And Othomar now knows that his "love" will become what is called aliaison, such as he has heard of in connection with this one and that, or read of in novels. He had not yet imagined such an arrangement. He does not know how he is to tell Dutri that he has made an assignation with the duchess in his rooms; and, when he thinks of the equerry, something of his innate sovereignty is chipped off as little pieces of marble or alabaster might be from a frail column....
Joining the duke and the general, he talks of the approaching manoeuvres. He now sees the duchess standing at a distance and Mena-Doni bending his Neronic head close to her face. His great antipathy for this man is mingled with jealousy. And, while he smiles and listens to the Duke of Yemena, he feels that he now knows for certain that his love after allislove, because jealousy plays a part in it.
Next morning, when Othomar rode out alone, he was thinking the whole time of Dutri. The difficulty of broaching the subject to his equerry struck him as unsurmountable. His heart beat when he met Dutri waiting for him in the Xaverius Barracks. But the young officer had the tact to whisper to him, very calmly and courteously, as though it were the simplest matter in the world:
"I was talking with the Duchess of Yemena, highness.... Her excellency told me that your highness wished to speak to her in private and did me the honour.... Will your highness take this key?..."
Othomar mechanically accepted the key. His face remained rigid and serious, but inwardly he felt much annoyed with the duchess and did not understand how and why she could drag Dutri into their secret. The ease and simplicity with which she had evidently done so flashed across him as something alarming. A confusion seemed to whirl through his head, as though the duchess and Dutri had, with one breath, blasted all sorts of firm convictions of his youth. He thought of the old duke. He considered all this wrong. He knew that Dutri was a young profligate; he was in the habit of hearing the whole gazette of court scandal from him, but he had never believed one-half of what Dutri related and had often told the equerry bluntly that he did not like to hear ill spoken of people whom they saw daily, people attached to his house. Now it seemed to him that everything that Dutri had said might be true and that yet worse things might well take place. This key, offered with such simple politeness, with such libertine ease, appeared to him as an object of searing dishonour. He was already ashamed of having put the thing in his pocket....
He went on, however. The key burnt him while he spoke with General Ducardi and, on his return to the Imperial, with his father and Myxila. Before going to visit the empress, who was awaiting him, he locked it away in his writing-table; then slowly, his forehead overshadowed, step by step he went through the long galleries to the empress' apartments. In the anteroom the lady-in-waiting rose, curtseyed, knocked at the door and opened it:
"His highness the Duke of Xara...."
Othomar silently made the sign of the Cross, as though he were entering a church:
"May God and His Mother forgive me!" he murmured between his lips.
Then he entered the empress' room.
She was sitting alone in the large drawing-room, at one of the open windows overlooking the park. She wore a very simple, smooth, dark dress. It struck him how young she looked; and he reflected that she was younger than the duchess. An aureole of delicate purity seemed to quiver around her tall, slender form like an atmosphere of light and gave her a distinction which other women did not possess. She smiled to him; and he came up slowly and kissed her hand.
She had not yet seen him that day; she took his head between her cool, slim hands and kissed him.
He sat down on a low chair by her side. Then she passed her hand over his forehead:
"What's the matter?" she asked.
He looked at her and said there was nothing particular. She suspected nothing further; this was not the first time he brought her a clouded forehead. She stroked it once more:
"I promised papa to have a serious talk with you," she said.
He looked up at her.
"He thought it better that I should talk to you, because it was his idea that I could do so more easily. For the rest, he is very pleased with you, my boy, and rejoices to find that you have such a clear judgement, sometimes, upon various political questions."
This opinion of his father's surprised him.
"And about what did you promise to talk to me?"
"About something very, very important," she said, with a gentle smile. "About your marriage, Othomar."
"My marriage?..."
"Yes, my boy.... You will soon be twenty-two. Papa married much later in life, but he had many brothers. They are dead. Uncle Xaverius is in his monastery. And we—papa and I—are not ever likely to have any more children, Othomar."
She put her arms about him and drew him to her. She whispered:
"We have no one but you, my boy, and our little Berengar. And ... papa therefore thinks that you ought to marry. We want an hereditary prince, a Count of Lycilia...."
His eyes became moist; he laid his head against her:
"Two to become emperor? Berengar, if I should be gone before him: is not that enough, mamma?"
She smilingly shook her head in denial. No, that was not certainty enough for the house of Czyrkiski-Xanantria.
"Mamma," he said, gently, "when sociologists speak of the social question, they deplore that so many children are born among the proletariate and they even hold the poor parents, who have nothing else but their love, responsible for the greater social misery which they cause through those children. Does not this reproach really affect us also? Or do you think an emperor so happy?"
Her brow became overcast.
"You are in one of your gloomy moods, Othomar. For God's sake, my boy, do not give way to them. Do not philosophize so much; accept life as it has been given to you. That is the only way in which to bear it. Do not reflect whether you will be happy, when you are emperor, but accept the fact that you must become emperor in your turn."
"Very well, for myself: but why children, mamma?"
"What sovereign allows his house to die out, Othomar? Do not be foolish. Cling to tradition: that is all in all to us. Don't have such strange ideas upon this question. They are not those of a future—I had almost said—autocrat; they are not those of a monarch. You understand, Othomar, do you not? You must, you must marry...."
Her voice sounded more decided than usual, sounded almost hard.
"And, dearest boy," she continued, "thank the circumstances and marry now, as quickly as possible. Our relations with foreign countries are at this moment such that there are no particular indications as to whom you ought to marry. You can more or less pick and choose. For you are the crown-prince of a great empire, my boy, of one of the greatest empires in Europe...."
He tried to speak; she continued, hurriedly:
"I repeat, you can—very nearly—choose. You don't know how much that means. Appreciate this, appreciate the circumstances. Travel to all the courts of Europe that are worth considering. Use your eyes, make your choice. There are pretty princesses in England, in Austria...."
