Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1905 edition.  Scanned and 
proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk






PRINCE OTTO - A ROMANCE




TO NELLY VAN DE GRIFT



(MRS. ADULFO SANCHEZ, OF MONTEREY)

AT last, after so many years, I have the pleasure of re-introducing 
you to 'Prince Otto,' whom you will remember a very little fellow, 
no bigger in fact than a few sheets of memoranda written for me by 
your kind hand.  The sight of his name will carry you back to an old 
wooden house embowered in creepers; a house that was far gone in the 
respectable stages of antiquity and seemed indissoluble from the 
green garden in which it stood, and that yet was a sea-traveller in 
its younger days, and had come round the Horn piecemeal in the belly 
of a ship, and might have heard the seamen stamping and shouting and 
the note of the boatswain's whistle.  It will recall to you the 
nondescript inhabitants now so widely scattered:- the two horses, 
the dog, and the four cats, some of them still looking in your face 
as you read these lines; - the poor lady, so unfortunately married 
to an author; - the China boy, by this time, perhaps, baiting his 
line by the banks of a river in the Flowery Land; - and in 
particular the Scot who was then sick apparently unto death, and 
whom you did so much to cheer and keep in good behaviour.

You may remember that he was full of ambitions and designs: so soon 
as he had his health again completely, you may remember the fortune 
he was to earn, the journeys he was to go upon, the delights he was 
to enjoy and confer, and (among other matters) the masterpiece he 
was to make of 'Prince Otto'!

Well, we will not give in that we are finally beaten.  We read 
together in those days the story of Braddock, and how, as he was 
carried dying from the scene of his defeat, he promised himself to 
do better another time: a story that will always touch a brave 
heart, and a dying speech worthy of a more fortunate commander.  I 
try to be of Braddock's mind.  I still mean to get my health again; 
I still purpose, by hook or crook, this book or the next, to launch 
a masterpiece; and I still intend - somehow, some time or other - to 
see your face and to hold your hand.

Meanwhile, this little paper traveller goes forth instead, crosses 
the great seas and the long plains and the dark mountains, and comes 
at last to your door in Monterey, charged with tender greetings.  
Pray you, take him in.  He comes from a house where (even as in your 
own) there are gathered together some of the waifs of our company at 
Oakland: a house - for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant 
station - where you are well-beloved.


R. L. S.
Skerryvore,
Bournemouth.





BOOK I - PRINCE ERRANT





CHAPTER I - IN WHICH THE PRINCE DEPARTS ON AN ADVENTURE


You shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygone state 
of Grunewald.  An independent principality, an infinitesimal member 
of the German Empire, she played, for several centuries, her part in 
the discord of Europe; and, at last, in the ripeness of time and at 
the spiriting of several bald diplomatists, vanished like a morning 
ghost.  Less fortunate than Poland, she left not a regret behind 
her; and the very memory of her boundaries has faded.

It was a patch of hilly country covered with thick wood.  Many 
streams took their beginning in the glens of Grunewald, turning 
mills for the inhabitants.  There was one town, Mittwalden, and many 
brown, wooden hamlets, climbing roof above roof, along the steep 
bottom of dells, and communicating by covered bridges over the 
larger of the torrents.  The hum of watermills, the splash of 
running water, the clean odour of pine sawdust, the sound and smell 
of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain 
pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull stroke of the wood-
axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean bare 
chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the 
village-bells - these were the recollections of the Grunewald 
tourist.

North and east the foothills of Grunewald sank with varying profile 
into a vast plain.  On these sides many small states bordered with 
the principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the 
number.  On the south it marched with the comparatively powerful 
kingdom of Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain 
bears, and inhabited by a people of singular simplicity and 
tenderness of heart.  Several intermarriages had, in the course of 
centuries, united the crowned families of Grunewald and Maritime 
Bohemia; and the last Prince of Grunewald, whose history I purpose 
to relate, drew his descent through Perdita, the only daughter of 
King Florizel the First of Bohemia.  That these intermarriages had 
in some degree mitigated the rough, manly stock of the first 
Grunewalds, was an opinion widely held within the borders of the 
principality.  The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the wielder 
of the broad axe among the congregated pines of Grunewald, proud of 
their hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage 
lore, looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and 
manners of the sovereign race.

The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to 
the conjecture of the reader.  But for the season of the year 
(which, in such a story, is the more important of the two) it was 
already so far forward in the spring, that when mountain people 
heard horns echoing all day about the north-west corner of the 
principality, they told themselves that Prince Otto and his hunt 
were up and out for the last time till the return of autumn.

At this point the borders of Grunewald descend somewhat steeply, 
here and there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless 
country stands in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below.  It 
was traversed at that period by two roads alone; one, the imperial 
highway, bound to Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope 
obliquely and by the easiest gradients.  The other ran like a fillet 
across the very forehead of the hills, dipping into savage gorges, 
and wetted by the spray of tiny waterfalls.  Once it passed beside a 
certain tower or castle, built sheer upon the margin of a formidable 
cliff, and commanding a vast prospect of the skirts of Grunewald and 
the busy plains of Gerolstein.  The Felsenburg (so this tower was 
called) served now as a prison, now as a hunting-seat; and for all 
it stood so lonesome to the naked eye, with the aid of a good glass 
the burghers of Brandenau could count its windows from the lime-tree 
terrace where they walked at night.

In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the 
horns continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as 
the sun began to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing 
triumph announced the slaughter of the quarry.  The first and second 
huntsman had drawn somewhat aside, and from the summit of a knoll 
gazed down before them on the drooping shoulders of the hill and 
across the expanse of plain.  They covered their eyes, for the sun 
was in their faces.  The glory of its going down was somewhat pale.  
Through the confused tracery of many thousands of naked poplars, the 
smoke of so many houses, and the evening steam ascending from the 
fields, the sails of a windmill on a gentle eminence moved very 
conspicuously, like a donkey's ears.  And hard by, like an open 
gash, the imperial high-road ran straight sun-ward, an artery of 
travel.

