a superstition in Mittwalden,' answered Otto, 'that it 
cheapens corn.'

With a sound like a sob the groom fled.  He was very white when he 
returned, even by the light of the lantern; and his hand trembled as 
he undid the fastenings and took the mare.

'Your Highness,' he began at last, 'for God's sake . . . . '  And 
there he paused, oppressed with guilt.

'For God's sake, what?' asked Otto cheerfully.  'For God's sake let 
us have cheaper corn, say I.  Good-night!'  And he strode off into 
the garden, leaving the groom petrified once more.

The garden descended by a succession of stone terraces to the level 
of the fish-pond.  On the far side the ground rose again, and was 
crowned by the confused roofs and gables of the palace.  The modern 
pillared front, the ball-room, the great library, the princely 
apartments, the busy and illuminated quarters of that great house, 
all faced the town.  The garden side was much older; and here it was 
almost dark; only a few windows quietly lighted at various 
elevations.  The great square tower rose, thinning by stages like a 
telescope; and on the top of all the flag hung motionless.

The garden, as it now lay in the dusk and glimmer of the starshine, 
breathed of April violets.  Under night's cavern arch the shrubs 
obscurely bustled.  Through the plotted terraces and down the marble 
stairs the Prince rapidly descended, fleeing before uncomfortable 
thoughts.  But, alas! from these there is no city of refuge.  And 
now, when he was about midway of the descent, distant strains of 
music began to fall upon his ear from the ball-room, where the court 
was dancing.  They reached him faint and broken, but they touched 
the keys of memory; and through and above them Otto heard the 
ranting melody of the wood-merchants' song.  Mere blackness seized 
upon his mind.  Here he was, coming home; the wife was dancing, the 
husband had been playing a trick upon a lackey; and meanwhile, all 
about them, they were a by-word to their subjects.  Such a prince, 
such a husband, such a man, as this Otto had become!  And he sped 
the faster onward.

Some way below he came unexpectedly upon a sentry; yet a little 
farther, and he was challenged by a second; and as he crossed the 
bridge over the fish-pond, an officer making the rounds stopped him 
once more.  The parade of watch was more than usual; but curiosity 
was dead in Otto's mind, and he only chafed at the interruption.  
The porter of the back postern admitted him, and started to behold 
him so disordered.  Thence, hasting by private stairs and passages, 
he came at length unseen to his own chamber, tore off his clothes, 
and threw himself upon his bed in the dark.  The music of the ball-
room still continued to a very lively measure; and still, behind 
that, he heard in spirit the chorus of the merchants clanking down 
the hill.



BOOK II - OF LOVE AND POLITICS




CHAPTER I - WHAT HAPPENED IN THE LIBRARY


AT a quarter before six on the following morning Doctor Gotthold was 
already at his desk in the library; and with a small cup of black 
coffee at his elbow, and an eye occasionally wandering to the busts 
and the long array of many-coloured books, was quietly reviewing the 
labours of the day before.  He was a man of about forty, flaxen-
haired, with refined features a little worn, and bright eyes 
somewhat faded.  Early to bed and early to rise, his life was 
devoted to two things: erudition and Rhine wine.  An ancient 
friendship existed latent between him and Otto; they rarely met, but 
when they did it was to take up at once the thread of their 
suspended intimacy.  Gotthold, the virgin priest of knowledge, had 
envied his cousin, for half a day, when he was married; he had never 
envied him his throne.

Reading was not a popular diversion at the court of Grunewald; and 
that great, pleasant, sunshiny gallery of books and statues was, in 
practice, Gotthold's private cabinet.  On this particular Wednesday 
morning, however, he had not been long about his manuscript when a 
door opened and the Prince stepped into the apartment.  The doctor 
watched him as he drew near, receiving, from each of the embayed 
windows in succession, a flush of morning sun; and Otto looked so 
gay, and walked so airily, he was so well dressed and brushed and 
frizzled, so point-device, and of such a sovereign elegance, that 
the heart of his cousin the recluse was rather moved against him.

