LITMIR.BIZ

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best compliment. You made a difficult speech. You are as adroit, dear Prince, as I am — charming.’ And as she said the word with a great curtsey, she justified it.

      ‘You hardly keep the bargain, madam, when you make yourself so beautiful,’ said the Prince, bowing.

      ‘It was my last arrow,’ she returned. ‘I am disarmed. Blank cartridge, O MON PRINCE! And now I tell you, if you choose to leave this prison, you can, and I am ruined. Choose!’

      ‘Madame von Rosen,’ replied Otto, ‘I choose, and I will go. My duty points me, duty still neglected by this Featherhead. But do not fear to be a loser. I propose instead that you should take me with you, a bear in chains, to Baron Gondremark. I am become perfectly unscrupulous: to save my wife I will do all, all he can ask or fancy. He shall be filled; were he huge as leviathan and greedy as the grave, I will content him. And you, the fairy of our pantomime, shall have the credit.’

      ‘Done!’ she cried. ‘Admirable! Prince Charming no longer — Prince Sorcerer, Prince Solon! Let us go this moment. Stay,’ she cried, pausing. ‘I beg dear Prince, to give you back these deeds. ‘Twas you who liked the farm — I have not seen it; and it was you who wished to benefit the peasants. And, besides,’ she added, with a comical change of tone, ‘I should prefer the ready money.’

      Both laughed. ‘Here I am, once more a farmer,’ said Otto, accepting the papers, ‘but overwhelmed in debt.’

      The Countess touched a bell, and the Governor appeared.

      ‘Governor,’ she said, ‘I am going to elope with his Highness. The result of our talk has been a thorough understanding, and the COUP D’ETAT is over. Here is the order.’

      Colonel Gordon adjusted silver spectacles upon his nose. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the Princess: very right. But the warrant, madam, was countersigned.’

      ‘By Heinrich!’ said von Rosen. ‘Well, and here am I to represent him.’

      ‘Well, your Highness,’ resumed the soldier of fortune, ‘I must congratulate you upon my loss. You have been cut out by beauty, and I am left lamenting. The Doctor still remains to me: PROBUS, DOCTUS, LEPIDUS, JUCUNDUS: a man of books.’

      ‘Ay, there is nothing about poor Gotthold,’ said the Prince.

      ‘The Governor’s consolation? Would you leave him bare?’ asked von Rosen.

      ‘And, your Highness,’ resumed Gordon, ‘may I trust that in the course of this temporary obscuration, you have found me discharge my part with suitable respect and, I may add, tact? I adopted purposely a cheerfulness of manner; mirth, it appeared to me, and a good glass of wine, were the fit alleviations.’

      ‘Colonel,’ said Otto, holding out his hand, ‘your society was of itself enough. I do not merely thank you for your pleasant spirits; I have to thank you, besides, for some philosophy, of which I stood in need. I trust I do not see you for the last time; and in the meanwhile, as a memento of our strange acquaintance, let me offer you these verses on which I was but now engaged. I am so little of a poet, and was so ill inspired by prison bars, that they have some claim to be at least a curiosity.’

      The Colonel’s countenance lighted as he took the paper; the silver spectacles were hurriedly replaced. ‘Ha!’ he said, ‘Alexandrines, the tragic metre. I shall cherish this, your Highness, like a relic; no more suitable offering, although I say it, could be made. “DIEUX DE L’IMMENSE PLAINE ET DES VASTES FORETS.” Very good,’ he said, ‘very good indeed! “ET DU GEOLIER LUI-MEME APPRENDRE DES LECONS.” Most handsome, begad!’

      ‘Come, Governor,’ cried the Countess, ‘you can read his poetry when we are gone. Open your grudging portals.’

      ‘I ask your pardon,’ said the Colonel. ‘To a man of my character and tastes, these verses, this handsome reference — most moving, I assure you. Can I offer you an escort?’

      ‘No, no,’ replied the Countess. ‘We go incogniti, as we arrived. We ride together; the Prince will take my servant’s horse. Hurry and privacy, Herr Oberst, that is all we seek.’ And she began impatiently to lead the way.

      But Otto had still to bid farewell to Dr. Gotthold; and the Governor following, with his spectacles in one hand and the paper in the other, had still to communicate his treasured verses, piece by piece, as he succeeded in deciphering the manuscript, to all he came across; and still his enthusiasm mounted. ‘I declare,’ he cried at last, with the air of one who has at length divined a mystery, ‘they remind me of Robbie Burns!’

      But there is an end to all things; and at length Otto was walking by the side of Madame von Rosen, along that mountain wall, her servant following with both the horses, and all about them sunlight, and breeze, and flying bird, and the vast regions of the air, and the capacious prospect: wildwood and climbing pinnacle, and the sound and voice of mountain torrents, at their hand: and far below them, green melting into sapphire on the plains.

      They walked at first in silence; for Otto’s mind was full of the delight of liberty and nature, and still, betweenwhiles, he was preparing his interview with Gondremark. But when the first rough promontory of the rock was turned, and the Felsenburg concealed behind its bulk, the lady paused.

      ‘Here,’ she said, ‘I will dismount poor Karl, and you and I must ply our spurs. I love a wild ride with a good companion.’

      As she spoke, a carriage came into sight round the corner next below them in the order of the road. It came heavily creaking, and a little ahead of it a traveller was soberly walking, note-book in hand.

      ‘It is Sir John,’ cried Otto, and he hailed him.

      The Baronet pocketed his note-book, stared through an eye-glass, and then waved his stick; and he on his side, and the Countess and the Prince on theirs, advanced with somewhat quicker steps. They met at the re-entrant angle, where a thin stream sprayed across a boulder and was scattered in rain among the brush; and the Baronet saluted the Prince with much punctilio. To the Countess, on the other hand, he bowed with a kind of sneering wonder.

      ‘Is it possible, madam, that you have not heard the news?’ he asked.

      ‘What news?’ she cried.

      ‘News of the first order,’ returned Sir John: ‘a revolution in the State, a Republic declared, the palace burned to the ground, the Princess in flight, Gondremark wounded — ’

      ‘Heinrich wounded?’ she screamed.

      ‘Wounded and suffering acutely,’ said Sir John. ‘His groans — ’

      There fell from the lady’s lips an oath so potent that, in smoother hours, it would have made her hearers jump. She ran to her horse, scrambled to the saddle, and, yet half seated, dashed down the road at full gallop. The groom, after a pause of wonder, followed her. The rush of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage horses over the verge of the steep hill; and still she clattered further, and the crags echoed to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of her. At the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a cry and escaped death by a hand’s-breadth. But the Countess wasted neither glance nor thought upon the incident. Out and in, about the bluffs of the mountain wall, she fled, loose-reined, and still the groom toiled in her pursuit.

      ‘A most impulsive lady!’ said Sir John. ‘Who would have thought she cared for him?’ And before the words were uttered, he was struggling in the Prince’s grasp.

      ‘My wife! the Princess? What of her?’

      ‘She is down the road,’ he gasped. ‘I left her twenty minutes back.’

      And next moment, the choked author stood alone, and the Prince on foot was racing down the hill behind the Countess.

      Chapter IV - Babes in the Wood

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