There is one of nature's spiritual ditties, that has not yet been 
set to words or human music: 'The Invitation to the Road'; an air 
continually sounding in the ears of gipsies, and to whose 
inspiration our nomadic fathers journeyed all their days.  The hour, 
the season, and the scene, all were in delicate accordance.  The air 
was full of birds of passage, steering westward and northward over 
Grunewald, an army of specks to the up-looking eye.  And below, the 
great practicable road was bound for the same quarter.

But to the two horsemen on the knoll this spiritual ditty was 
unheard.  They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every 
fold of the subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and dismay in 
their impatient gestures.

'I do not see him, Kuno,' said the first huntsman, 'nowhere - not a 
trace, not a hair of the mare's tail!  No, sir, he's off; broke 
cover and got away.  Why, for twopence I would hunt him with the 
dogs!'

'Mayhap, he's gone home,' said Kuno, but without conviction.

'Home!' sneered the other.  'I give him twelve days to get home.  
No, it's begun again; it's as it was three years ago, before he 
married; a disgrace!  Hereditary prince, hereditary fool!  There 
goes the government over the borders on a grey mare.  What's that?  
No, nothing - no, I tell you, on my word, I set more store by a good 
gelding or an English dog.  That for your Otto!'

'He's not my Otto,' growled Kuno.

'Then I don't know whose he is,' was the retort.

'You would put your hand in the fire for him to-morrow,' said Kuno, 
facing round.

'Me!' cried the huntsman.  'I would see him hanged!  I'm a Grunewald 
patriot - enrolled, and have my medal, too; and I would help a 
prince!  I'm for liberty and Gondremark.'

'Well, it's all one,' said Kuno.  'If anybody said what you said, 
you would have his blood, and you know it.'

'You have him on the brain,' retorted his companion.  'There he 
goes!' he cried, the next moment.

And sure enough, about a mile down the mountain, a rider on a white 
horse was seen to flit rapidly across a heathy open and vanish among 
the trees on the farther side.

'In ten minutes he'll be over the border into Gerolstein,' said 
Kuno.  'It's past cure.'

'Well, if he founders that mare, I'll never forgive him,' added the 
other, gathering his reins.

And as they turned down from the knoll to rejoin their comrades, the 
sun dipped and disappeared, and the woods fell instantly into the 
gravity and greyness of the early night.




CHAPTER II - IN WHICH THE PRINCE PLAYS HAROUN-AL-RASCHID


THE night fell upon the Prince while he was threading green tracks 
in the lower valleys of the wood; and though the stars came out 
overhead and displayed the interminable order of the pine-tree 
pyramids, regular and dark like cypresses, their light was of small 
service to a traveller in such lonely paths, and from thenceforth he 
rode at random.  The austere face of nature, the uncertain issue of 
his course, the open sky and the free air, delighted him like wine; 
and the hoarse chafing of a river on his left sounded in his ears 
agreeably.

It was past eight at night before his toil was rewarded and he 
issued at last out of the forest on the firm white high-road.  It 
lay downhill before him, with a sweeping eastward trend, faintly 
bright between the thickets; and Otto paused and gazed upon it.  So 
it ran, league after league, still joining others, to the farthest 
ends of Europe, there skirting the sea-surge, here gleaming in the 
lights of cities; and the innumerable army of tramps and travellers 
moved upon it in all lands as by a common impulse, and were now in 
all places drawing near to the inn door and the night's rest.  The 
pictures swarmed and vanished in his brain; a surge of temptation, a 
beat of all his blood, went over him, to set spur to the mare and to 
go on into the unknown for ever.  And then it passed away; hunger 
and fatigue, and that habit of middling actions which we call common 
sense, resumed their empire; and in that changed mood his eye 
lighted upon two bright windows on his left hand, between the road 
and river.

He turned off by a by-road, and in a few minutes he was knocking 
with his whip on the door of a large farmhouse, and a chorus of dogs 
from the farmyard were making angry answer.  A very tall, old, 
white-headed man came, shading a candle, at the summons.  He had 
been of great strength in his time, and of a handsome countenance; 
but now he was fallen away, his teeth were quite gone, and his voice 
when he spoke was broken and falsetto.

'You will pardon me,' said Otto.  'I am a traveller and have 
entirely lost my way.'

'Sir,' said the old man, in a very stately, shaky manner, 'you are 
at the River Farm, and I am Killian Gottesheim, at your disposal.  
We are here, sir, at about an equal distance from Mittwalden in 
Grunewald and Brandenau in Gerolstein: six leagues to either, and 
the road excellent; but there is not a wine bush, not a carter's 
alehouse, anywhere between.  You will have to accept my hospitality 
for the night; rough hospitality, to which I make you freely 
welcome; for, sir,' he added with a bow, 'it is God who sends the 
guest.'

'Amen.  And I most heartily thank you,' replied Otto, bowing in his 
turn.

'Fritz,' said the old man, turning towards the interior, 'lead round 
this gentleman's horse; and you, sir, condescend to enter.'

Otto entered a chamber occupying the greater part of the ground-
floor of the building.  It had probably once been divided; for the 
farther end was raised by a long step above the nearer, and the 
blazing fire and the white supper-table seemed to stand upon a dais.  
All around were dark, brass-mounted cabinets and cupboards; dark 
shelves carrying ancient country crockery; guns and antlers and 
broadside ballads on the wall; a tall old clock with roses on the 
dial; and down in one corner the comfortable promise of a wine 
barrel.  It was homely, elegant, and quaint.