Othomar closed his eyes an instant, as though exhausted with weariness:
"Later on, mamma," he whispered.
"No, my boy," said the empress, "do not speak of later on, do not put off. Think it over. Think how you will order your journey and whom you will take with you and then talk it over with papa and Myxila. Will you promise?"
He just pressed his head against her and promised, with a weary smile.
"But what's the matter with you, my boy?" she asked. "What is it?"
His eyes grew moist.
"I don't know, mamma. I am so tired sometimes...."
"Aren't you well?"
"Yes, I'm all right, but I am so tired...."
"But why, my child?"
He began to sob softly:
"Tired ... of everything ... mamma."
She looked at him for a long time, shook her head slowly, disapprovingly.
"Forgive me, mamma," he stammered, wiping his eyes. "I shan't give way like this again...."
"You promised me that once before, Othomar dear."
He leant his head against her once more, like a child:
"No, really," he declared, caressingly, "I really will resist it. It is not right of me, mamma. I will employ myself more, I shall grow stronger. I swear to you I shall grow stronger for your sake...."
She again looked long in his eyes, with her pure smile. Utter tenderness went out from her to him; he felt that he would never love any one so much as his mother. Then she took him in her arms and pressed him close against her:
"I accept your promise and I thank you ... my poor boy!" she whispered through her kiss.
At this moment there came a buzz of young voices, as though from birds set free, out of the park, through the open windows. The tripping of many little feet grated on the gravel. A high, shrill, childish voice suddenly rang with furious words from among the others; the others were silent....
The empress started with a shock that was electric. She drew herself up hastily, deadly pale:
"Berengar!" she cried; and her voice died away.
"And I shall tell his majesty what a scoundrel you are and then we'll see! Then we'll see, then we'll see!..."
The empress trembled as she leant out of the window. She saw ten or eleven little boys; they looked perplexed.
"Where is his highness?" she asked.
"His highness is over there, ma'am!" shyly answered a little count, pointing to the back-court, which the empress could not see.
"But what is happening? What a noise to make! Send his highness here at once! Berengar! Berengar!"
His highness, Berengar, was called and came. He passed through the little dukes and counts and looked up at the window through which his mother was leaning. He was a small, sturdily built, vigorous little chap; his face was crimson with indignation, his two small, furious eyes were like two black sparks.
"Berengar, come here!" cried the empress. "What is all this? Why can't you play without quarrelling?"
"I'm not quarrelling, mamma, but ... but I shall tell papa ... and ... and then we'll see! Then we'll ..."
"Berengar, come in here at once, through the palace, at once!" commanded the empress.
Othomar looked out from behind the empress at the group of boys. He saw Berengar speak a word of apology to the biggest little duke and disappear through the back-court.
A minute later, the boy entered the room.
"Berengar," said the empress, "it's very bad manners to make such a noise in the park ... and just behind the palace too."
The boy looked at her with his serious little crimson face:
"Yes, mamma," he assented, gently.
"What happened?"
Berengar's lips began to tremble.
"It was that beastly sentry ..." he began.
"What about the sentry?"
"He ... he didn't present arms to me!"
"Didn't the sentry present arms to you? Why not?"
"I don't know!" cried Berengar, indignantly.
"But surely he always does?"
"Yes, but this time he did not. He did the first time when we passed, but not the second time.... We were playing touch and, when we ran past him the second time, he didn't present arms!"
Othomar began to scream with laughter.
"There's nothing to laugh at!" cried Berengar, angrily. "And I shall tell papa and then you shall see."
"But, Berengar," said the empress, "did you expect the man to present arms to you every time you ran past him while you were playing touch?"
Berengar reflected:
"He might at least have done it the second time. If it had been three, or four, or five times, I could have understood.... But only the second time!... What can the boys have thought of me?"
"Listen, Berengar," said the empress, "whatever happens, it is not at all proper for you to call people names, whoever they may be, nor to make such a noise in the park, right behind the palace. An emperor's son never calls names, not even to a sentry. So now you must go straight to that sentry and tell him you are sorry you lost your temper so."
"Mamma!" cried the child, in consternation.
The empress' face was inflexible:
"I insist, Berengar."
The boy looked at her with the greatest astonishment:
"But am I to say that ... to the sentry, mamma?"
"Yes."
Evidently Berengar at this moment failed to understand the order of the universe; he suspected for an instant that the revolution had broken out:
"But, mamma, I can't do that!"
"You must, Berengar, and at once."
"But, mamma, will papa approve of it?"
"Certainly, Berengar," said Othomar. "Whatever mamma tells you to do papa of course approves of."
The boy looked up at Othomar helplessly; his little face grew long, his sturdy little fists quivered. Then he burst into a fit of desperate sobbing.
"Come, Berengar, go," the empress repeated.
The child was still more dismayed by her severity: that was how he always saw her stare at the crowd, but not at her children. And he threw himself with the small width of his helpless little arms into her skirts, embraced her and sobbed, with great, gulping sobs:
"I can't do it, mamma, I can't do it!"
"You must, Berengar...."
"And ... and ... and Ishan't, Ishan't!" the boy screamed, in a sudden fury, stamping his foot.
The empress did nothing but look at him, very long, very long. Her reproachful glance crushed the boy. He sobbed aloud and seemed to forget that his little friends outside would be sure to hear his highness sobbing. He saw that there was nothing to be done, that he must do it. He must! His imperial highness Berengar Marquis of Thracyna, knight of St. Ladislas, must say he was sorry to a sentry and one moreover who denied him, his highness, his rights.
His medieval little childish soul was all upset by it. He understood nothing more. He only saw that he must do as he was told, because his mother looked at him with such a sad expression:
"Othomar!" he sobbed, in his despair. "Othomar! Will ... you ... go with me ... then? But how am I to do it, how am I to do it?"
