Prince Otto, a Romance

‘It will take me twelve hours to collect my men, and it had best be done at night. To-morrow midnight, if you please?’ answered the Baron.

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘My door is always open to you, Baron. As soon as the order is prepared, bring it me to sign.’

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘alone of all of us you do not risk your head in this adventure. For that reason, and to prevent all hesitation, I venture to propose the order should be in your hand throughout.’

‘You are right,’ she replied.

He laid a form before her, and she wrote the order in a clear hand, and re-read it. Suddenly a cruel smile came on her face. ‘I had forgotten his puppet,’ said she. ‘They will keep each other company.’ And she interlined and initiated the condemnation of Doctor Gotthold.

‘Your Highness has more memory than your servant,’ said the Baron; and then he, in his turn, carefully perused the fateful paper. ‘Good!’ said he.

‘You will appear in the drawing-room, Baron?’ she asked.

‘I thought it better,’ said he, ‘to avoid the possibility of a public affront. Anything that shook my credit might hamper us in the immediate future.’

‘You are right,’ she said; and she held out her hand as to an old friend and equal.

CHAPTER IX – THE PRICE OF THE RIVER FARM; IN WHICH VAINGLORY GOES BEFORE A FALL

The pistol had been practically fired. Under ordinary circumstances the scene at the council table would have entirely exhausted Otto’s store both of energy and anger; he would have begun to examine and condemn his conduct, have remembered all that was true, forgotten all that was unjust in Seraphina’s onslaught; and by half an hour after would have fallen into that state of mind in which a Catholic flees to the confessional and a sot takes refuge with the bottle. Two matters of detail preserved his spirits. For, first, he had still an infinity of business to transact; and to transact business, for a man of Otto’s neglectful and procrastinating habits, is the best anodyne for conscience. All afternoon he was hard at it with the Chancellor, reading, dictating, signing, and despatching papers; and this kept him in a glow of self-approval. But, secondly, his vanity was still alarmed; he had failed to get the money; to-morrow before noon he would have to disappoint old Killian; and in the eyes of that family which counted him so little, and to which he had sought to play the part of the heroic comforter, he must sink lower than at first. To a man of Otto’s temper, this was death. He could not accept the situation. And even as he worked, and worked wisely and well, over the hated details of his principality, he was secretly maturing a plan by which to turn the situation. It was a scheme as pleasing to the man as it was dishonourable in the prince; in which his frivolous nature found and took vengeance for the gravity and burthen of the afternoon. He chuckled as he thought of it: and Greisengesang heard him with wonder, and attributed his lively spirits to the skirmish of the morning.

Led by this idea, the antique courtier ventured to compliment his sovereign on his bearing. It reminded him, he said, of Otto’s father.

‘What?’ asked the Prince, whose thoughts were miles away.

‘Your Highness’s authority at the board,’ explained the flatterer.

‘O, that! O yes,’ returned Otto; but for all his carelessness, his vanity was delicately tickled, and his mind returned and dwelt approvingly over the details of his victory. ‘I quelled them all,’ he thought.

When the more pressing matters had been dismissed, it was already late, and Otto kept the Chancellor to dinner, and was entertained with a leash of ancient histories and modern compliments. The Chancellor’s career had been based, from the first off-put, on entire subserviency; he had crawled into honours and employments; and his mind was prostitute. The instinct of the creature served him well with Otto. First, he let fall a sneering word or two upon the female intellect; thence he proceeded to a closer engagement; and before the third course he was artfully dissecting Seraphina’s character to her approving husband. Of course no names were used; and of course the identity of that abstract or ideal man, with whom she was currently contrasted, remained an open secret. But this stiff old gentleman had a wonderful instinct for evil, thus to wind his way into man’s citadel; thus to harp by the hour on the virtues of his hearer and not once alarm his self-respect. Otto was all roseate, in and out, with flattery and Tokay and an approving conscience. He saw himself in the most attractive colours. If even Greisengesang, he thought, could thus espy the loose stitches in Seraphina’s character, and thus disloyally impart them to the opposite camp, he, the discarded husband – the dispossessed Prince – could scarce have erred on the side of severity.

In this excellent frame he bade adieu to the old gentleman, whose voice had proved so musical, and set forth for the drawing-room. Already on the stair, he was seized with some compunction; but when he entered the great gallery and beheld his wife, the Chancellor’s abstract flatteries fell from him like rain, and he re-awoke to the poetic facts of life. She stood a good way off below a shining lustre, her back turned. The bend of her waist overcame him with physical weakness. This was the girl-wife who had lain in his arms and whom he had sworn to cherish; there was she, who was better than success.

