Роберт Льюис Стивенсон
Prince Otto, a Romance
He did look at her. When a man has been embraced by a woman, he sees her in a glamour; and at such a time, in the baffling glimmer of the stars, she will look wildly well. The hair is touched with light; the eyes are constellations; the face sketched in shadows – a sketch, you might say, by passion. Otto became consoled for his defeat; he began to take an interest. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I am no ingrate.’
‘You promised me fun,’ she returned, with a laugh. ‘I have given you as good. We have had a stormy scena.’
He laughed in his turn, and the sound of the laughter, in either case, was hardly reassuring.
‘Come, what are you going to give me in exchange,’ she continued, ‘for my excellent declamation?’
‘What you will,’ he said.
‘Whatever I will? Upon your honour? Suppose I asked the crown?’ She was flashing upon him, beautiful in triumph.
‘Upon my honour,’ he replied.
‘Shall I ask the crown?’ she continued. ‘Nay; what should I do with it? 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 dumbfoundered 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. Suddenly the Countess seemed to awake. ‘As for your wife – ’ she began in a clear and steady voice.
The word recalled Otto, with a shudder, from his trance. ‘I will hear nothing against my wife,’ he cried wildly; and then, recovering himself and in a kindlier tone, ‘I will tell you my one secret,’ he added. ‘I love my wife.’
‘You should have let me finish,’ she returned, smiling. ‘Do you suppose I did not mention her on purpose? You know you had lost your head. Well, so had I. Come now, do not be abashed by words,’ she added somewhat sharply. ‘It is the one thing I despise. If you are not a fool, you will see that I am building fortresses about your virtue. And at any rate, I choose that you shall understand that I am not dying of love for you. It is a very smiling business; no tragedy for me! And now here is what I have to say about your wife; she is not and she never has been Gondremark’s mistress. Be sure he would have boasted if she had. Good-night!’
And in a moment she was gone down the alley, and Otto was alone with the bag of money and the flying god.
CHAPTER X – GOTTHOLD’S REVISED OPINION; AND THE FALL COMPLETED
The Countess left poor Otto with a caress and buffet simultaneously administered. The welcome word about his wife and the virtuous ending of his interview should doubtless have delighted him. But for all that, as he shouldered the bag of money and set forward to rejoin his groom, he was conscious of many aching sensibilities. To have gone wrong and to have been set right makes but a double trial for man’s vanity. The discovery of his own weakness and possible unfaith had staggered him to the heart; and to hear, in the same hour, of his wife’s fidelity from one who loved her not, increased the bitterness of the surprise.
He was about half-way between the fountain and the Flying Mercury before his thoughts began to be clear; and he was surprised to find them resentful. He paused in a kind of temper, and struck with his hand a little shrub. Thence there arose instantly a cloud of awakened sparrows, which as instantly dispersed and disappeared into the thicket. He looked at them stupidly, and when they were gone continued staring at the stars. ‘I am angry. By what right? By none!’ he thought; but he was still angry. He cursed Madame von Rosen and instantly repented. Heavy was the money on his shoulders.
When he reached the fountain, he did, out of ill-humour and parade, an unpardonable act. He gave the money bodily to the dishonest groom. ‘Keep this for me,’ he said, ‘until I call for it to-morrow. It is a great sum, and by that you will judge that I have not condemned you.’ And he strode away ruffling, as if he had done something generous. It was a desperate stroke to re-enter at the point of the bayonet into his self-esteem; and, like all such, it was fruitless in the end. He got to bed with the devil, it appeared: kicked and tumbled till the grey of the morning; and then fell inopportunely into a leaden slumber, and awoke to find it ten. To miss the appointment with old Killian after all, had been too tragic a miscarriage: and he hurried with all his might, found the groom (for a wonder) faithful to his trust, and arrived only a few minutes before noon in the guest-chamber of the Morning Star. Killian was there in his Sunday’s best and looking very gaunt and rigid; a lawyer from Brandenau stood sentinel over his outspread papers; and the groom and the landlord of the inn were called to serve as witnesses. The obvious deference of that great man, the innkeeper, plainly affected the old farmer with surprise; but it was not until Otto had taken the pen and signed that the truth flashed upon him fully. Then, indeed, he was beside himself.