Othomar smiled to him compassionately and held out his hand to him. The empress nodded to the princes to go.
"How am I to do it? O God, how am I to do it?" she still heard Berengar's voice sobbing desperately in the lobby.
Elizabeth had turned deadly pale. As soon as she was alone, she sank into a chair, with her head flung back. Hélène of Thesbia entered at this moment:
"Madam!" cried the young countess. "What is it?"
The empress put out her hand; Hélène felt that it was icy cold.
"Nothing, Hélène," she replied. "But Berengar frightened me so terribly. I thought ... I thought they were murdering him!"
And in an hysterical fit of spasmodic sobbing she threw herself into the countess' arms.
That night, before Othomar left with his equerries to dine at the French ambassador's, he drew Dutri aside:
"I see, prince, that her excellency the duchess confides in you fully," he said, in curt tones. "I do not doubt that her confidence is well placed. But I assure you of this: if it should ever appear that it was misplaced, I shall never—now or at any later period—forget it...."
Dutri looked up strangely; he heard his future emperor address him. Then he pouted like a sulky child and said:
"I cannot say that your highness is very grateful for the hospitality which I have offered you...."
Othomar smiled painfully and gave him his hand....
"Or that it is kind of your highness to threaten me to-day with your displeasure," Dutri continued.
"I know you, Dutri," the prince said in his ear. "I know your tongue. That's my only reason for warning you.... And now, for God's sake, say no more about this, for it ... it all gives me pain...."
Dutri was silent, thought him a child and a prince in one. He shrugged his shoulders silently at Othomar's incomparable innocence, but he shuddered when he thought of a possible disgrace. He had no fortune; his position with the crown-prince was his life, his ambition, his all, for now and for later, when the prince should be emperor!... How pleased he had been at first that Alexa had told him everything, that he knew a secret of his prince, who never seemed to have any secrets! A vague pleasure that this secret would give him a power over his future emperor had already flitted through his head, full of frivolous calculations. And now the prince was threatening him and that power was frustrated at its very inception! And Dutri was now almost sorry that he had learned this secret; he even feared that the emperor might come to hear of it, that he would be visited with the father's displeasure even before the son's....
"If only Alexa had not dragged me into it!" he complained to himself, with his shallow fickleness of thought.
But, although Dutri was silent and even contradicted the rumour, the crown-prince'sliaisonwas discussed, possibly only because of Alexa's triumphant glances whenever Othomar addressed a word to her at a reception, at a ball. Nevertheless, Dutri's contradiction introduced a certain confusion—for he was known as a ready blabber—and people did not know what to think or what to believe.
But Othomar did not feel happy in his love. The fierce passion of this woman with her fiery glances, who overpowered him one moment with her kisses and the next crept before him like a slave and crouched at his feet in humility before her future sovereign, at first astonished him and, in one or two of his fits of despair, carried him away, but in the long run aroused in him a feeling of disinclination and opposition. In the young equerry's scented flat where they met—it was as dainty as any young girl's sitting-room and padded like a jewel-case—he sometimes felt a wish to repulse this woman, for all that she loved him with her strange soul and did not feign her love; he felt a wish to kick her, to beat her. His temperament was not fit for so animal a passion. She seemed to harry his nerves. She revolted him at times. And yet ... one single word from him and she mastered her fierceness, sank down humbly by his side, softly stroked his hand, his head; and he could not doubt that she adored him, perhaps a little because he was the crown-prince, but also greatly for himself.
And so April came; already it was almost summer; the King and Queen of Syria were expected. They had been first to the sultan and afterwards to the court of Athens. From Liparia they were to go on to the northern states of Europe. On the day of their arrival, Lipara fluttered with flags; the southern sun, already potent, rained down gold upon the white city; the harbour rippled a brilliant blue. A hum of people—tanned faces, many peasants from Thracyna still clad in their parti-coloured national dress—swarmed and crowded upon the quays. On the azure of the water, as on liquid metal, the ironclads, which were to welcome the king and queen and serve as their escort, steamed out to the mouth of the harbour. There, on theXaveria, with their suite of admirals and rear-admirals, were the two princes, Othomar and Berengar, and their brother-in-law, the Archduke of Carinthia. Innumerable small boats glided rapidly over the sea, like water-spiders.
A shot from Fort Wenceslas, tearing the vivid ether, announced the moment at which the little fleet met the Syrian yacht and the oriental potentates left her for theXaveria. From the villas on the quays, from the little boats full of sight-seers, every glass was directed towards the blue horizon, tremulous with light, on which the ships were still visibly shimmering. Half an hour later there rose, as though coming from the Imperial, the cheers of the multitude, surging louder and louder towards the harbour. Through the rows of the grenadiers, who lined the streets from the palace to the pavilion where the august visitors were to land, came the landaus, driven by postillions, in which their majesties sat. These were followed by the carriages of the two sisters, the Archduchess of Carinthia and Thera, and of the suite.
The fleet, with the Syrian yacht in its centre, had steamed back into the harbour. Across the guard-of-honour formed by the throne-guards, through the purple draperies and the flags, the crowd were able to see something of the meeting of the sovereigns in the pavilion. They shouted their hurrahs; and then the procession drove to the Imperial, the emperor with the King of Syria in the first carriage, the empress with the queen in the next; after these, the landaus with the princes and princesses and the suite.