A powerful youth hurried out to attend on the grey mare; and when 
Mr. Killian Gottesheim had presented him to his daughter Ottilia, 
Otto followed to the stable as became, not perhaps the Prince, but 
the good horseman.  When he returned, a smoking omelette and some 
slices of home-cured ham were waiting him; these were followed by a 
ragout and a cheese; and it was not until his guest had entirely 
satisfied his hunger, and the whole party drew about the fire over 
the wine jug, that Killian Gottesheim's elaborate courtesy permitted 
him to address a question to the Prince.

'You have perhaps ridden far, sir?' he inquired.

'I have, as you say, ridden far,' replied Otto; 'and, as you have 
seen, I was prepared to do justice to your daughters cookery.'

'Possibly, sir, from the direction of Brandenau?' continued Killian.

'Precisely: and I should have slept to-night, had I not wandered, in 
Mittwalden,' answered the Prince, weaving in a patch of truth, 
according to the habit of all liars.

'Business leads you to Mittwalden?' was the next question.

'Mere curiosity,' said Otto.  'I have never yet visited the 
principality of Grunewald.'

'A pleasant state, sir,' piped the old man, nodding, 'a very 
pleasant state, and a fine race, both pines and people.  We reckon 
ourselves part Grunewalders here, lying so near the borders; and the 
river there is all good Grunewald water, every drop of it.  Yes, 
sir, a fine state.  A man of Grunewald now will swing me an axe over 
his head that many a man of Gerolstein could hardly lift; and the 
pines, why, deary me, there must be more pines in that little state, 
sir, than people in this whole big world.  'Tis twenty years now 
since I crossed the marshes, for we grow home-keepers in old age; 
but I mind it as if it was yesterday.  Up and down, the road keeps 
right on from here to Mittwalden; and nothing all the way but the 
good green pine-trees, big and little, and water-power! water-power 
at every step, sir.  We once sold a bit of forest, up there beside 
the high-road; and the sight of minted money that we got for it has 
set me ciphering ever since what all the pines in Grunewald would 
amount to.'

'I suppose you see nothing of the Prince?' inquired Otto.

'No,' said the young man, speaking for the first time, 'nor want 
to.'

'Why so? is he so much disliked?' asked Otto.

'Not what you might call disliked,' replied the old gentleman, 'but 
despised, sir.'

'Indeed,' said the Prince, somewhat faintly.

'Yes, sir, despised,' nodded Killian, filling a long pipe, 'and, to 
my way of thinking, justly despised.  Here is a man with great 
opportunities, and what does he do with them?  He hunts, and he 
dresses very prettily - which is a thing to be ashamed of in a man - 
and he acts plays; and if he does aught else, the news of it has not 
come here.'

'Yet these are all innocent,' said Otto.  'What would you have him 
do - make war?'

'No, sir,' replied the old man.  'But here it is; I have been fifty 
years upon this River Farm, and wrought in it, day in, day out; I 
have ploughed and sowed and reaped, and risen early, and waked late; 
and this is the upshot: that all these years it has supported me and 
my family; and been the best friend that ever I had, set aside my 
wife; and now, when my time comes, I leave it a better farm than 
when I found it.  So it is, if a man works hearty in the order of 
nature, he gets bread and he receives comfort, and whatever he 
touches breeds.  And it humbly appears to me, if that Prince was to 
labour on his throne, as I have laboured and wrought in my farm, he 
would find both an increase and a blessing.'

'I believe with you, sir,' Otto said; 'and yet the parallel is 
inexact.  For the farmer's life is natural and simple; but the 
prince's is both artificial and complicated.  It is easy to do right 
in the one, and exceedingly difficult not to do wrong in the other.  
If your crop is blighted, you can take off your bonnet and say, 
"God's will be done"; but if the prince meets with a reverse, he may 
have to blame himself for the attempt.  And perhaps, if all the 
kings in Europe were to confine themselves to innocent amusement, 
the subjects would be the better off.'

'Ay,' said the young man Fritz, 'you are in the right of it there.  
That was a true word spoken.  And I see you are like me, a good 
patriot and an enemy to princes.'

Otto was somewhat abashed at this deduction, and he made haste to 
change his ground.  'But,' said he, 'you surprise me by what you say 
of this Prince Otto.  I have heard him, I must own, more favourably 
painted.  I was told he was, in his heart, a good fellow, and the 
enemy of no one but himself.'

'And so he is, sir,' said the girl, 'a very handsome, pleasant 
prince; and we know some who would shed their blood for him.'

'O! Kuno!' said Fritz.  'An ignoramus!'

'Ay, Kuno, to be sure,' quavered the old farmer.  'Well, since this 
gentleman is a stranger to these parts, and curious about the 
Prince, I do believe that story might divert him.  This Kuno, you 
must know, sir, is one of the hunt servants, and a most ignorant, 
intemperate man: a right Grunewalder, as we say in Gerolstein.  We 
know him well, in this house; for he has come as far as here after 
his stray dogs; and I make all welcome, sir, without account of 
state or nation.  And, indeed, between Gerolstein and Grunewald the 
peace has held so long that the roads stand open like my door; and a 
man will make no more of the frontier than the very birds 
themselves.'

'Ay,' said Otto, 'it has been a long peace - a peace of centuries.'

'Centuries, as you say,' returned Killian; 'the more the pity that 
it should not be for ever.  Well, sir, this Kuno was one day in 
fault, and Otto, who has a quick temper, up with his whip and 
thrashed him, they do say, soundly.  Kuno took it as best he could, 
but at last he broke out, and dared the Prince to throw his whip 
away and wrestle like a man; for we are all great at wrestling in 
these parts, and it's so that we generally settle our disputes.  
Well, sir, the Prince did so; and, being a weakly creature, found 
the tables turned; for the man whom he had just been thrashing like 
a negro slave, lifted him with a back grip and threw him heels 
overhead.'