‘His Highness!’ he cried, ‘His Highness!’ and repeated the exclamation till his mind had grappled fairly with the facts. Then he turned to the witnesses. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you dwell in a country highly favoured by God; for of all generous gentlemen, I will say it on my conscience, this one is the king. I am an old man, and I have seen good and bad, and the year of the great famine; but a more excellent gentleman, no, never.’
‘We know that,’ cried the landlord, ‘we know that well in Grünewald. If we saw more of his Highness we should be the better pleased.’
‘It is the kindest Prince,’ began the groom, and suddenly closed his mouth upon a sob, so that every one turned to gaze upon his emotion – Otto not last; Otto struck with remorse, to see the man so grateful.
Then it was the lawyer’s turn to pay a compliment. ‘I do not know what Providence may hold in store,’ he said, ‘but this day should be a bright one in the annals of your reign. The shouts of armies could not be more eloquent than the emotion on these honest faces.’ And the Brandenau lawyer bowed, skipped, stepped back, and took snuff, with the air of a man who has found and seized an opportunity.
‘Well, young gentleman,’ said Killian, ‘if you will pardon me the plainness of calling you a gentleman, many a good day’s work you have done, I doubt not, but never a better, or one that will be better blessed; and whatever, sir, may be your happiness and triumph in that high sphere to which you have been called, it will be none the worse, sir, for an old man’s blessing!’
The scene had almost assumed the proportions of an ovation; and when the Prince escaped he had but one thought: to go wherever he was most sure of praise. His conduct at the board of council occurred to him as a fair chapter; and this evoked the memory of Gotthold. To Gotthold he would go.
Gotthold was in the library as usual, and laid down his pen, a little angrily, on Otto’s entrance. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here you are.’
‘Well,’ returned Otto, ‘we made a revolution, I believe.’
‘It is what I fear,’ returned the Doctor.
‘How?’ said Otto. ‘Fear? Fear is the burnt child. I have learned my strength and the weakness of the others; and I now mean to govern.’
Gotthold said nothing, but he looked down and smoothed his chin.
‘You disapprove?’ cried Otto. ‘You are a weather-cock.’
‘On the contrary,’ replied the Doctor. ‘My observation has confirmed my fears. It will not do, Otto, not do.’
‘What will not do?’ demanded the Prince, with a sickening stab of pain.
‘None of it,’ answered Gotthold. ‘You are unfitted for a life of action; you lack the stamina, the habit, the restraint, the patience. Your wife is greatly better, vastly better; and though she is in bad hands, displays a very different aptitude. She is a woman of affairs; you are – dear boy, you are yourself. I bid you back to your amusements; like a smiling dominie, I give you holidays for life. 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. And I give you my word, I would rather see a man capably doing evil than blundering about good.’
Otto was still silent, in extreme dudgeon.
Presently the Doctor resumed: ‘I will take the smaller matter first: your conduct to your wife. You went, I hear, and had an explanation. That may have been right or wrong; I know not; at least, you had stirred her temper. At the council she insults you; well, you insult her back – a man to a woman, a husband to his wife, in public! Next upon the back of this, you propose – the story runs like wildfire – to recall the power of signature. Can she ever forgive that? a woman – a young woman – ambitious, conscious of talents beyond yours? Never, Otto. And to sum all, at such a crisis in your married life, you get into a window corner with that ogling dame von Rosen. I do not dream that there was any harm; but I do say it was an idle disrespect to your wife. Why, man, the woman is not decent.’
‘Gotthold,’ said Otto, ‘I will hear no evil of the Countess.’
‘You will certainly hear no good of her,’ returned Gotthold; ‘and if you wish your wife to be the pink of nicety, you should clear your court of demi-reputations.’
‘The commonplace injustice of a by-word,’ Otto cried. ‘The partiality of sex. She is a demirep; what then is Gondremark? Were she a man – ’
‘It would be all one,’ retorted Gotthold roughly. ‘When I see a man, come to years of wisdom, who speaks in double-meanings and is the braggart of his vices, I spit on the other side. “You, my friend,” say I, “are not even a gentleman.” Well, she’s not even a lady.’