A series of festivals and displays followed. After the tragedies of the inundations and the parliamentary crisis, a mood of gaiety blew over the capital, as it glittered in the sun, and lasted till late in the lighted rooms and parks of the Imperial. This gaiety was because of the eastern queen. The King of Syria may have had a few drops of the blood of Solomon still flowing through his veins. But the queen was not of royal descent. She was the daughter of a Syrian magnate and her mother's name was not mentioned in theAlmanach de Gotha. That mother was doubtless a favourite of dubious noble descent, but nobody knew who she had been exactly. Ademi-mondainefrom Paris or Vienna, who had stranded in the east and made her fortune in the harem of some great Syrian? A half-European, half-Egyptian dancer from a Cairene or Alexandrian dancing-house? Whoever she was, her lucky daughter, the Queen of Syria, showed an unmistakable mixture of blood, something at once eastern and European. Next to the true Semitic type of the king, who possessed a certain nervous dignity in his half-European, half-oriental uniform glittering with diamonds, the queen, short, fat, chubby, pale-brown, had the exuberant smiles, the restless movements, the turning head and rolling eyes of a woman of colour. Her very first appearance, as she sat in the carriage, next to the delicate figure of the Empress Elizabeth, in a gaudy travelling-dress and a hat with great feathers, bowing and laughing on every side with profuse amiability, had affected the Liparians, accustomed to the calm haughtiness of their own rulers, with an apparently inextinguishable gaiety. The Queen of Syria became the universal topic of conversation; and every conversation referring to her was accented with a smile of wickedness. Withal she seemed so entirely good-natured that it was impossible to say a word against her; and people were only amused about her. They remembered that the Syrians had subscribed fabulous sums at the time of the inundations. And the merriment that blew over Lipara was a southern merriment, free from malice and vented in sheer jolly laughter and delight, because the Liparians had never seen so droll a queen.
The great manoeuvres took place on the parade-ground. The king accompanied the emperor and the princes on horseback, with a bevy of European and oriental aides-de-camp. Their consorts with their suite watched the march-past from landaus. Berengar marched bravely with his company of grenadiers, in which he was a lieutenant, as well as he could march with his short little legs, and stiffened his small features, so as not to betray the difficulty it cost him to keep pace with his men's long step. The hussars astonished the Syrian monarch by their unity with their horses, when in wild career they threw themselves half off and in still more rapid rushes picked up a flag from the ground, swung themselves up again with a yell and waved the bunting. The Africans executed their showy fantasias, brandished their spears, which flashed like loosened sheaves of sunbeams, and came fluttering on in clouds of white burnouses and dust, amid which their negro heads clustered darkly in endless black patches and their eyes glistened.
In addition there was a military tournament, followed by garden-parties, races, regattas, popular games and fireworks. Lipara was one city of pleasure. Every day it was traversed by royal processions, the array of uniforms glittered like live gold, the imperial landaus rattled in the sun, with the spokes of their wheels flashing through the light dust which flew up from the flagged pavements of the town. Most brilliant of all, like drops of white flame, were the diamonds which the Syrian pair wore even in the streets. At night, when the sun ceased shining, there shone over the white town, vague with evening light, and over its violet harbour, festoons of salamanders and gaudy bridges of fire, factitiously bright beneath the silent silver glances of the stars; rockets fell hissing into the water, on which the boats showed black, and left behind them a faint, oppressive savour of gunpowder in the night.
In the great hall of pillars the ceremonial banquets followed one after the other, with a display of gold plate of incredible value. The Queen of Syria wore her curious, theatrical costumes, her broad bosom always crossed by the blue ribbon of an order covered with badges; her hair was dressed with tall plumes, hung with small diamonds. She talked with great vivacity, thankful for the kindness of her Liparian friends, for the enjoyment and for the cheering. Her profuse gestures enlivened everybody, introduced an element of fun into the stately Liparian etiquette. Elizabeth herself could not but laugh at them. The queen played her royal part with the self-possession of a bad but good-natured actress. She spoke to everybody, spread amiable little atoms of her small, chubby, brown majesty over one and all. Next her sat the king, looking dignified and wise as Solomon. The emperor praised him for a sensible, broad-minded sovereign: the king had already paid many visits to Europe. The Syrian aide-de-camps were dignified too, calm and composed, a little stiff in their ways, adapting themselves to western manners; the queen's ladies-in-waiting wore the trains of their Paris or London dresses a little strangely, but still looked slender in them, brown and attractive, with their curly little heads and long, almond-shaped eyes: still they would have been prettier in draped gold-gauze.
The Syrians stayed twelve days before going on to Italy. It was the last evening but one: in the Imperial a suite of fourteen rooms had been lighted up around the great ballroom for a ball. Three thousand invitations had been sent out. In the fore-court and in the neighbouring main-streets stood the grenadiers.
The ballroom was at the back of the palace; the tall, balconied windows were open and looked across their balustrades upon the shadows of the park of plane-trees. The band resounded from the groups of palms in the gallery. The imperial quadrille had been formed in the centre of the room: the emperor with the queen, the king and the empress, the Archduke of Carinthia and Thera, Othomar with the archduchess. The other official quadrilles formed their figures around them. Hundreds of guests looked on.
From the coruscating rock-crystal of the chandeliers, the electric light flowed in white patches out of the high dome, glided along the inlaid-marble walls and porphyry pillars of the ballroom and poured in millions of scintillations on the smooth facets of the jewels, on the gold of the uniforms and court-dresses, on the shimmering white brocades of the trains; for white was prescribed: all the ladies were in white; and the snow of the velvets, the lily glow of the satins were silver-shrill. One blinding whirl of refulgence passed through the immense room with its changing glamours. For the light never stood still, continually changed its brightest spot, turned the ball into one glittering kaleidoscope. The light gilded each bit of gold-lace, was caught in every brilliant, hung in every pearl. The music seemed to be one with that light; the brass resounded like gold.
The Duchess of Yemena stood among a group of diplomatists and equerries; she rose monumental in her beauty, which was statuesque and splendid in this wayward illumination. She seemed supernaturally tall, thanks to the heavy Watteau plait which trailed from her back in white brocade. She wore her tiara of emeralds and brilliants; and the same green stones sparkled in a great jewelled spray that blossomed over her bodice.