'Good-morning, Gotthold,' said Otto, dropping in a chair.

'Good-morning, Otto,' returned the librarian.  'You are an early 
bird.  Is this an accident, or do you begin reforming?'

'It is about time, I fancy,' answered the Prince.

'I cannot imagine,' said the Doctor.  'I am too sceptical to be an 
ethical adviser; and as for good resolutions, I believed in them 
when I was young.  They are the colours of hope's rainbow.'

'If you come to think of it,' said Otto, 'I am not a popular 
sovereign.'  And with a look he changed his statement to a question.

'Popular?  Well, there I would distinguish,' answered Gotthold, 
leaning back and joining the tips of his fingers.  'There are 
various kinds of popularity; the bookish, which is perfectly 
impersonal, as unreal as the nightmare; the politician's, a mixed 
variety; and yours, which is the most personal of all.  Women take 
to you; footmen adore you; it is as natural to like you as to pat a 
dog; and were you a saw-miller you would be the most popular citizen 
in Grunewald.  As a prince - well, you are in the wrong trade.  It 
is perhaps philosophical to recognise it as you do.'

'Perhaps philosophical?' repeated Otto.

'Yes, perhaps.  I would not be dogmatic,' answered Gotthold.

'Perhaps philosophical, and certainly not virtuous,' Otto resumed.

'Not of a Roman virtue,' chuckled the recluse.

Otto drew his chair nearer to the table, leaned upon it with his 
elbow, and looked his cousin squarely in the face.  'In short,' he 
asked, 'not manly?'

'Well,' Gotthold hesitated, 'not manly, if you will.'  And then, 
with a laugh, 'I did not know that you gave yourself out to be 
manly,' he added.  'It was one of the points that I inclined to like 
about you; inclined, I believe, to admire.  The names of virtues 
exercise a charm on most of us; we must lay claim to all of them, 
however incompatible; we must all be both daring and prudent; we 
must all vaunt our pride and go to the stake for our humility.  Not 
so you.  Without compromise you were yourself: a pretty sight.  I 
have always said it: none so void of all pretence as Otto.'

'Pretence and effort both!' cried Otto.  'A dead dog in a canal is 
more alive.  And the question, Gotthold, the question that I have to 
face is this: Can I not, with effort and self-denial, can I not 
become a tolerable sovereign?'

'Never,' replied Gotthold.  'Dismiss the notion.  And besides, dear 
child, you would not try.'

'Nay, Gotthold, I am not to be put by,' said Otto.  'If I am 
constitutionally unfit to be a sovereign, what am I doing with this 
money, with this palace, with these guards?  And I - a thief - am to 
execute the law on others?'

'I admit the difficulty,' said Gotthold.

'Well, can I not try?' continued Otto.  'Am I not bound to try?  And 
with the advice and help of such a man as you - '

'Me!' cried the librarian.  'Now, God forbid!'

Otto, though he was in no very smiling humour, could not forbear to 
smile.  'Yet I was told last night,' he laughed, 'that with a man 
like me to impersonate, and a man like you to touch the springs, a 
very possible government could be composed.'

'Now I wonder in what diseased imagination,' Gotthold said, 'that 
preposterous monster saw the light of day?'

'It was one of your own trade - a writer: one Roederer,' said Otto.

'Roederer! an ignorant puppy!' cried the librarian.

'You are ungrateful,' said Otto.  'He is one of your professed 
admirers.'

'Is he?' cried Gotthold, obviously impressed.  'Come, that is a good 
account of the young man.  I must read his stuff again.  It is the 
rather to his credit, as our views are opposite.  The east and west 
are not more opposite.  Can I have converted him?  But no; the 
incident belongs to Fairyland.'

'You are not then,' asked the Prince, 'an authoritarian?'

'I?  God bless me, no!' said Gotthold.  'I am a red, dear child.'