‘She is the best friend I have, and I choose that she shall be respected,’ Otto said.
‘If she is your friend, so much the worse,’ replied the Doctor. ‘It will not stop there.’
‘Ah!’ cried Otto, ‘there is the charity of virtue! All evil in the spotted fruit. But I can tell you, sir, that you do Madame von Rosen prodigal injustice.’
‘You can tell me!’ said the Doctor shrewdly. ‘Have you, tried? have you been riding the marches?’
The blood came into Otto’s face.
‘Ah!’ cried Gotthold, ‘look at your wife and blush! There’s a wife for a man to marry and then lose! She’s a carnation, Otto. The soul is in her eyes.’
‘You have changed your note for Seraphina, I perceive,’ said Otto.
‘Changed it!’ cried the Doctor, with a flush. ‘Why, when was it different? But I own I admired her at the council. When she sat there silent, tapping with her foot, I admired her as I might a hurricane. Were I one of those who venture upon matrimony, there had been the prize to tempt me! She invites, as Mexico invited Cortez; the enterprise is hard, the natives are unfriendly – I believe them cruel too – but the metropolis is paved with gold and the breeze blows out of paradise. Yes, I could desire to be that conqueror. But to philander with von Rosen! never! Senses? I discard them; what are they? – pruritus! Curiosity? Reach me my Anatomy!’
‘To whom do you address yourself?’ cried Otto. ‘Surely you, of all men, know that I love my wife!’
‘O, love!’ cried Gotthold; ‘love is a great word; it is in all the dictionaries. If you had loved, she would have paid you back. What does she ask? A little ardour!’
‘It is hard to love for two,’ replied the Prince.
‘Hard? Why, there’s the touchstone! O, I know my poets!’ cried the Doctor. ‘We are but dust and fire, too and to endure life’s scorching; and love, like the shadow of a great rock, should lend shelter and refreshment, not to the lover only, but to his mistress and to the children that reward them; and their very friends should seek repose in the fringes of that peace. Love is not love that cannot build a home. And you call it love to grudge and quarrel and pick faults? You call it love to thwart her to her face, and bandy insults? Love!’
‘Gotthold, you are unjust. I was then fighting for my country,’ said the Prince.
‘Ay, and there’s the worst of all,’ returned the Doctor. ‘You could not even see that you were wrong; that being where they were, retreat was ruin.’
Why, you supported me!’ cried Otto.
‘I did. I was a fool like you,’ replied Gotthold. ‘But now my eyes are open. If you go on as you have started, disgrace this fellow Gondremark, and publish the scandal of your divided house, there will befall a most abominable thing in Grünewald. A revolution, friend – a revolution.’
‘You speak strangely for a red,’ said Otto.
‘A red republican, but not a revolutionary,’ returned the Doctor. ‘An ugly thing is a Grünewalder drunk! One man alone can save the country from this pass, and that is the double-dealer Gondremark, with whom I conjure you to make peace. It will not be you; it never can be you: – you, who can do nothing, as your wife said, but trade upon your station – you, who spent the hours in begging money! And in God’s name, what for? Why money? What mystery of idiocy was this?’
‘It was to no ill end. It was to buy a farm,’ quoth Otto sulkily.
‘To buy a farm!’ cried Gotthold. ‘Buy a farm!’
‘Well, what then?’ returned Otto. ‘I have bought it, if you come to that.’
Gotthold fairly bounded on his seat. ‘And how that?’ he cried.
‘How?’ repeated Otto, startled.
‘Ay, verily, how!’ returned the Doctor. ‘How came you by the money?’
The Prince’s countenance darkened. ‘That is my affair,’ said he.