'He broke his bridle-arm,' cried Fritz - 'and some say his nose.  
Serve him right, say I!  Man to man, which is the better at that?'

'And then?' asked Otto.

'O, then Kuno carried him home; and they were the best of friends 
from that day forth.  I don't say it's a discreditable story, you 
observe,' continued Mr. Gottesheim; 'but it's droll, and that's the 
fact.  A man should think before he strikes; for, as my nephew says, 
man to man was the old valuation.'

'Now, if you were to ask me,' said Otto, 'I should perhaps surprise 
you.  I think it was the Prince that conquered.'

'And, sir, you would be right,' replied Killian seriously.  'In the 
eyes of God, I do not question but you would be right; but men, sir, 
look at these things differently, and they laugh.'

'They made a song of it,' observed Fritz.  'How does it go?  Ta-tum-
ta-ra . . .'

'Well,' interrupted Otto, who had no great anxiety to hear the song, 
'the Prince is young; he may yet mend.'

'Not so young, by your leave,' cried Fritz.  'A man of forty.'

'Thirty-six,' corrected Mr. Gottesheim.

'O,' cried Ottilia, in obvious disillusion, 'a man of middle age!  
And they said he was so handsome when he was young!'

'And bald, too,' added Fritz.

Otto passed his hand among his locks.  At that moment he was far 
from happy, and even the tedious evenings at Mittwalden Palace began 
to smile upon him by comparison.

'O, six-and-thirty!' he protested.  'A man is not yet old at six-
and-thirty.  I am that age myself.'

'I should have taken you for more, sir,' piped the old farmer.  'But 
if that be so, you are of an age with Master Ottekin, as people call 
him; and, I would wager a crown, have done more service in your 
time.  Though it seems young by comparison with men of a great age 
like me, yet it's some way through life for all that; and the mere 
fools and fiddlers are beginning to grow weary and to look old.  
Yes, sir, by six-and-thirty, if a man be a follower of God's laws, 
he should have made himself a home and a good name to live by; he 
should have got a wife and a blessing on his marriage; and his 
works, as the Word says, should begin to follow him.'

'Ah, well, the Prince is married,' cried Fritz, with a coarse burst 
of laughter.

'That seems to entertain you, sir,' said Otto.

'Ay,' said the young boor.  'Did you not know that?  I thought all 
Europe knew it!'  And he added a pantomime of a nature to explain 
his accusation to the dullest.

'Ah, sir,' said Mr. Gottesheim, 'it is very plain that you are not 
from hereabouts!  But the truth is, that the whole princely family 
and Court are rips and rascals, not one to mend another.  They live, 
sir, in idleness and - what most commonly follows it - corruption.  
The Princess has a lover - a Baron, as he calls himself, from East 
Prussia; and the Prince is so little of a man, sir, that he holds 
the candle.  Nor is that the worst of it, for this foreigner and his 
paramour are suffered to transact the State affairs, while the 
Prince takes the salary and leaves all things to go to wrack.  There 
will follow upon this some manifest judgment which, though I am old, 
I may survive to see.'

'Good man, you are in the wrong about Gondremark,' said Fritz, 
showing a greatly increased animation; 'but for all the rest, you 
speak the God's truth like a good patriot.  As for the Prince, if he 
would take and strangle his wife, I would forgive him yet.'

'Nay, Fritz,' said the old man, 'that would be to add iniquity to 
evil.  For you perceive, sir,' he continued, once more addressing 
himself to the unfortunate Prince, 'this Otto has himself to thank 
for these disorders.  He has his young wife and his principality, 
and he has sworn to cherish both.'

'Sworn at the altar!' echoed Fritz.  'But put your faith in 
princes!'

'Well, sir, he leaves them both to an adventurer from East Prussia,' 
pursued the farmer: 'leaves the girl to be seduced and to go on from 
bad to worse, till her name's become a tap-room by-word, and she not 
yet twenty; leaves the country to be overtaxed, and bullied with 
armaments, and jockied into war - '

'War!' cried Otto.

'So they say, sir; those that watch their ongoings, say to war,' 
asseverated Killian.  'Well, sir, that is very sad; it is a sad 
thing for this poor, wicked girl to go down to hell with people's 
curses; it's a sad thing for a tight little happy country to be 
misconducted; but whoever may complain, I humbly conceive, sir, that 
this Otto cannot.  What he has worked for, that he has got; and may 
God have pity on his soul, for a great and a silly sinner's!'

'He has broke his oath; then he is a perjurer.  He takes the money 
and leaves the work; why, then plainly he's a thief.  A cuckold he 
was before, and a fool by birth.  Better me that!' cried Fritz, and 
snapped his fingers.

'And now, sir, you will see a little,' continued the farmer, 'why we 
think so poorly of this Prince Otto.  There's such a thing as a man 
being pious and honest in the private way; and there is such a 
thing, sir, as a public virtue; but when a man has neither, the Lord 
lighten him!  Even this Gondremark, that Fritz here thinks so much 
of - '

'Ay,' interrupted Fritz, 'Gondremark's the man for me.  I would we 
had his like in Gerolstein.'

'He is a bad man,' said the old farmer, shaking his head; 'and there 
was never good begun by the breach of God's commandments.  But so 
far I will go with you; he is a man that works for what he has.'

'I tell you he's the hope of Grunewald,' cried Fritz.  'He doesn't 
suit some of your high-and-dry, old, ancient ideas; but he's a 
downright modern man - a man of the new lights and the progress of 
the age.  He does some things wrong; so they all do; but he has the 
people's interests next his heart; and you mark me - you, sir, who 
are a Liberal, and the enemy of all their governments, you please to 
mark my words - the day will come in Grunewald, when they take out 
that yellow-headed skulk of a Prince and that dough-faced Messalina 
of a Princess, march 'em back foremost over the borders, and 
proclaim the Baron Gondremark first President.  I've heard them say 
it in a speech.  I was at a meeting once at Brandenau, and the 
Mittwalden delegates spoke up for fifteen thousand.  Fifteen 
thousand, all brigaded, and each man with a medal round his neck to 
rally by.  That's all Gondremark.'