'That brings me then to my next point, and by a natural transition.  
If I am so clearly unfitted for my post,' the Prince asked; 'if my 
friends admit it, if my subjects clamour for my downfall, if 
revolution is preparing at this hour, must I not go forth to meet 
the inevitable? should I not save these horrors and be done with 
these absurdities? in a word, should I not abdicate?  O, believe me, 
I feel the ridicule, the vast abuse of language,' he added, wincing, 
'but even a principulus like me cannot resign; he must make a great 
gesture, and come buskined forth, and abdicate.'

'Ay,' said Gotthold, 'or else stay where he is.  What gnat has 
bitten you to-day?  Do you not know that you are touching, with lay 
hands, the very holiest inwards of philosophy, where madness dwells?  
Ay, Otto, madness; for in the serene temples of the wise, the inmost 
shrine, which we carefully keep locked, is full of spiders' webs.  
All men, all, are fundamentally useless; nature tolerates, she does 
not need, she does not use them: sterile flowers!  All - down to the 
fellow swinking in a byre, whom fools point out for the exception - 
all are useless; all weave ropes of sand; or like a child that has 
breathed on a window, write and obliterate, write and obliterate, 
idle words!  Talk of it no more.  That way, I tell you, madness 
lies.'  The speaker rose from his chair and then sat down again.  He 
laughed a little laugh, and then, changing his tone, resumed: 'Yes, 
dear child, we are not here to do battle with giants; we are here to 
be happy like the flowers, if we can be.  It is because you could, 
that I have always secretly admired you.  Cling to that trade; 
believe me, it is the right one.  Be happy, be idle, be airy.  To 
the devil with all casuistry! and leave the state to Gondremark, as 
heretofore.  He does it well enough, they say; and his vanity enjoys 
the situation.'

'Gotthold,' cried Otto, 'what is this to me?  Useless is not the 
question; I cannot rest at uselessness; I must be useful or I must 
be noxious - one or other.  I grant you the whole thing, prince and 
principality alike, is pure absurdity, a stroke of satire; and that 
a banker or the man who keeps an inn has graver duties.  But now, 
when I have washed my hands of it three years, and left all - 
labour, responsibility, and honour and enjoyment too, if there be 
any - to Gondremark and to - Seraphina - '  He hesitated at the 
name, and Gotthold glanced aside.  'Well,' the Prince continued, 
'what has come of it?  Taxes, army, cannon - why, it's like a box of 
lead soldiers!  And the people sick at the folly of it, and fired 
with the injustice!  And war, too - I hear of war - war in this 
teapot!  What a complication of absurdity and disgrace!  And when 
the inevitable end arrives - the revolution - who will be to blame 
in the sight of God, who will be gibbeted in public opinion?  I!  
Prince Puppet!'

'I thought you had despised public opinion,' said Gotthold.

'I did,' said Otto sombrely, 'but now I do not.  I am growing old.  
And then, Gotthold, there is Seraphina.  She is loathed in this 
country that I brought her to and suffered her to spoil.  Yes, I 
gave it her as a plaything, and she has broken it: a fine Prince, an 
admirable Princess!  Even her life - I ask you, Gotthold, is her 
life safe?'

'It is safe enough to-day,' replied the librarian: 'but since you 
ask me seriously, I would not answer for to-morrow.  She is ill-
advised.'

'And by whom?  By this Gondremark, to whom you counsel me to leave 
my country,' cried the Prince.  'Rare advice!  The course that I 
have been following all these years, to come at last to this.  O, 
ill-advised! if that were all!  See now, there is no sense in 
beating about the bush between two men: you know what scandal says 
of her?'

Gotthold, with pursed lips, silently nodded.

'Well, come, you are not very cheering as to my conduct as the 
Prince; have I even done my duty as a husband?' Otto asked.

'Nay, nay,' said Gotthold, earnestly and eagerly, 'this is another 
chapter.  I am an old celibate, an old monk.  I cannot advise you in 
your marriage.'