‘You see you are ashamed,’ retorted Gotthold. ‘And so you bought a farm in the hour of our country’s need – doubtless to be ready for the abdication; and I put it that you stole the funds. There are not three ways of getting money: there are but two: to earn and steal. And now, when you have combined Charles the Fifth and Long-fingered Tom, you come to me to fortify your vanity! But I will clear my mind upon this matter: until I know the right and wrong of the transaction, I put my hand behind my back. 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. I must do more than pardon, I must admire, because you have faced this – this formidable monarch, like a Nathan before David. You have uprooted an old kindness, sir, with an unsparing hand. You leave me very bare. My last bond is broken; and though I take Heaven to witness that I sought to do the right, I have this reward: to find myself alone. You say I am no gentleman; yet the sneers have been upon your side; and though I can very well perceive where you have lodged your sympathies, I will forbear the taunt.’
‘Otto, are you insane?’ cried Gotthold, leaping up. ‘Because I ask you how you came by certain moneys, and because you refuse – ’
‘Herr von Hohenstockwitz, I have ceased to invite your aid in my affairs,’ said Otto. ‘I have heard all that I desire, and you have sufficiently trampled on my vanity. It may be that I cannot govern, it may be that I cannot love – you tell me so with every mark of honesty; but God has granted me one virtue, and I can still forgive. I forgive you; even in this hour of passion, I can perceive my faults and your excuses; and if I desire that in future I may be spared your conversation, it is not, sir, from resentment – not resentment – but, by Heaven, because no man on earth could endure to be so rated. You have the satisfaction to see your sovereign weep; and that person whom you have so often taunted with his happiness reduced to the last pitch of solitude and misery. No, – I will hear nothing; I claim the last word, sir, as your Prince; and that last word shall be – forgiveness.’
And with that Otto was gone from the apartment, and Doctor Gotthold was left alone with the most conflicting sentiments of sorrow, remorse, and merriment; walking to and fro before his table, and asking himself, with hands uplifted, which of the pair of them was most to blame for this unhappy rupture. Presently, he took from a cupboard a bottle of Rhine wine and a goblet of the deep Bohemian ruby. The first glass a little warmed and comforted his bosom; with the second he began to look down upon these troubles from a sunny mountain; yet a while, and filled with this false comfort and contemplating life throughout a golden medium, he owned to himself, with a flush, a smile, and a half-pleasurable sigh, that he had been somewhat over plain in dealing with his cousin. ‘He said the truth, too,’ added the penitent librarian, ‘for in my monkish fashion I adore the Princess.’ And then, with a still deepening flush and a certain stealth, although he sat all alone in that great gallery, he toasted Seraphina to the dregs.
CHAPTER XI – PROVIDENCE VON ROSEN: ACT THE FIRST
SHE BEGUILES THE BARON
At a sufficiently late hour, or to be more exact, at three in the afternoon, Madame von Rosen issued on the world. She swept downstairs and out across the garden, a black mantilla thrown over her head, and the long train of her black velvet dress ruthlessly sweeping in the dirt.
At the other end of that long garden, and back to back with the villa of the Countess, stood the large mansion where the Prime Minister transacted his affairs and pleasures. This distance, which was enough for decency by the easy canons of Mittwalden, the Countess swiftly traversed, opened a little door with a key, mounted a flight of stairs, and entered unceremoniously into Gondremark’s study. It was a large and very high apartment; books all about the walls, papers on the table, papers on the floor; here and there a picture, somewhat scant of drapery; a great fire glowing and flaming in the blue tiled hearth; and the daylight streaming through a cupola above. In the midst of this sat the great Baron Gondremark in his shirt-sleeves, his business for that day fairly at an end, and the hour arrived for relaxation. His expression, his very nature, seemed to have undergone a fundamental change. Gondremark at home appeared the very antipode of Gondremark on duty. He had an air of massive jollity that well became him; grossness and geniality sat upon his features; and along with his manners, he had laid aside his sly and sinister expression. He lolled there, sunning his bulk before the fire, a noble animal.
‘Hey!’ he cried. ‘At last!’
The Countess stepped into the room in silence, threw herself on a chair, and crossed her legs. In her lace and velvet, with a good display of smooth black stocking and of snowy petticoat, and with the refined profile of her face and slender plumpness of her body, she showed in singular contrast to the big, black, intellectual satyr by the fire.
‘How often do you send for me?’ she cried. ‘It is compromising.’