'Ay, sir, you see what it leads to; wild talk to-day, and wilder 
doings to-morrow,' said the old man.  'For there is one thing 
certain: that this Gondremark has one foot in the Court backstairs, 
and the other in the Masons' lodges.  He gives himself out, sir, for 
what nowadays they call a patriot: a man from East Prussia!'

'Give himself out!' cried Fritz.  'He is!  He is to lay by his title 
as soon as the Republic is declared; I heard it in a speech.'

'Lay by Baron to take up President?' returned Killian.  'King Log, 
King Stork.  But you'll live longer than I, and you will see the 
fruits of it.'

'Father,' whispered Ottilia, pulling at the speaker's coat, 'surely 
the gentleman is ill.'

'I beg your pardon,' cried the farmer, rewaking to hospitable 
thoughts; 'can I offer you anything?'

'I thank you.  I am very weary,' answered Otto.  'I have presumed 
upon my strength.  If you would show me to a bed, I should be 
grateful.'

'Ottilia, a candle!' said the old man.  'Indeed, sir, you look 
paley.  A little cordial water?  No?  Then follow me, I beseech you, 
and I will bring you to the stranger's bed.  You are not the first 
by many who has slept well below my roof,' continued the old 
gentleman, mounting the stairs before his guest; 'for good food, 
honest wine, a grateful conscience, and a little pleasant chat 
before a man retires, are worth all the possets and apothecary's 
drugs.  See, sir,' and here he opened a door and ushered Otto into a 
little white-washed sleeping-room, 'here you are in port.  It is 
small, but it is airy, and the sheets are clean and kept in 
lavender.  The window, too, looks out above the river, and there's 
no music like a little river's.  It plays the same tune (and that's 
the favourite) over and over again, and yet does not weary of it 
like men fiddlers.  It takes the mind out of doors: and though we 
should be grateful for good houses, there is, after all, no house 
like God's out-of-doors.  And lastly, sir, it quiets a man down like 
saying his prayers.  So here, sir, I take my kind leave of you until 
to-morrow; and it is my prayerful wish that you may slumber like a 
prince.'

And the old man, with the twentieth courteous inclination, left his 
guest alone.




CHAPTER III - IN WHICH THE PRINCE COMFORTS AGE AND BEAUTY AND 
DELIVERS A LECTURE ON DISCRETION IN LOVE


THE Prince was early abroad: in the time of the first chorus of 
birds, of the pure and quiet air, of the slanting sunlight and the 
mile-long shadows.  To one who had passed a miserable night, the 
freshness of that hour was tonic and reviving; to steal a march upon 
his slumbering fellows, to be the Adam of the coming day, composed 
and fortified his spirits; and the Prince, breathing deep and 
pausing as he went, walked in the wet fields beside his shadow, and 
was glad.

A trellised path led down into the valley of the brook, and he 
turned to follow it.  The stream was a break-neck, boiling Highland 
river.  Hard by the farm, it leaped a little precipice in a thick 
grey-mare's tail of twisted filaments, and then lay and worked and 
bubbled in a lynn.  Into the middle of this quaking pool a rock 
protruded, shelving to a cape; and thither Otto scrambled and sat 
down to ponder.

Soon the sun struck through the screen of branches and thin early 
leaves that made a hanging bower above the fall; and the golden 
lights and flitting shadows fell upon and marbled the surface of 
that so seething pot; and rays plunged deep among the turning 
waters; and a spark, as bright as a diamond, lit upon the swaying 
eddy.  It began to grow warm where Otto lingered, warm and heady; 
the lights swam, weaving their maze across the shaken pool; on the 
impending rock, reflections danced like butterflies; and the air was 
fanned by the waterfall as by a swinging curtain.

Otto, who was weary with tossing and beset with horrid phantoms of 
remorse and jealousy, instantly fell dead in love with that sun-
chequered, echoing corner.  Holding his feet, he stared out of a 
drowsy trance, wondering, admiring, musing, losing his way among 
uncertain thoughts.  There is nothing that so apes the external 
bearing of free will as that unconscious bustle, obscurely following 
liquid laws, with which a river contends among obstructions.  It 
seems the very play of man and destiny, and as Otto pored on these 
recurrent changes, he grew, by equal steps, the sleepier and the 
more profound.  Eddy and Prince were alike jostled in their purpose, 
alike anchored by intangible influences in one corner of the world.  
Eddy and Prince were alike useless, starkly useless, in the 
cosmology of men.  Eddy and Prince - Prince and Eddy.

It is probable he had been some while asleep when a voice recalled 
him from oblivion.  'Sir,' it was saying; and looking round, he saw 
Mr. Killian's daughter, terrified by her boldness and making bashful 
signals from the shore.  She was a plain, honest lass, healthy and 
happy and good, and with that sort of beauty that comes of happiness 
and health.  But her confusion lent her for the moment an additional 
charm.

'Good-morning,' said Otto, rising and moving towards her.  'I arose 
early and was in a dream.'

'O, sir!' she cried, 'I wish to beg of you to spare my father; for I 
assure your Highness, if he had known who you was, he would have 
bitten his tongue out sooner.  And Fritz, too - how he went on!  But 
I had a notion; and this morning I went straight down into the 
stable, and there was your Highness's crown upon the stirrup-irons!  
But, O, sir, I made certain you would spare them; for they were as 
innocent as lambs.'