'Nor do I require advice,' said Otto, rising.  'All of this must 
cease.'  And he began to walk to and fro with his hands behind his 
back.

'Well, Otto, may God guide you!' said Gotthold, after a considerable 
silence.  'I cannot.'

'From what does all this spring?' said the Prince, stopping in his 
walk.  'What am I to call it?  Diffidence?  The fear of ridicule?  
Inverted vanity?  What matter names, if it has brought me to this?  
I could never bear to be bustling about nothing; I was ashamed of 
this toy kingdom from the first; I could not tolerate that people 
should fancy I believed in a thing so patently absurd!  I would do 
nothing that cannot be done smiling.  I have a sense of humour, 
forsooth!  I must know better than my Maker.  And it was the same 
thing in my marriage,' he added more hoarsely.  'I did not believe 
this girl could care for me; I must not intrude; I must preserve the 
foppery of my indifference.  What an impotent picture!'

'Ay, we have the same blood,' moralised Gotthold.  'You are drawing, 
with fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic.'

'Sceptic? - coward!' cried Otto.  'Coward is the word.  A 
springless, putty-hearted, cowering coward!'

And as the Prince rapped out the words in tones of unusual vigour, a 
little, stout, old gentleman, opening a door behind Gotthold, 
received them fairly in the face.  With his parrot's beak for a 
nose, his pursed mouth, his little goggling eyes, he was the picture 
of formality; and in ordinary circumstances, strutting behind the 
drum of his corporation, he impressed the beholder with a certain 
air of frozen dignity and wisdom.  But at the smallest contrariety, 
his trembling hands and disconnected gestures betrayed the weakness 
at the root.  And now, when he was thus surprisingly received in 
that library of Mittwalden Palace, which was the customary haunt of 
silence, his hands went up into the air as if he had been shot, and 
he cried aloud with the scream of an old woman.

'O!' he gasped, recovering, 'Your Highness!  I beg ten thousand 
pardons.  But your Highness at such an hour in the library! - a 
circumstance so unusual as your Highness's presence was a thing I 
could not be expected to foresee.'

'There is no harm done, Herr Cancellarius,' said Otto.

'I came upon the errand of a moment: some papers I left over-night 
with the Herr Doctor,' said the Chancellor of Grunewald.  'Herr 
Doctor, if you will kindly give me them, I will intrude no longer.'

Gotthold unlocked a drawer and handed a bundle of manuscript to the 
old gentleman, who prepared, with fitting salutations, to take his 
departure.

'Herr Greisengesang, since we have met,' said Otto, 'let us talk.'

'I am honoured by his Highness's commands,' replied the Chancellor.

'All has been quiet since I left?' asked the Prince, resuming his 
seat.

'The usual business, your Highness,' answered Greisengesang; 
'punctual trifles: huge, indeed, if neglected, but trifles when 
discharged.  Your Highness is most zealously obeyed.'

'Obeyed, Herr Cancellarius?' returned the Prince.  'And when have I 
obliged you with an order?  Replaced, let us rather say.  But to 
touch upon these trifles; instance me a few.'

'The routine of government, from which your Highness has so wisely 
dissociated his leisure . . . ' began Greisengesang.

'We will leave my leisure, sir,' said Otto.  'Approach the facts.'

'The routine of business was proceeded with,' replied the official, 
now visibly twittering.

'It is very strange, Herr Cancellarius, that you should so 
persistently avoid my questions,' said the Prince.  'You tempt me to 
suppose a purpose in your dulness.  I have asked you whether all was 
quiet; do me the pleasure to reply.'

'Perfectly - O, perfectly quiet,' jerked the ancient puppet, with 
every signal of untruth.

'I make a note of these words,' said the Prince gravely.  'You 
assure me, your sovereign, that since the date of my departure 
nothing has occurred of which you owe me an account.'

'I take your Highness, I take the Herr Doctor to witness,' cried 
Greisengesang, 'that I have had no such expression.'

