Robert Louis Stevenson

“ If she conspires with Gondremark against your liberty, she may conspire with him against your honour also.”
“My honour?” he repeated. “For a woman, you surprise me. If I have failed to gain her love or play my part of husband, what right is left me? or what honour can remain in such a scene of defeat? No honour that I recognise. I am become a stranger. If my wife no longer loves me, I will go to prison, since she wills it; if she love another, where should I be more in place? or whose fault is it but mine? You speak, Madame von Rosen, like too many women, with a man’s tongue. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ It was cold, but she did not feel it, being warm within; her thoughts, in that dark corner, shone like the gold and 143 rubies at the jeweller’s; her ears, which heard the brushing of so many footfalls, transposed it into music.
What was she to do? She held the paper by which all depended. Otto and Gondremark and Ratafia, and the state itself, hung light in her balances, as light as dust; her little finger laid in either scale would set all flying: and she hugged herself upon her huge preponderance, and then laughed aloud to think how giddily it might be used. ”

“ 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 Grünewald. As a prince—well, you are in the wrong trade. It is perhaps philosophical to recognise it as you do.”
“Perhaps philosophical?” repeated Otto. ”

“ See, sir,” and here he opened a door and ushered Otto into a little whitewashed 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. ”

“ But at the thought of scattering these loved treasures the blood leaped into Morris’s cheek. “I would rather die!” he exclaimed, and, cramming his hat upon his head, strode forth into the streets.
“I must raise funds,” he thought. “My uncle being dead, the money in the bank is mine, or would be mine but for the cursed injustice that has pursued me ever since I was an orphan in a commercial academy. I know what any other man would do; any other man in Christendom would forge; although I don’t know why I call it forging, either, when Joseph’s dead, and the funds are my own. ”

“ The sound of the wind in the forest swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent. The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses, the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride and its kindly adversary. ”

“ Now, you know me, Michael. I live for my calculations; I live for my manifold and ever-changing views of life; pens and paper and the productions of the popular press are to me as important as food and drink; and my life was growing quite intolerable when, in the confusion of that fortunate railway accident at Browndean, I made my escape. They must think me dead, and are trying to deceive the world for the chance of the tontine. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ She advanced a step superbly as she spoke, with outstretched arms; and Seraphina shrank. “Do not be alarmed!” the Countess cried; “I am not offering that hermitage to you; in all the world there is but one who wants to, and him you have dismissed! ‘If it will give her pleasure I should wear the martyr’s crown,’ he cried, ‘I will embrace the thorns.’ I tell you—I am quite frank—I put the order in his power and begged him to resist. You, who have betrayed your husband, may betray me to Gondremark; my Prince would betray no one. ”

“ I do not need to forget or to forgive, Seraphina, for I have understood.”
“I know what I have done,” she said. “I am not so weak that I can be deceived with kind speeches. I know what I have been—I see myself. I am not worth your anger, how much less to be forgiven! In all this downfall and misery, I see only me and you: you, as you have 209 been always; me, as I was—me, above all! O yes, I see myself; and what can I think?”
“Ah, then, let us reverse the parts!” said Otto. “It is ourselves we cannot forgive, when we deny forgiveness to another—so a friend told me last night. ”

“ He was at her feet. “Do not trifle with my hopes,” he pleaded. “Tell me, dearest Madame von Rosen, tell me! You cannot be cruel: it is not in your nature. Give? I can give nothing; I have nothing; I can only plead in mercy.”
“Do not,” she said; “it is not fair. Otto, you know my weakness. Spare me. Be generous.”
“O, madam,” he said, “it is for you to be generous, to have pity.” He took her hand and pressed it; he plied her with caresses and appeals. The Countess had a most enjoyable sham siege, and then relented. ”

“ Then Michael rose from his seat, and, ringing for his clerk, uttered a single clause:
“It won’t do, Morris.”
It was in vain that the leather merchant pleaded and reasoned, and returned day after day to plead and reason. It was in vain that he offered a bonus of one thousand, of two thousand, of three thousand pounds; in vain that he offered, in Joseph’s name, to be content with only one-third of the pool. Still there came the same answer: “It won’t do.”
“I can’t see the bottom of this,” he said at last. “You answer none of my arguments; you haven’t a word to say. ”

“ 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 Grünewald 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. ”

“ He set down a pitcher of coarse wine, bread, a piece of 178 cheese, and a handful of raw onions. The bread was hard and sour, the cheese like leather; even the onion, which ranks with the truffle and the nectarine in the chief place of honour of earth’s fruits, is not perhaps a dish for princesses when raw. But she ate, if not with appetite, with courage; and when she had eaten, did not disdain the pitcher. In all her life before, she had not tasted of gross food nor drunk after another; but a brave woman far more readily accepts a change of circumstances than the bravest man. ”

“ Yes,” he continued, “there is a day appointed for all when they shall turn again upon their own philosophy. I had grown to disbelieve impartially in all; and if in the atlas of the sciences there were two charts I disbelieved in more than all the rest, they were politics and morals. I had a sneaking kindness for your vices; as they were negative, they flattered my philosophy; and I called them almost virtues. Well, Otto, I was wrong; I have forsworn my sceptical philosophy; and I perceive your faults to be unpardonable. You are unfit to be a Prince, unfit to be a husband. ”