The emperor came up to her; she drooped in her famous curtsey and Oscar jested with her for a moment. When the emperor had passed on, she saw the crown-prince approach. She curtseyed again; he bowed smilingly and offered her his arm. Slowly they went through the ballroom.
"I have something important to say to you," he whispered, in a conversational tone.
He could not move away with her; they would be missed. So they continued to walk through the rooms.
"It is so long since I saw you ... alone!" she whispered, reproachfully, in the same voice. "And what did ... what did your highness wish to say to me?"
They spoke cautiously, with the smile of cool conversation on their lips, deadening the sound of their voices, casting indifferent glances around them, to see whether they could be overheard.
"Something ... that I have long wanted to tell you.... A decision I have to take...."
The words came crumbling in fragments from his lips and not sounding with their true accent, from caution. She perceived that he was about to tell her some great piece of news. She trembled without knowing why.... He himself did not know whether what he was doing was cruel or not: he did not know this woman well enough for that. But he did know that he had purposely chosen this difficult moment for his interview, because he was uncertain how she would bear it ... how she would bear it in atête-à-tête, when she would be able to give way to her passion. Here he knew how she would bear it: smilingly, as a woman of the world, although it turned to anguish for her. Perhaps after all he was cruel.... But it was too late now: he must go through with it.
She looked up at him, moving the feathers of her fan. He continued:
"A decision.... When our Syrian guests have left ... I ... I am going on a journey...."
"Where to, highness?"
"To ... to different European courts...."
She asked nothing more; her smile died away; then she smiled again, like an automaton. She asked nothing more, because she well knew what it meant when a crown-prince went on a journey to different European courts. That meant a bridal progress. And she merely said, in a voice that could not but sound plaintively:
"So soon?..."
So soon!... Was her imperial romance to last so short a time? She had indeed known that this might be the end of it, for she knew him to be too pure to retain her by the side of a young consort. Also she had pictured an end like this after a year, two years perhaps, she withdrawing herself, and she had pictured to herself that she would do so without any feeling of spite against her young future empress. But now! So soon! Barely a few weeks! So short a time as that no romance of her life had ever lasted! She felt an aching melancholy; a mist hazed over her eyes; and the lights of the ballroom shimmered before her as if through water. She constantly forgot to smile, but, so soon as she remembered, she smiled again:
"So soon?..."
"It must be...."
Yes, it must be, it could not be otherwise. For her, this was the end of her life. She felt no despair because of this ending; only a smarting sorrow. It was the end. After this imperial romance there would be no other. Oh no, never more! She would sacrifice her youth to it; she would launch her stepdaughters into society. She would be grateful that she had lived and would now grow old. But old: she was still so young, she still felt herself so young! She now first perceived how she loved her crown-prince. And she would have liked to be elsewhere, far from the brilliant ball, to embrace him once more alone, for the last time.... Oh, this sorrow because everything must end, as though nothing were more than a fleeting perfume!...
"I am trusting you, duchess," he now said. "I hope you will say nothing about this journey. You understand, it is all still a secret; no choice has been made yet ... it has been discussed with no one except their majesties and Myxila. I can trust you, can't I?"
She smilingly nodded yes.
"But I wanted to tell you at once," he continued.
She smiled again. At this moment a strange storm seemed to burst ... behind the palace, under the palace, where? Right through the blare of the music and the blaze of the light, a crash of thunder shook and rolled. It was as though the palace had been struck by lightning, for immediately afterwards, through the open windows, there came from one of the back-wings of the palace a rattling clatter of stones, which seemed tossed into the air, of great rafters, which fell noisily and roughly, of shivers of glass, which seemed to be splintering shrilly on every side....
The music was suddenly silenced. The uniforms, the court-trains rushed to the open balconies, which overlooked the park; but the night was dark, the park was hushed. A last couple of rafters seemed to be still falling, with a last crash of stones....
In the bright glare of the electric light, faces turned deathly pale, like the faces of corpses. Eyes stared at one another in terror. The duchess half-sank against Othomar when she saw Elizabeth tear past her with wild, vacant eyes and out at a door, her long, white velvet train trailing madly after her, round the corner. The mistress of the robes followed her; so did Hélène of Thesbia. The emperor appeared to give the chamberlains some hurried orders; then he also left the ballroom, accompanied by a few officers.
Shortly afterwards the music again burst forth from the balcony in the gallery. Many equerries and aides-de-camp were seen bowing to their partners, the ladies trembling as they rose. The ball proceeded; the uniforms and trains glittered as before in the windings of the waltz. But the smiles seemed to have been obliterated from the dancers' features and their pallid faces turned the ball into a dance of death.
Leoni, shivering, bowed before Othomar:
"A dynamite explosion, low down in the cellars of the western back-wing. The anterooms of his majesty's private apartments are destroyed. His majesty requests your highness to make every effort to continue the ball. All officers and court-ladies are commanded to dance."
The duchess clutched Othomar's arm, almost fainting. The rumour spread around them. The equerries dragged their partners along half-swooning. Two were seen carried away in a dead faint. The Queen of Syria stood vacantly beside the Archduke of Carinthia, who put his arm round her heavy waist to dance. She did not yet seem able to make up her mind.
Othomar passed his arm round the duchess:
"O God, I can't do it!" she stammered. "For God's sake, highness, don't ask me!..."
"We must," he said. "His majesty wishes it...."
"His majesty wishes...." she repeated.
Her legs trembled beneath her as though with electric thrills. Then she let him take her and they danced.
Every one danced.
The empress had rushed up the stairs and along the galleries to the bedroom-floor. She did not see that two ladies were following her; she thrust back a door:
"Berengar!" she screamed.
The young prince's bedroom was lighted. The boy had half-risen, in his little shirt, from his camp-bed. His valet and a chambermaid stood in dismay in the middle of the room.
"Berengar!" the empress gasped out, rejoicing when she saw him unharmed.