'Halt!' said the Prince; and then, after a pause: 'Herr 
Greisengesang, you are an old man, and you served my father before 
you served me,' he added.  'It consists neither with your dignity 
nor mine that you should babble excuses and stumble possibly upon 
untruths.  Collect your thoughts; and then categorically inform me 
of all you have been charged to hide.'

Gotthold, stooping very low over his desk, appeared to have resumed 
his labours; but his shoulders heaved with subterranean merriment.  
The Prince waited, drawing his handkerchief quietly through his 
fingers.

'Your Highness, in this informal manner,' said the old gentleman at 
last, 'and being unavoidably deprived of documents, it would be 
difficult, it would be impossible, to do justice to the somewhat 
grave occurrences which have transpired.'

'I will not criticise your attitude,' replied the Prince.  'I desire 
that, between you and me, all should be done gently; for I have not 
forgotten, my old friend, that you were kind to me from the first, 
and for a period of years a faithful servant.  I will thus dismiss 
the matters on which you waive immediate inquiry.  But you have 
certain papers actually in your hand.  Come, Herr Greisengesang, 
there is at least one point for which you have authority.  Enlighten 
me on that.'

'On that?' cried the old gentleman.  'O, that is a trifle; a matter, 
your Highness, of police; a detail of a purely administrative order.  
These are simply a selection of the papers seized upon the English 
traveller.'

'Seized?' echoed Otto.  'In what sense?  Explain yourself.'

'Sir John Crabtree,' interposed Gotthold, looking up, 'was arrested 
yesterday evening.'

'It this so, Herr Cancellarius?' demanded Otto sternly.

'It was judged right, your Highness,' protested Greisengesang.  'The 
decree was in due form, invested with your Highness's authority by 
procuration.  I am but an agent; I had no status to prevent the 
measure.'

'This man, my guest, has been arrested,' said the Prince.  'On what 
grounds, sir?  With what colour of pretence?'

The Chancellor stammered.

'Your Highness will perhaps find the reason in these documents,' 
said Gotthold, pointing with the tail of his pen.

Otto thanked his cousin with a look.  'Give them to me,' he said, 
addressing the Chancellor.

But that gentleman visibly hesitated to obey.  'Baron von 
Gondremark,' he said, 'has made the affair his own.  I am in this 
case a mere messenger; and as such, I am not clothed with any 
capacity to communicate the documents I carry.  Herr Doctor, I am 
convinced you will not fail to bear me out.'

'I have heard a great deal of nonsense,' said Gotthold, 'and most of 
it from you; but this beats all.'

'Come, sir,' said Otto, rising, 'the papers.  I command.'

Herr Greisengesang instantly gave way.

'With your Highness's permission,' he said, 'and laying at his feet 
my most submiss apologies, I will now hasten to attend his further 
orders in the Chancery.'

'Herr Cancellarius, do you see this chair?' said Otto.  'There is 
where you shall attend my further orders.  O, now, no more!' he 
cried, with a gesture, as the old man opened his lips.  'You have 
sufficiently marked your zeal to your employer; and I begin to weary 
of a moderation you abuse.'

The Chancellor moved to the appointed chair and took his seat in 
silence.

'And now,' said Otto, opening the roll, 'what is all this? it looks 
like the manuscript of a book.'

'It is,' said Gotthold, 'the manuscript of a book of travels.'

'You have read it, Doctor Hohenstockwitz?' asked the Prince.

'Nay, I but saw the title-page,' replied Gotthold.  'But the roll 
was given to me open, and I heard no word of any secrecy.'

Otto dealt the Chancellor an angry glance.