“ Thank God, I am not so destitute of humour as to make a tragedy of such a farce.” He flicked the order on the table. “You may signify my readiness,” he added grandly.
“Ah,” she said, “you are more angry than you own.”
“I, madam? angry?” he cried. “You rave! I have no cause for anger. In every way I have been taught my weakness, my instability, and my unfitness for the world. I am a plexus of weaknesses, an impotent Prince, a doubtful gentleman; and you yourself, indulgent as you are, have twice reproved my levity. ”

“ Grünewald is but a petty state; my ambition swells above it. I shall ask—I find I want nothing,” she concluded. “I will give you something instead. I will give you leave to kiss me—once.”
Otto drew near, and she put up her face; they were both smiling, both on the brink of laughter, all was so innocent and playful; and the Prince, when their lips encountered, was dumfoundered by the sudden convulsion of his being. Both drew instantly apart, and for an appreciable time sat tongue-tied. Otto was indistinctly conscious of a peril in the silence, but could find no words to utter. ”

“ So a man may be proud of having tamed a bear, and yet sicken at his captive’s odour. And above all, she had certain jealous intimations that the man was false and the deception double. True, she falsely trifled with his love; but he, perhaps, was only trifling with her vanity. The insolence of his late mimicry, and the odium of her own position as she sat and watched it, lay besides like a load upon her conscience. She met Otto almost with a sense of guilt, and yet she welcomed him as a deliverer from ugly things.
But the wheels of an interview are at the mercy of a thousand ruts ”

“ But, Seraphina, I begin to learn it is not always wise. If I were too old and too uncongenial for your husband, I should still have remembered that I was the Prince of that country to which you came, a visitor and a child. In that relation also there were duties, and these duties I have not performed.”
To claim the advantage of superior age is to give sure offence. “Duty!” laughed Seraphina, “and on your lips, Frédéric! You make me laugh. What fancy is this? Go, flirt with the maids and be a prince in Dresden china, as you look. Enjoy yourself, mon enfant, and leave duty and the state to us.” ”

“ She shook it round her face, and the pool repeated her thus veiled. Her hair had smelt like violets, she remembered Otto saying; and so now she tried to smell it, and then shook her head, and laughed a little, sadly, to herself.
The laugh was returned upon her in a childish echo. She looked up; and lo! two children looking on,—a small girl and a yet smaller boy, standing, like playthings, by the pool, below a spreading pine. Seraphina was not fond of children, and now she was startled to the heart. ”

“ Honour, duty, ay, and the care of our own lives, demand we should proceed.”
She was looking at him, her brow thoughtfully knitted. “I feel it,” she said. “But how? He has the power.”
“The power, madam? The power is in the army,” he replied; and then hastily, ere she could intevene, “we have to save ourselves,” he went on; “I have to save my Princess, she has to save her minister; we have both of us to save this infatuated youth from his own madness. He in the outbreak would be the earliest victim; I see him,” he cried, “torn in pieces; and Grünewald, unhappy Grünewald! ”

“ 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 Grünewald, 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. ”

“ There is a day coming when your vain dreams will roll away like clouds, and you will find yourself alone. Then you will remember
“Otto.”
She read with a great horror on her mind; that day, of which he wrote, was come. She was alone; she had been false, she had been cruel; remorse rolled in upon her; and then with a more piercing note, vanity bounded on the stage of consciousness. She a dupe! she helpless! she to have betrayed herself in seeking to betray her husband! she to have lived these years upon flattery, grossly swallowing the bolus, like a clown with sharpers! she—Seraphina! ”

“ My honour is engaged. I said but now we were as poor as Job; and behold! not many miles from here I have a house of my own to which I will conduct you. Otto the Prince being down, we must try what luck remains to Otto the Hunter. Come, Seraphina; show that you forgive me, and let us set about this business of escape in the best spirits possible. You used to say, my dear, that, except as a husband and a prince, I was a pleasant fellow. I am neither now, and you may like my company without remorse. Come, then; it were idle to be captured. Can you still walk? ”

“ All these Masterman had eminently displayed, and here he was, ab agendo, at seventy-three; while Joseph, barely two years younger, and in the most excellent preservation, had disgraced himself through life by idleness and eccentricity. Embarked in the leather trade, he had early wearied of business, for which he was supposed to have small parts. A taste for general information, not promptly checked, had soon begun to sap his manhood. There is no passion more debilitating to the mind, unless, perhaps, it be that itch of public speaking which it not infrequently accompanies or begets. ”

“ Well, if you will not profit by my goodwill, then be of use to me; and as soon as ever you feel ready, go to the Flying Mercury where we met last night. It will be none the worse for you; and to make it quite plain, it will be better for the rest of us.”
“Dear madam, certainly,” said Otto. “If I am prepared for the chief evil, I shall not quarrel with details. Go, then, with my best gratitude; and when I have written a few lines of leave-taking, I shall immediately hasten to keep tryst. To-night I shall not meet so dangerous a cavalier,” he added, with a smiling gallantry. ”

“ A man may be the pitifullest prince; he must be a spotless gentleman.”
The Prince had gotten to his feet, as pale as paper. “Gotthold,” he said, “you drive me beyond bounds. Beware, sir, beware!”
“Do you threaten me, friend Otto?” asked the Doctor grimly. “That would be a strange conclusion.”
“When have you ever known me use my power in any private animosity?” cried Otto. “To any private man your words were an unpardonable insult, but at me you shoot in full security, and I must turn aside to compliment you on your plainness. ”