She threw her arms around him, pressed him to her bosom.
"Oh, mamma, you're hurting me!" cried the boy, indignantly.
Her jewels had brought a drop of blood from his little bare chest. She now embraced him more gently, with nervous sobs that choked in her throat. A spray of diamond ostrich-feathers fell to the ground; the maid picked them up with awkward fingers.
"Mamma, are they blowing up the palace?"
"No, Berengar, no, it's nothing...."
"Mamma, I want to go and look! I must see what's happening!"
"Berengar...."
The door had been left open; the emperor entered, calmly. The ladies stood in the corridor, waiting for the empress....
"Papa, may I go with you and look?"
"No, Berengar, there's nothing to see. Go to sleep...."
Then he offered his arm to Elizabeth:
"Madam," he said, tranquilly.
She threw him an imploring glance. He continued to hold out his arm to her. Then she kissed the boy once more, soothed him to sleep:
"Wait a moment," she stammered to Oscar.
She went to the glass; the maid, with her clumsy fingers, fastened the jewelled spray to the edge of the low-cut bodice, spread out the square train.
"I'm ready," the empress said to Oscar, in a lifeless voice.
She took his arm; the emperor just pressed her hand; and they nodded once more to Berengar and went.
Arm-in-arm the imperial pair appeared for the second time at the ball. The empress was pale but smiling. She was magnificent, delicate with dainty majesty in the trailing white velvet, upon which, on the bodice and over the front of the skirt, flickered sprays of diamond ostrich-feathers, formed into fleurs-de-lys. An empress' crown of brilliants crowned her small, round head.
It was two o'clock. Generally the sovereigns were accustomed to stay till one o'clock at the court balls. The Queen of Syria, however, in her exuberant love of life, had begged them to stay longer. They had consented. Had they left at one o'clock, the explosion would have taken place at the moment when Oscar would probably just have entered his apartments. They had first talked of the anterooms only: but it would now appear that great damage had also been done to the emperor's own room.
Supper began. They supped in a large hall; from every table rose a palm-tree and the hall was thus turned into a forest of palms. The floor was strewn with gold sand, which powdered the trains as their wearers walked upon it. Electric light shone through the long leaves like moonlight. In this moonlight the faces remained deadly white, like patches of chalk, above the glittering crystal and all the gold plate. The music clattered with great cymbal-strokes of brass.
"To HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF GOTHLAND.
"IMPERIAL,"LIPARA,"—May, 18—.
"MY DEAREST SISTER,
"At last I can find time to write to you. The excitement of the visit of our good Syrians is over and Lipara has calmed down. But my reflections are nothing but sadness. And this is why, Olga.
"I fear that Othomar is much more ill than the doctors perceive. He has become thinner and looks very bad. He never complains much, but yet he told me lately that he often felt tired. The doctors think that he needs a rest and recommend a long sea-voyage. His journey through Europe, about which I wrote to you in my last, will have to be postponed. And now I want to ask you a favour.
"I know that Herman is soon going to take a long voyage on theVikingto India, Japan and America; and it would be my fondest wish at this moment that Othomar might accompany him. When the doctors advised a sea-voyage, I discussed the matter to Oscar, but we came to no decision. My boy, you must know, Olga, has no friend of his own age; and this made me so sad and we did not know how nor with whom to send him on this voyage in a way which would be pleasant for him and which would not involve a solitary banishment from our home-circle. He is on excellent terms with his equerries, but yet that is not what I should desire: a cordial, mutual, confidential friendship with some one of his own age with whom he could spend a certain time, solely with a view to enjoyment and relaxation.
"I know quite well that it is to some extent my boy's fault and due to his innate diffidence and reticence. Nevertheless he has qualities for which he could easily be loved, if they were known, if he allowed them to appear. Don't you agree, Olga? You are fond of him too: it is not only my own blind mother's love that finds my son lovable and sympathetic? And that is why I should be so very glad if Herman would take him with him and learn to know him better: who knows whether they would not then come to love each other! Othomar has already told me that, on their journey through the north of Liparia, they were drawn much closer together than they had thought they would be; but it was a busy time: every moment was filled with duties and business and they had no time to talk together and get to know each other. And yet, at such a difficult period of united labour, two young men can learn to know each other even without talking. At any rate, they have already become more friendly. At one time, Olga, they used to dislike each other, to my bitter sorrow; they would even not meet; even outwardly there was nothing but coolness between them: oh, how unhappy all this used to make me, when I saw our boys so hostile to each other and remembered howweused to be, Olga, when we were girls together in our beautiful old castle near Bucharest! How we lived bound up in each other! Olga, Olga, how terribly long ago that all is! Our parents are dead, our brothers dispersed, the castle is deserted and we are separated: when do we see each other? Scarcely now and then, for a couple of days at a time, when we meet somewhere for a wedding of relations; and then these are always restless days, when we can see next to nothing of each other. Then, sometimes, not even every year, a fortnight either in Gothland or here. You sometimes reproach me that I, who am so fond of Gothland, come to you so seldom, but it is always for the same reason: Othomar does not care to leave Liparia and I can't leave my husband. I can be strong when I am at his side, but alone I am so weak, Olga. That anything might happen tohimwhich I should not share increases my dread unbearably. I felt that again quite lately, when I was with Thera at Altara: our visit was announced and binding; and, however unwilling I was to leave Oscar, I was obliged to go, was I not? It was just at that trying period; Lipara was under martial law. But Oscar wished me to go and I went. Oh, how I suffered at that time!
"But I am becoming used to my fears, I do not complain and I accept life as it comes; I only hope that my boy will also learn to accept it thus. Perhaps he will learn. Indeed it is not so easy for him, for he will have to do more than his mother, who, as a woman, can be much more passive; and it is easier to learn to acquiesce passively than actively. But the Saints will surely give him strength later to bear his lot and his crown; this I rely upon. And yet, O Olga, it makes me so immensely sad that we are sovereigns! But let me not continue in this strain: it weakens one, it is not right, it is not right....