'I see,' he went on.  'The papers of an author seized at this date 
of the world's history, in a state so petty and so ignorant as 
Grunewald, here is indeed an ignominious folly.  Sir,' to the 
Chancellor, 'I marvel to find you in so scurvy an employment.  On 
your conduct to your Prince I will not dwell; but to descend to be a 
spy!  For what else can it be called?  To seize the papers of this 
gentleman, the private papers of a stranger, the toil of a life, 
perhaps - to open, and to read them.  And what have we to do with 
books?  The Herr Doctor might perhaps be asked for his advice; but 
we have no INDEX EXPURGATORIUS in Grunewald.  Had we but that, we 
should be the most absolute parody and farce upon this tawdry 
earth.'

Yet, even while Otto spoke, he had continued to unfold the roll; and 
now, when it lay fully open, his eye rested on the title-page 
elaborately written in red ink.  It ran thus:


MEMOIRS
OF A VISIT TO THE VARIOUS
COURTS OF EUROPE,
BY
SIR JOHN CRABTREE, BARONET.


Below was a list of chapters, each bearing the name of one of the 
European Courts; and among these the nineteenth and the last upon 
the list was dedicated to Grunewald.

'Ah!  The Court of Grunewald!' said Otto, 'that should be droll 
reading.'  And his curiosity itched for it.

'A methodical dog, this English Baronet,' said Gotthold.  'Each 
chapter written and finished on the spot.  I shall look for his work 
when it appears.'

'It would be odd, now, just to glance at it,' said Otto, wavering.

Gotthold's brow darkened, and he looked out of window.

But though the Prince understood the reproof, his weakness 
prevailed.  'I will,' he said, with an uneasy laugh, 'I will, I 
think, just glance at it.'

So saying, he resumed his seat and spread the traveller's manuscript 
upon the table.




CHAPTER II - 'ON THE COURT OF GRUNEWALD,' BEING A PORTION OF THE 
TRAVELLER'S MANUSCRIPT


IT may well be asked (IT WAS THUS THE ENGLISH TRAVELLER BEGAN HIS 
NINETEENTH CHAPTER) why I should have chosen Grunewald out of so 
many other states equally petty, formal, dull, and corrupt.  
Accident, indeed, decided, and not I; but I have seen no reason to 
regret my visit.  The spectacle of this small society macerating in 
its own abuses was not perhaps instructive, but I have found it 
exceedingly diverting.

The reigning Prince, Otto Johann Friedrich, a young man of imperfect 
education, questionable valour, and no scintilla of capacity, has 
fallen into entire public contempt.  It was with difficulty that I 
obtained an interview, for he is frequently absent from a court 
where his presence is unheeded, and where his only role is to be a 
cloak for the amours of his wife.  At last, however, on the third 
occasion when I visited the palace, I found this sovereign in the 
exercise of his inglorious function, with the wife on one hand, and 
the lover on the other.  He is not ill-looking; he has hair of a 
ruddy gold, which naturally curls, and his eyes are dark, a 
combination which I always regard as the mark of some congenital 
deficiency, physical or moral; his features are irregular, but 
pleasing; the nose perhaps a little short, and the mouth a little 
womanish; his address is excellent, and he can express himself with 
point.  But to pierce below these externals is to come on a vacuity 
of any sterling quality, a deliquescence of the moral nature, a 
frivolity and inconsequence of purpose that mark the nearly perfect 
fruit of a decadent age.  He has a worthless smattering of many 
subjects, but a grasp of none.  'I soon weary of a pursuit,' he said 
to me, laughing; it would almost appear as if he took a pride in his 
incapacity and lack of moral courage.  The results of his 
dilettanteism are to be seen in every field; he is a bad fencer, a 
second-rate horseman, dancer, shot; he sings - I have heard him - 
and he sings like a child; he writes intolerable verses in more than 
doubtful French; he acts like the common amateur; and in short there 
is no end to the number of the things that he does, and does badly.  
His one manly taste is for the chase.  In sum, he is but a plexus of 
weaknesses; the singing chambermaid of the stage, tricked out in 
man's apparel, and mounted on a circus horse.  I have seen this poor 
phantom of a prince riding out alone or with a few huntsmen, 
disregarded by all, and I have been even grieved for the bearer of 
so futile and melancholy an existence.  The last Merovingians may 
have looked not otherwise.