It was Seraphina who restored him from the blow. She swam forward and smiled upon her husband with a sweetness that was insultingly artificial. ‘Frédéric,’ she lisped, ‘you are late.’ It was a scene of high comedy, such as is proper to unhappy marriages; and her aplomb disgusted him.

There was no etiquette at these small drawing-rooms. People came and went at pleasure. The window embrasures became the roost of happy couples; at the great chimney the talkers mostly congregated, each full-charged with scandal; and down at the farther end the gamblers gambled. It was towards this point that Otto moved, not ostentatiously, but with a gentle insistence, and scattering attentions as he went. Once abreast of the card-table, he placed himself opposite to Madame von Rosen, and, as soon as he had caught her eye, withdrew to the embrasure of a window. There she had speedily joined him.

‘You did well to call me,’ she said, a little wildly. ‘These cards will be my ruin.’

‘Leave them,’ said Otto.

‘I!’ she cried, and laughed; ‘they are my destiny. My only chance was to die of a consumption; now I must die in a garret.’

‘You are bitter to-night,’ said Otto.

‘I have been losing,’ she replied. ‘You do not know what greed is.’

‘I have come, then, in an evil hour,’ said he.

‘Ah, you wish a favour!’ she cried, brightening beautifully.

‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I am about to found my party, and I come to you for a recruit.’

‘Done,’ said the Countess. ‘I am a man again.’

‘I may be wrong,’ continued Otto, ‘but I believe upon my heart you wish me no ill.’

‘I wish you so well,’ she said, ‘that I dare not tell it you.’

‘Then if I ask my favour?’ quoth the Prince.

‘Ask it, mon Prince,’ she answered. ‘Whatever it is, it is granted.’

‘I wish you,’ he returned, ‘this very night to make the farmer of our talk.’

‘Heaven knows your meaning!’ she exclaimed. ‘I know not, neither care; there are no bounds to my desire to please you. Call him made.’

‘I will put it in another way,’ returned Otto. ‘Did you ever steal?’

‘Often!’ cried the Countess. ‘I have broken all the ten commandments; and if there were more to-morrow, I should not sleep till I had broken these.’

‘This is a case of burglary: to say the truth, I thought it would amuse you,’ said the Prince.

‘I have no practical experience,’ she replied, ‘but O! the good-will! I have broken a work-box in my time, and several hearts, my own included. Never a house! But it cannot be difficult; sins are so unromantically easy! What are we to break?’

‘Madam, we are to break the treasury,’ said Otto and he sketched to her briefly, wittily, with here and there a touch of pathos, the story of his visit to the farm, of his promise to buy it, and of the refusal with which his demand for money had been met that morning at the council; concluding with a few practical words as to the treasury windows, and the helps and hindrances of the proposed exploit.

‘They refused you the money,’ she said when he had done. ‘And you accepted the refusal? Well!’

‘They gave their reasons,’ replied Otto, colouring. ‘They were not such as I could combat; and I am driven to dilapidate the funds of my own country by a theft. It is not dignified; but it is fun.’

‘Fun,’ she said; ‘yes.’ And then she remained silently plunged in thought for an appreciable time. ‘How much do you require?’ she asked at length.

‘Three thousand crowns will do,’ he answered, ‘for I have still some money of my own.’

‘Excellent,’ she said, regaining her levity. ‘I am your true accomplice. And where are we to meet?’

‘You know the Flying Mercury,’ he answered, ‘in the Park? Three pathways intersect; there they have made a seat and raised the statue. The spot is handy and the deity congenial.’

‘Child,’ she said, and tapped him with her fan. ‘But do you know, my Prince, you are an egoist – your handy trysting-place is miles from me. You must give me ample time; I cannot, I think, possibly be there before two. But as the bell beats two, your helper shall arrive: welcome, I trust. Stay – do you bring any one?’ she added. ‘O, it is not for a chaperon – I am not a prude!’

‘I shall bring a groom of mine,’ said Otto. ‘I caught him stealing corn.’

‘His name?’ she asked.

‘I profess I know not. I am not yet intimate with my corn-stealer,’ returned the Prince. ‘It was in a professional capacity – ’

‘Like me! Flatterer!’ she cried. ‘But oblige me in one thing. Let me find you waiting at the seat – yes, you shall await me; for on this expedition it shall be no longer Prince and Countess, it shall be the lady and the squire – and your friend the thief shall be no nearer than the fountain. Do you promise?’