"There is also a secret reason why I should like to get Othomar away from Lipara, though it always grieves me so much to part from my darling. There seems after all to be some truth in those rumours about the Duchess of Yemena: Oscar asked Myxila about it and he could not deny it and even said that it was generally known. I do my best not to take it too much to heart, Olga, but I think it a terrible thing. O God, let me not think or write about it any more; otherwise it will go whirling so in my poor head! What can my son see in a woman who is older than his own mother! What a terrible world, this is, Olga, in which these things take place; and how can there be such women, whom you and I will never understand! For, after all, temperament is not everything: every woman has her own heart; and in that we ought all to see one another; but it would seem that we can't. In my sadness about this, I prefer to assume that the woman loves my boy and therefore deceives her husband. Oh, it is so wicked also of my boy: why need he be like this, he who is otherwise so good! I just assume that she loves him. Not long ago we had my last drawing-room, the function with which, as you know, our winter-season ends; and, when she came up to me and bowed before me and pressed her lips to my hand, she must have felt my disapproval and my sadness radiating from my fingers, for she rose out of her curtsey with a desperate look of anguish in her eyes and a sort of sob in her throat! I stared at her coldly, but all the same I pitied her, Olga, for, when a woman of our world is so little able to control herself at a ceremonial moment, in the presence of her empress, her soul must have sustained a severe shock: do you not think so too?
"We are now quiet. In a week we are going to our summer-quarters in Xara, at Castel Xaveria; the weather is already very hot here. I should so much like to have your answer before we leave and to know how Herman takes my request. I know that he is very fond of me and will doubtless gladly grant it and that he will try to like Othomar for my sake; and let me hasten to add that it is alsoOthomar'sdearest wish that he should travel with Herman. The sea-voyage did not attract him in the least at first, because he knew of no one to take with him and he said he preferred to go with us to Castel Xaveria; but, when I mentioned Herman, he joined in my plan entirely.
"Olga, what will the summer bring us, peace or not? I dare not hope. The winter has been horrible; our northern provinces have not yet recovered from the disasters. The misery there is irretrievable. There is an epidemic of typhoid and there have been many cases of cholera. The strikes in the east are now over, but I am so afraid of that rough, violent repression. Oh, if everything could only be done with gentleness! That attempt on Othomar's life and the explosion at the last ball have also made me so ill. How I should love to see you and take you in my arms: can you not come to Castel Xaveria and spend the summer with us? It would give me such intense, such intense pleasure!
"Kiss Siegfried and the children for me. And answer me soon, will you not? I embrace you fervently.
"Your affectionate sister,
"ELIZABETH."
August, on the Baltic. The grey billows curl against the rocks with high, rounded crests of thick foam. The sky above is one wide cupola, through which drift great mountain-ranges of grey-white clouds. They come up slowly, filling the firmament with their changing, shadowy masses, like chains of rocks and Alps floating on the air, and slowly drift away again. The sea has a narrow beach, with many crumbling cliffs; quite close at hand loom sombre green pine-woods. With the gloom of the pine-woods for a background, as it were half out of the cliffs rises old Altseeborgen. It is a weather-beaten castle, at which the writhing waves seem to gnaw; its three tall, uneven towers soar round and massive into the sky. The broad road to the castle slants up from the woods terrace-wise and leads to the esplanade at the back, where the main entrance is. Round the castle the wide granite terraces are cut into stairs, with their rugged balustrades, whose freestone is worn away by the salt air. These terraces enjoy a more extensive view of the sea as they rise higher, higher; and, seen from the topmost terrace, the sea lies against the beach, to right and left, in one great, strangely mobile expanse, a living element. Across the sea the south-winds blow upon the castle; the pine-woods shelter it to some extent from the northernly gales.
From the tallest tower an imposing standard flaps gaily in the air: two yellow stripes and a white stripe between, with the dark patch of the crenellated fortress which forms the arms of Gothland. It floats there on the sunless morning like a smile in the sky; it swells and falls limp again and then again lets itself be blown high up by the wind, which comes swinging lustily over the water.
A young man and a girl are walking on the beach; they talk, smile, look at each other. She is taller than he, with a very fair complexion; under her little sailor-hat a few of her auburn tresses, tangled by the wind, blow across her face; she keeps on smoothing them away. She wears a simple blue serge skirt and a white blouse, with a broad leather belt around her waist. Her dainty little feet, in their black-silk stockings and yellow-leather shoes, are constantly uncovered by the wind. She carelessly swings a pair of gloves in her hand.
The young man wears a light check summer suit and a straw hat. He is short and slender; his black eyes have a look of gentle melancholy. He appears to be telling the girl by his side a tale of travel; she listens, with her smile.
Round about them, in spite of the wind, the atmosphere is full of peace. Walking along the beach, they go by the castle, pass round behind it and look up. From one of the windows somebody gaily waves a hand and calls out something. They try to hear, with their hands to their ears, but they shrug their shoulders: the wind has blown the words away. They wave their hands again and walk on.
They do not go far, however, always along the beach. Yonder lies the fishing-village, lie a couple of small villas, almost cottages. One of them seems just to have been taken by a large family, for the holiday-month no doubt; a hum of voices issues from it, children chase one another along the beach; a tiny girl, in running, bumps against the young man.
"Hullo there!" he says, pleasantly, with a laugh.
Laughing they walk on.
The children run along. A fisherman comes with his nets, grins cheerily and mutters a greeting. A fat lady in the verandah has been watching the young people inquisitively; she sees the fisherman touch his cap and beckons to him:
"Who are that lady and gentleman?"
The fisherman points cheerily to Altseeborgen:
"From the castle."
"But who are they?" asks the lady, alarmed.