The Princess Amalia Seraphina, a daughter of the Grand-Ducal house 
of Toggenburg-Tannhauser, would be equally inconsiderable if she 
were not a cutting instrument in the hands of an ambitious man.  She 
is much younger than the Prince, a girl of two-and-twenty, sick with 
vanity, superficially clever, and fundamentally a fool.  She has a 
red-brown rolling eye, too large for her face, and with sparks of 
both levity and ferocity; her forehead is high and narrow, her 
figure thin and a little stooping.  Her manners, her conversation, 
which she interlards with French, her very tastes and ambitions, are 
alike assumed; and the assumption is ungracefully apparent: Hoyden 
playing Cleopatra.  I should judge her to be incapable of truth.  In 
private life a girl of this description embroils the peace of 
families, walks attended by a troop of scowling swains, and passes, 
once at least, through the divorce court; it is a common and, except 
to the cynic, an uninteresting type.  On the throne, however, and in 
the hands of a man like Gondremark, she may become the authoress of 
serious public evils.

Gondremark, the true ruler of this unfortunate country, is a more 
complex study.  His position in Grunewald, to which he is a 
foreigner, is eminently false; and that he should maintain it as he 
does, a very miracle of impudence and dexterity.  His speech, his 
face, his policy, are all double: heads and tails.  Which of the two 
extremes may be his actual design he were a bold man who should 
offer to decide.  Yet I will hazard the guess that he follows both 
experimentally, and awaits, at the hand of destiny, one of those 
directing hints of which she is so lavish to the wise.

On the one hand, as MAIRE DU PALAIS to the incompetent Otto, and 
using the love-sick Princess for a tool and mouthpiece, he pursues a 
policy of arbitrary power and territorial aggrandisement.  He has 
called out the whole capable male population of the state to 
military service; he has bought cannon; he has tempted away 
promising officers from foreign armies; and he now begins, in his 
international relations, to assume the swaggering port and the 
vague, threatful language of a bully.  The idea of extending 
Grunewald may appear absurd, but the little state is advantageously 
placed, its neighbours are all defenceless; and if at any moment the 
jealousies of the greater courts should neutralise each other, an 
active policy might double the principality both in population and 
extent.  Certainly at least the scheme is entertained in the court 
of Mittwalden; nor do I myself regard it as entirely desperate.  The 
margravate of Brandenburg has grown from as small beginnings to a 
formidable power; and though it is late in the day to try 
adventurous policies, and the age of war seems ended, Fortune, we 
must not forget, still blindly turns her wheel for men and nations.  
Concurrently with, and tributary to, these warlike preparations, 
crushing taxes have been levied, journals have been suppressed, and 
the country, which three years ago was prosperous and happy, now 
stagnates in a forced inaction, gold has become a curiosity, and the 
mills stand idle on the mountain streams.

On the other hand, in his second capacity of popular tribune, 
Gondremark- is the incarnation of the free lodges, and sits at the 
centre of an organised conspiracy against the state.  To any such 
movement my sympathies were early acquired, and I would not 
willingly let fall a word that might embarrass or retard the 
revolution.  But to show that I speak of knowledge, and not as the 
reporter of mere gossip, I may mention that I have myself been 
present at a meeting where the details of a republican Constitution 
were minutely debated and arranged; and I may add that Gondremark 
was throughout referred to by the speakers as their captain in 
action and the arbiter of their disputes.  He has taught his dupes 
(for so I must regard them) that his power of resistance to the 
Princess is limited, and at each fresh stretch of authority 
persuades them, with specious reasons, to postpone the hour of 
insurrection.  Thus (to give some instances of his astute diplomacy) 
he salved over the decree enforcing military service, under the plea 
that to be well drilled and exercised in arms was even a necessary 
preparation for revolt.  And the other day, when it began to be 
rumoured abroad that a war was being forced on a reluctant 
neighbour, the Grand Duke of Gerolstein, and I made sure it would be 
the signal for an instant rising, I was struck dumb with wonder to 
find that even this had been prepared and was to be accepted.  I 
went from one to another in the Liberal camp, and all were in the 
same story, all had been drilled and schooled and fitted out with 
vacuous argument.  'The lads had better see some real fighting,' 
they said; 'and besides, it will be as well to capture Gerolstein: 
we can then extend to our neighbours the blessing of liberty on the 
same day that we snatch it for ourselves; and the republic will be 
all the stronger to resist, if the kings of Europe should band 
themselves together to reduce it.'  I know not which of the two I 
should admire the more: the simplicity of the multitude or the 
audacity of the adventurer.  But such are the subtleties, such the 
quibbling reasons, with which he blinds and leads this people.  How 
long a course so tortuous can be pursued with safety I am incapable 
of guessing; not long, one would suppose; and yet this singular man 
has been treading the mazes for five years, and his favour at court 
and his popularity among the lodges still endure unbroken.