'My dear,' said Otto, both amused and gratified, 'you do not 
understand.  It is I who am in the wrong; for I had no business to 
conceal my name and lead on these gentleman to speak of me.  And it 
is I who have to beg of you that you will keep my secret and not 
betray the discourtesy of which I was guilty.  As for any fear of 
me, your friends are safe in Gerolstein; and even in my own 
territory, you must be well aware I have no power.'

' O, sir,' she said, curtsying, 'I would not say that: the huntsmen 
would all die for you.'

'Happy Prince!' said Otto.  'But although you are too courteous to 
avow the knowledge, you have had many opportunities of learning that 
I am a vain show.  Only last night we heard it very clearly stated.  
You see the shadow flitting on this hard rock?  Prince Otto, I am 
afraid, is but the moving shadow, and the name of the rock is 
Gondremark.  Ah! if your friends had fallen foul of Gondremark!  But 
happily the younger of the two admires him.  And as for the old 
gentleman your father, he is a wise man and an excellent talker, and 
I would take a long wager he is honest.'

'O, for honest, your Highness, that he is!' exclaimed the girl.  
'And Fritz is as honest as he.  And as for all they said, it was 
just talk and nonsense.  When countryfolk get gossiping, they go on, 
I do assure you, for the fun; they don't as much as think of what 
they say.  If you went to the next farm, it's my belief you would 
hear as much against my father.'

'Nay, nay,' said Otto, 'there you go too fast.  For all that was 
said against Prince Otto - '

'O, it was shameful!' cried the girl.

'Not shameful - true,' returned Otto.  'O, yes - true.  I am all 
they said of me - all that and worse.'

'I never!' cried 'Ottilia.  'Is that how you do?  Well, you would 
never be a soldier.  Now if any one accuses me, I get up and give it 
them.  O, I defend myself.  I wouldn't take a fault at another 
person's hands, no, not if I had it on my forehead.  And that's what 
you must do, if you mean to live it out.  But, indeed, I never heard 
such nonsense.  I should think you was ashamed of yourself!  You're 
bald, then, I suppose?'

'O no,' said Otto, fairly laughing.  'There I acquit myself: not 
bald!'

'Well, and good?' pursued the girl.  'Come now, you know you are 
good, and I'll make you say so. . . . Your Highness, I beg your 
humble pardon.  But there's no disrespect intended.  And anyhow, you 
know you are.'

'Why, now, what am I to say?' replied Otto.  'You are a cook, and 
excellently well you do it; I embrace the chance of thanking you for 
the ragout.  Well now, have you not seen good food so bedevilled by 
unskilful cookery that no one could be brought to eat the pudding?  
That is me, my dear.  I am full of good ingredients, but the dish is 
worthless.  I am - I give it you in one word - sugar in the salad.'

'Well, I don't care, you're good,' reiterated Ottilia, a little 
flushed by having failed to understand.

'I will tell you one thing,' replied Otto: 'You are!'

'Ah, well, that's what they all said of you,' moralised the girl; 
'such a tongue to come round - such a flattering tongue!'

' O, you forget, I am a man of middle age,' the Prince chuckled.

'Well, to speak to you, I should think you was a boy; and Prince or 
no Prince, if you came worrying where I was cooking, I would pin a 
napkin to your tails. . . . And, O Lord, I declare I hope your 
Highness will forgive me,' the girl added.  'I can't keep it in my 
mind.'

'No more can I,' cried Otto.  'That is just what they complain of!'

They made a loverly-looking couple; only the heavy pouring of that 
horse-tail of water made them raise their voices above lovers' 
pitch.  But to a jealous onlooker from above, their mirth and close 
proximity might easily give umbrage; and a rough voice out of a tuft 
of brambles began calling on Ottilia by name.  She changed colour at 
that.  'It is Fritz,' she said.  'I must go.'

'Go, my dear, and I need not bid you go in peace, for I think you 
have discovered that I am not formidable at close quarters,' said 
the Prince, and made her a fine gesture of dismissal.

So Ottilia skipped up the bank, and disappeared into the thicket, 
stopping once for a single blushing bob - blushing, because she had 
in the interval once more forgotten and remembered the stranger's 
quality.

Otto returned to his rock promontory; but his humour had in the 
meantime changed.  The sun now shone more fairly on the pool; and 
over its brown, welling surface, the blue of heaven and the golden 
green of the spring foliage danced in fleeting arabesque.  The 
eddies laughed and brightened with essential colour.  And the beauty 
of the dell began to rankle in the Prince's mind; it was so near to 
his own borders, yet without.  He had never had much of the joy of 
possessorship in any of the thousand and one beautiful and curious 
things that were his; and now he was conscious of envy for what was 
another's.  It was, indeed, a smiling, dilettante sort of envy; but 
yet there it was: the passion of Ahab for the vineyard, done in 
little; and he was relieved when Mr. Killian appeared upon the 
scene.

'I hope, sir, that you have slept well under my plain roof,' said 
the old farmer.

'I am admiring this sweet spot that you are privileged to dwell in,' 
replied Otto, evading the inquiry.

'It is rustic,' returned Mr. Gottesheim, looking around him with 
complacency, 'a very rustic corner; and some of the land to the west 
is most excellent fat land, excellent deep soil.  You should see my 
wheat in the ten-acre field.  There is not a farm in Grunewald, no, 
nor many in Gerolstein, to match the River Farm.  Some sixty - I 
keep thinking when I sow - some sixty, and some seventy, and some an 
hundredfold; and my own place, six score!  But that, sir, is partly 
the farming.'

'And the stream has fish?' asked Otto.

'A fishpond,' said the farmer.  'Ay, it is a pleasant bit.  It is 
pleasant even here, if one had time, with the brook drumming in that 
black pool, and the green things hanging all about the rocks, and, 
dear heart, to see the very pebbles! all turned to gold and precious 
stones!  But you have come to that time of life, sir, when, if you 
will excuse me, you must look to have the rheumatism set in.  Thirty 
to forty is, as one may say, their seed-time.  And this is a damp 
cold corner for the early morning and an empty stomach.  If I might 
humbly advise you, sir, I would be moving.'