Gondremark laughed. ‘Speaking of that,’ said he, ‘what in the devil’s name were you about? You were not home till morning.’
‘I was giving alms,’ she said.
The Baron again laughed loud and long, for in his shirt-sleeves he was a very mirthful creature. ‘It is fortunate I am not jealous,’ he remarked. ‘But you know my way: pleasure and liberty go hand in hand. I believe what I believe; it is not much, but I believe it. – But now to business. Have you not read my letter?’
‘No,’ she said; ‘my head ached.’
‘Ah, well! then I have news indeed!’ cried Gondremark. ‘I was mad to see you all last night and all this morning: for yesterday afternoon I brought my long business to a head; the ship has come home; one more dead lift, and I shall cease to fetch and carry for the Princess Ratafia. Yes, ’tis done. I have the order all in Ratafia’s hand; I carry it on my heart. At the hour of twelve to-night, Prince Featherhead is to be taken in his bed and, like the bambino, whipped into a chariot; and by next morning he will command a most romantic prospect from the donjon of the Felsenburg. Farewell, Featherhead! The war goes on, the girl is in my hand; I have long been indispensable, but now I shall be sole. I have long,’ he added exultingly, ‘long carried this intrigue upon my shoulders, like Samson with the gates of Gaza; now I discharge that burthen.’
She had sprung to her feet a little paler. ‘Is this true?’ she cried.
‘I tell you a fact,’ he asseverated. ‘The trick is played.’
‘I will never believe it,’ she said. ‘An order in her own hand? I will never believe it, Heinrich.’
‘I swear to you,’ said he.
‘O, what do you care for oaths – or I either? What would you swear by? Wine, women, and song? It is not binding,’ she said. She had come quite close up to him and laid her hand upon his arm. ‘As for the order – no, Heinrich, never! I will never believe it. I will die ere I believe it. You have some secret purpose – what, I cannot guess – but not one word of it is true.’
‘Shall I show it you?’ he asked.
‘You cannot,’ she answered. ‘There is no such thing.’
‘Incorrigible Sadducee!’ he cried. ‘Well, I will convert you; you shall see the order.’ He moved to a chair where he had thrown his coat, and then drawing forth and holding out a paper, ‘Read,’ said he.
She took it greedily, and her eye flashed as she perused it.
‘Hey!’ cried the Baron, ‘there falls a dynasty, and it was I that felled it; and I and you inherit!’ He seemed to swell in stature; and next moment, with a laugh, he put his hand forward. Give me the dagger,’ said he.
But she whisked the paper suddenly behind her back and faced him, lowering. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘You and I have first a point to settle. Do you suppose me blind? She could never have given that paper but to one man, and that man her lover. Here you stand – her lover, her accomplice, her master – O, I well believe it, for I know your power. But what am I?’ she cried; ‘I, whom you deceive!’
‘Jealousy!’ cried Gondremark. ‘Anna, I would never have believed it! But I declare to you by all that’s credible that I am not her lover. I might be, I suppose; but I never yet durst risk the declaration. The chit is so unreal; a mincing doll; she will and she will not; there is no counting on her, by God! And hitherto I have had my own way without, and keep the lover in reserve. And I say, Anna,’ he added with severity, ‘you must break yourself of this new fit, my girl; there must be no combustion. I keep the creature under the belief that I adore her; and if she caught a breath of you and me, she is such a fool, prude, and dog in the manger, that she is capable of spoiling all.’
‘All very fine,’ returned the lady. ‘With whom do you pass your days? and which am I to believe, your words or your actions?’
‘Anna, the devil take you, are you blind?’ cried Gondremark. ‘You know me. Am I likely to care for such a preciosa? ’Tis hard that we should have been together for so long, and you should still take me for a troubadour. But if there is one thing that I despise and deprecate, it is all such figures in Berlin wool. Give me a human woman – like myself. You are my mate; you were made for me; you amuse me like the play. And what have I to gain that I should pretend to you? If I do not love you, what use are you to me? Why, none. It is as clear as noonday.’
‘Do you love me, Heinrich?’ she asked, languishing. ‘Do you truly?’