I have the privilege of slightly knowing him.  Heavily and somewhat 
clumsily built, of a vast, disjointed, rambling frame, he can still 
pull himself together, and figure, not without admiration, in the 
saloon or the ball-room.  His hue and temperament are plentifully 
bilious; he has a saturnine eye; his cheek is of a dark blue where 
he has been shaven.  Essentially he is to be numbered among the man-
haters, a convinced contemner of his fellows.  Yet he is himself of 
a commonplace ambition and greedy of applause.  In talk, he is 
remarkable for a thirst of information, loving rather to hear than 
to communicate; for sound and studious views; and, judging by the 
extreme short-sightedness of common politicians, for a remarkable 
provision of events.  All this, however, without grace, pleasantry, 
or charm, heavily set forth, with a dull countenance.  In our 
numerous conversations, although he has always heard me with 
deference, I have been conscious throughout of a sort of ponderous 
finessing hard to tolerate.  He produces none of the effect of a 
gentleman; devoid not merely of pleasantry, but of all attention or 
communicative warmth of bearing.  No gentleman, besides, would so 
parade his amours with the Princess; still less repay the Prince for 
his long-suffering with a studied insolence of demeanour and the 
fabrication of insulting nicknames, such as Prince Featherhead, 
which run from ear to ear and create a laugh throughout the country.  
Gondremark has thus some of the clumsier characters of the self-made 
man, combined with an inordinate, almost a besotted, pride of 
intellect and birth.  Heavy, bilious, selfish, inornate, he sits 
upon this court and country like an incubus.

But it is probable that he preserves softer gifts for necessary 
purposes.  Indeed, it is certain, although he vouchsafed none of it 
to me, that this cold and stolid politician possesses to a great 
degree the art of ingratiation, and can be all things to all men.  
Hence there has probably sprung up the idle legend that in private 
life he is a gross romping voluptuary.  Nothing, at least, can well 
be more surprising than the terms of his connection with the 
Princess.  Older than her husband, certainly uglier, and, according 
to the feeble ideas common among women, in every particular less 
pleasing, he has not only seized the complete command of all her 
thought and action, but has imposed on her in public a humiliating 
part.  I do not here refer to the complete sacrifice of every rag of 
her reputation; for to many women these extremities are in 
themselves attractive.  But there is about the court a certain lady 
of a dishevelled reputation, a Countess von Rosen, wife or widow of 
a cloudy count, no longer in her second youth, and already bereft of 
some of her attractions, who unequivocally occupies the station of 
the Baron's mistress.  I had thought, at first, that she was but a 
hired accomplice, a mere blind or buffer for the more important 
sinner.  A few hours' acquaintance with Madame von Rosen for ever 
dispelled the illusion.  She is one rather to make than to prevent a 
scandal, and she values none of those bribes - money, honours, or 
employment - with which the situation might be gilded.  Indeed, as a 
person frankly bad, she pleased me, in the court of Grunewald, like 
a piece of nature.