'With all my heart,' said Otto gravely.  'And so you have lived your 
life here?' he added, as they turned to go.

'Here I was born,' replied the farmer, 'and here I wish I could say 
I was to die.  But fortune, sir, fortune turns the wheel.  They say 
she is blind, but we will hope she only sees a little farther on.  
My grandfather and my father and I, we have all tilled these acres, 
my furrow following theirs.  All the three names are on the garden 
bench, two Killians and one Johann.  Yes, sir, good men have 
prepared themselves for the great change in my old garden.  Well do 
I mind my father, in a woollen night-cap, the good soul, going round 
and round to see the last of it.  'Killian,' said he, 'do you see 
the smoke of my tobacco?  Why,' said he, 'that is man's life.'  It 
was his last pipe, and I believe he knew it; and it was a strange 
thing, without doubt, to leave the trees that he had planted, and 
the son that he had begotten, ay, sir, and even the old pipe with 
the Turk's head that he had smoked since he was a lad and went a-
courting.  But here we have no continuing city; and as for the 
eternal, it's a comfortable thought that we have other merits than 
our own.  And yet you would hardly think how sore it goes against 
the grain with me, to die in a strange bed.'

'And must you do so?  For what reason?' Otto asked.

'The reason?  The place is to be sold; three thousand crowns,' 
replied Mr. Gottesheim.  'Had it been a third of that, I may say 
without boasting that, what with my credit and my savings, I could 
have met the sum.  But at three thousand, unless I have singular 
good fortune and the new proprietor continues me in office, there is 
nothing left me but to budge.'

Otto's fancy for the place redoubled at the news, and became joined 
with other feelings.  If all he heard were true, Grunewald was 
growing very hot for a sovereign Prince; it might be well to have a 
refuge; and if so, what more delightful hermitage could man imagine?  
Mr. Gottesheim, besides, had touched his sympathies.  Every man 
loves in his soul to play the part of the stage deity.  And to step 
down to the aid of the old farmer, who had so roughly handled him in 
talk, was the ideal of a Fair Revenge.  Otto's thoughts brightened 
at the prospect, and he began to regard himself with a renewed 
respect.

'I can find you, I believe, a purchaser,' he said, 'and one who 
would continue to avail himself of your skill.'

'Can you, sir, indeed?' said the old man.  'Well, I shall be 
heartily obliged; for I begin to find a man may practise resignation 
all his days, as he takes physic, and not come to like it in the 
end.'

'If you will have the papers drawn, you may even burthen the 
purchase with your interest,' said Otto.  'Let it be assured to you 
through life.'

'Your friend, sir,' insinuated Killian, 'would not, perhaps, care to 
make the interest reversible?  Fritz is a good lad.'

'Fritz is young,' said the Prince dryly; 'he must earn 
consideration, not inherit.'

'He has long worked upon the place, sir,' insisted Mr. Gottesheim; 
'and at my great age, for I am seventy-eight come harvest, it would 
be a troublesome thought to the proprietor how to fill my shoes.  It 
would be a care spared to assure yourself of Fritz.  And I believe 
he might be tempted by a permanency.'

'The young man has unsettled views,' returned Otto.

'Possibly the purchaser - ' began Killian.

A little spot of anger burned in Otto's cheek.  'I am the 
purchaser,' he said.

'It was what I might have guessed,' replied the farmer, bowing with 
an aged, obsequious dignity.  'You have made an old man very happy; 
and I may say, indeed, that I have entertained an angel unawares.  
Sir, the great people of this world - and by that I mean those who 
are great in station - if they had only hearts like yours, how they 
would make the fires burn and the poor sing!'

'I would not judge them hardly, sir,' said Otto.  'We all have our 
frailties.'

'Truly, sir,' said Mr. Gottesheim, with unction.  'And by what name, 
sir, am I to address my generous landlord?'

The double recollection of an English traveller, whom he had 
received the week before at court, and of an old English rogue 
called Transome, whom he had known in youth, came pertinently to the 
Prince's help.  'Transome,' he answered, 'is my name.  I am an 
English traveller.  It is, to-day, Tuesday.  On Thursday, before 
noon, the money shall be ready.  Let us meet, if you please, in 
Mittwalden, at the "Morning Star."'

'I am, in all things lawful, your servant to command,' replied the 
farmer.  'An Englishman!  You are a great race of travellers.  And 
has your lordship some experience of land?'

'I have had some interest of the kind before,' returned the Prince; 
'not in Gerolstein, indeed.  But fortune, as you say, turns the 
wheel, and I desire to be beforehand with her revolutions.'

'Very right, sir, I am sure,' said Mr. Killian.

They had been strolling with deliberation; but they were now drawing 
near to the farmhouse, mounting by the trellised pathway to the 
level of the meadow.  A little before them, the sound of voices had 
been some while audible, and now grew louder and more distinct with 
every step of their advance.  Presently, when they emerged upon the 
top of the bank, they beheld Fritz and Ottilia some way off; he, 
very black and bloodshot, emphasising his hoarse speech with the 
smacking of his fist against his palm; she, standing a little way 
off in blowsy, voluble distress.

'Dear me!' said Mr. Gottesheim, and made as if he would turn aside.

But Otto went straight towards the lovers, in whose dissension he 
believed himself to have a share.  And, indeed, as soon as he had 
seen the Prince, Fritz had stood tragic, as if awaiting and defying 
his approach.

'O, here you are!' he cried, as soon as they were near enough for 
easy speech.  'You are a man at least, and must reply.  What were 
you after?  Why were you two skulking in the bush?  God!' he broke 
out, turning again upon Ottilia, 'to think that I should waste my 
heart on you!'