‘I tell you,’ he cried, ‘I love you next after myself. I should be all abroad if I had lost you.’
‘Well, then,’ said she, folding up the paper and putting it calmly in her pocket, ‘I will believe you, and I join the plot. Count upon me. At midnight, did you say? It is Gordon, I see, that you have charged with it. Excellent; he will stick at nothing – ’
Gondremark watched her suspiciously. ‘Why do you take the paper?’ he demanded. ‘Give it here.’
‘No,’ she returned; ‘I mean to keep it. It is I who must prepare the stroke; you cannot manage it without me; and to do my best I must possess the paper. Where shall I find Gordon? In his rooms?’ She spoke with a rather feverish self-possession.
‘Anna,’ he said sternly, the black, bilious countenance of his palace rôle taking the place of the more open favour of his hours at home, ‘I ask you for that paper. Once, twice, and thrice.’
‘Heinrich,’ she returned, looking him in the face, ‘take care. I will put up with no dictation.’
Both looked dangerous; and the silence lasted for a measurable interval of time. Then she made haste to have the first word; and with a laugh that rang clear and honest, ‘Do not be a child,’ she said. ‘I wonder at you. If your assurances are true, you can have no reason to mistrust me, nor I to play you false. The difficulty is to get the Prince out of the palace without scandal. His valets are devoted; his chamberlain a slave; and yet one cry might ruin all.’
‘They must be overpowered,’ he said, following her to the new ground, ‘and disappear along with him.’
‘And your whole scheme along with them!’ she cried. ‘He does not take his servants when he goes a-hunting: a child could read the truth. No, no; the plan is idiotic; it must be Ratafia’s. But hear me. You know the Prince worships me?’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Poor Featherhead, I cross his destiny!’
‘Well now,’ she continued, ‘what if I bring him alone out of the palace, to some quiet corner of the Park – the Flying Mercury, for instance? Gordon can be posted in the thicket; the carriage wait behind the temple; not a cry, not a scuffle, not a footfall; simply, the Prince vanishes! – What do you say? Am I an able ally? Are my beaux yuex of service? Ah, Heinrich, do not lose your Anna! – she has power!’
He struck with his open hand upon the chimney. ‘Witch!’ he said, ‘there is not your match for devilry in Europe. Service! the thing runs on wheels.’
‘Kiss me, then, and let me go. I must not miss my Featherhead,’ she said.
‘Stay, stay,’ said the Baron; ‘not so fast. I wish, upon my soul, that I could trust you; but you are, out and in, so whimsical a devil that I dare not. Hang it, Anna, no; it’s not possible!’
‘You doubt me, Heinrich?’ she cried.
‘Doubt is not the word,’ said he. ‘I know you. Once you were clear of me with that paper in your pocket, who knows what you would do with it? – not you, at least – nor I. You see,’ he added, shaking his head paternally upon the Countess, ‘you are as vicious as a monkey.’
‘I swear to you,’ she cried, ‘by my salvation.. ‘
‘I have no curiosity to hear you swearing,’ said the Baron.
‘You think that I have no religion? You suppose me destitute of honour. Well,’ she said, ‘see here: I will not argue, but I tell you once for all: leave me this order, and the Prince shall be arrested – take it from me, and, as certain as I speak, I will upset the coach. Trust me, or fear me: take your choice.’ And she offered him the paper.
The Baron, in a great contention of mind, stood irresolute, weighing the two dangers. Once his hand advanced, then dropped. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘since trust is what you call it.’
‘No more,’ she interrupted, ‘Do not spoil your attitude. And now since you have behaved like a good sort of fellow in the dark, I will condescend to tell you why. I go to the palace to arrange with Gordon; but how is Gordon to obey me? And how can I foresee the hours? It may be midnight; ay, and it may be nightfall; all’s a chance; and to act, I must be free and hold the strings of the adventure. And now,’ she cried, ‘your Vivien goes. Dub me your knight!’ And she held out her arms and smiled upon him radiant.
‘Well,’ he said, when he had kissed her, ‘every man must have his folly; I thank God mine is no worse. Off with you! I have given a child a squib.’