'I beg your pardon,' Otto cut in.  'You were addressing me.  In 
virtue of what circumstance am I to render you an account of this 
young lady's conduct?  Are you her father? her brother? her 
husband?'

'O, sir, you know as well as I,' returned the peasant.  'We keep 
company, she and I.  I love her, and she is by way of loving me; but 
all shall be above-board, I would have her to know.  I have a good 
pride of my own.'

'Why, I perceive I must explain to you what love is,' said Otto.  
'Its measure is kindness.  It is very possible that you are proud; 
but she, too, may have some self-esteem; I do not speak for myself.  
And perhaps, if your own doings were so curiously examined, you 
might find it inconvenient to reply.'

'These are all set-offs,' said the young man.  'You know very well 
that a man is a man, and a woman only a woman.  That holds good all 
over, up and down.  I ask you a question, I ask it again, and here I 
stand.'  He drew a mark and toed it.

'When you have studied liberal doctrines somewhat deeper,' said the 
Prince, 'you will perhaps change your note.  You are a man of false 
weights and measures, my young friend.  You have one scale for 
women, another for men; one for princes, and one for farmer-folk.  
On the prince who neglects his wife you can be most severe.  But 
what of the lover who insults his mistress?  You use the name of 
love.  I should think this lady might very fairly ask to be 
delivered from love of such a nature.  For if I, a stranger, had 
been one-tenth part so gross and so discourteous, you would most 
righteously have broke my head.  It would have been in your part, as 
lover, to protect her from such insolence.  Protect her first, then, 
from yourself.'

'Ay,' quoth Mr. Gottesheim, who had been looking on with his hands 
behind his tall old back, 'ay, that's Scripture truth.'

Fritz was staggered, not only by the Prince's imperturbable 
superiority of manner, but by a glimmering consciousness that he 
himself was in the wrong.  The appeal to liberal doctrines had, 
besides, unmanned him.

'Well,' said he, 'if I was rude, I'll own to it.  I meant no ill, 
and did nothing out of my just rights; but I am above all these old 
vulgar notions too; and if I spoke sharp, I'll ask her pardon.'

'Freely granted, Fritz,' said Ottilia.

'But all this doesn't answer me,' cried Fritz.  'I ask what you two 
spoke about.  She says she promised not to tell; well, then, I mean 
to know.  Civility is civility, but I'll be no man's gull.  I have a 
right to common justice, if I DO keep company!'

'If you will ask Mr. Gottesheim,' replied Otto, 'you will find I 
have not spent my hours in idleness.  I have, since I arose this 
morning, agreed to buy the farm.  So far I will go to satisfy a 
curiosity which I condemn.'

'O, well, if there was business, that's another matter,' returned 
Fritz.  'Though it beats me why you could not tell.  But, of course, 
if the gentleman is to buy the farm, I suppose there would naturally 
be an end.'

'To be sure,' said Mr. Gottesheim, with a strong accent of 
conviction.

But Ottilia was much braver.  'There now!' she cried in triumph.  
'What did I tell you?  I told you I was fighting your battles.  Now 
you see!  Think shame of your suspicious temper!  You should go down 
upon your bended knees both to that gentleman and me.'




CHAPTER IV - IN WHICH THE PRINCE COLLECTS OPINIONS BY THE WAY


A LITTLE before noon Otto, by a triumph of manoeuvring, effected his 
escape.  He was quit in this way of the ponderous gratitude of Mr. 
Killian, and of the confidential gratitude of poor Ottilia; but of 
Fritz he was not quit so readily.  That young politician, brimming 
with mysterious glances, offered to lend his convoy as far as to the 
high-road; and Otto, in fear of some residuary jealousy and for the 
girl's sake, had not the courage to gainsay him; but he regarded his 
companion with uneasy glances, and devoutly wished the business at 
an end.  For some time Fritz walked by the mare in silence; and they 
had already traversed more than half the proposed distance when, 
with something of a blush, he looked up and opened fire.

'Are you not,' he asked, 'what they call a socialist?'

'Why, no,' returned Otto, 'not precisely what they call so.  Why do 
you ask?'

'I will tell you why,' said the young man.  'I saw from the first 
that you were a red progressional, and nothing but the fear of old 
Killian kept you back.  And there, sir, you were right: old men are 
always cowards.  But nowadays, you see, there are so many groups: 
you can never tell how far the likeliest kind of man may be prepared 
to go; and I was never sure you were one of the strong thinkers, 
till you hinted about women and free love.'

'Indeed,' cried Otto, 'I never said a word of such a thing.'

'Not you!' cried Fritz.  'Never a word to compromise!  You was 
sowing seed: ground-bait, our president calls it.  But it's hard to 
deceive me, for I know all the agitators and their ways, and all the 
doctrines; and between you and me,' lowering his voice, 'I am myself 
affiliated.  O yes, I am a secret society man, and here is my 
medal.'  And drawing out a green ribbon that he wore about his neck, 
he held up, for Otto's inspection, a pewter medal bearing the 
imprint of a Phoenix and the legend LIBERTAS.  'And so now you see 
you may trust me,' added Fritz, 'I am none of your alehouse talkers; 
I am a convinced revolutionary.'  And he looked meltingly upon Otto.

'I see,' replied the Prince; 'that is very gratifying.  Well, sir, 
the great thing for the good of one's country is, first of all, to 
be a good man.  All springs from there.  For my part, although you 
are right in thinking that I have to do with politics, I am unfit by 
intellect and temper for a leading role.  I was intended, I fear, 
for a subaltern.  Yet we have all something to command, Mr. Fritz, 
if it be only our own temper; and a man about to marry must look 
closely to himself.  The husband's, like the prince's, is a very 
artificial standing; and it is hard to be kind in either.  Do you 
follow that?'