"Well, the gentleman is the Prince of Liparia and the young lady is an Austrian princess," says the fisherman, as if it could not well be anybody else.
The lady looks in dismay after the princely pair and then in despair at her running children. The young couple are just turning back in their walk; they are now laughing even more gaily than before and are hastening a little towards the castle, as though they had delayed too long. The lady, still pale, does not dare to offer excuses, but makes a low bow; she receives a pleasant greeting in return.
The royal family of Gothland were in the habit of spending the whole summer at Altseeborgen. The beach was particularly well-suited for laying out a watering-place around the fishing-village, but King Siegfried would never hear of this: the beach and the village were royal domains; a few modest villas were all that he had granted permission to build. Generally these were visited in the summer by two or three middle-class families with their children. Altseeborgen should never become a modern bathing-place, however excellent the fashionable world might consider it as a means of summer display, lying as it did in the immediate neighbourhood of the royal castle.
But the Gothlandic family made a point of guarding the freedom of their summer lives. They lived there for four months, without palace-etiquette, in the greatest simplicity. They formed a numerous family; and there were always many visitors. The king attended to state-affairs in homely fashion at the castle. His grandchildren would run into his room while he was discussing important business with the prime minister, who came down to Altseeborgen on certain days. He just patted their flaxen curls and sent them away to play, with a caress. Staying at the castle were the Crown-prince Gunther and the Crown-princess Sofie, a German princess—Duke and Duchess of Wendeholm—with their four children, a girl and three boys. Next to the duke came Prince Herman; next to him Princess Wanda, twenty years of age; next to her, the younger princes, Olaf and Christofel. In addition there were always two old princesses, sisters of the king, widows of German princes. From all the courts of Europe, which were as one great family, different members came from time to time to stay, bringing with them their respectivenuancesof a different nationality, something exotic in voice and manner, so far as all this was not merged in their cosmopolitanism.
Othomar had been three months at sea with Herman; they had touched shore in India, China, Japan and America. They had travelled incognito, so as to escape all official receptions, and Othomar had borne no other title than that of Prince Czykirski. The voyage had done Othomar much good: he was even feeling so well that he had written to the Empress Elizabeth that he would like to stay some time longer in the family-circle at Altseeborgen, but that he would afterwards undertake his long-contemplated journey to the European courts.
Their easy life in each other's company had done much to bring the cousins closer together. Herman had learnt to see in Othomar, beneath his stiffness and lack of ease, a young crown-prince who was afraid of his future, but who possessed much reasonableness and was willing to learn to acquiesce in life and to fortify himself for his coming yoke of empire. He understood Othomar and felt sorry for him. He himself took a vital pleasure in life: merely to breathe was an enjoyment; his existence as a second son, with only his naval duties, which he loved by heredity, as a descendant of the old sea-kings might well love them, opened before him a prospect of nothing but continued, cloudless freedom from care; that he was a king's son gave him nothing but satisfaction and delight; and he appreciated his high estate with jovial pleasure, skimming the cream from a chalice out of which Othomar in due time would drink gall and wormwood. If at first he compared Othomar with his brother, the Duke of Wendeholm—a crown-prince too, of Gothland he—Herman now compared them no longer; his judgement had become more reasonable: he understood that no comparison was possible. Liparia was a tremendous, almost despotic empire; the people, especially in the south, always very fickle, always kept in check by force, on account of their childish uncertainty as to what, in their capriciousness, they would do next. The Gothlanders, on the other hand, calmly liberal in temperament, devoid of noisy vehemence, ranged themselves peacefully, with their long-established, ample constitution, round King Siegfried, whom they called the father of his country. That Gunther was not afraid of having to wear the crown one day, was this a reason why Othomar should be without his fear? Did Othomar not possess the gentler qualities, which are valued in the narrow circle of intimate surroundings and arouse esteem among a few sympathetic natures, rather than that fiercer brilliancy of character, which makes its possessor stand out in clear relief in high places and awakens admiration in the multitude? Was this boy, with his soul full of scruples, his nostalgia after justice, his yearning for love, his easily wounded sensitiveness, was he the son of his ancestors, the descendant of Berengar the Strong, Wenceslas the Cruel, son of the warlike Xaveria, or was he not rather the child of his gentle mother alone?
It was not in Herman's way to reflect much and long on all this, but it came to him suddenly, abruptly, like a new view that is opened out in a brighter light. And what had been antipathy in him became compassion, friendship and astonishment at the disposition of the universe, which knew not what else to do with a soul like Othomar's but to crush it beneath a crown.
The simple family-life at Altseeborgen worked on Othomar like a cure. He felt himself reviving amid natural surroundings, his humanity developing wide and untrammelled. Accustomed as he was to the ceremonial life of the Imperial, with its court-etiquette strictly maintained by the Emperor Oscar, he was at first surprised, but soon delighted by the almost homely simplicity of his Gothlandic relations. In former years, it is true, he had paid an occasional brief visit to Altseeborgen, but had never stayed long enough to be able to count himself, as now, quite one of themselves.
Othomar was at this moment the only visitor from abroad, except the Archduchess Valérie, a niece of the Emperor of Austria. Did the young people suspect anything, or not? Were their names coupled together by the younger princes and princesses? Not so, to all outward seeming: only once or twice had Princess Sofie or Princess Wanda found it necessary to hush her young brothers with a glance. And yet it was with a serious intention that the Queen of Gothland, in concert with the Emperor of Liparia and Valérie's parents—the Archduke Albrecht and the Archduchess of Eudoxie, who lived at Sigismundingen Castle—had brought the young people together. The Emperor Oscar would certainly have preferred one of the young Russian grand-duchesses, a niece of the Czar, for his daughter-in-law; but the difference in religion remained an insurmountable obstacle; and the emperor, despite his preference, had no objection to the Austrian alliance.
Perhaps Othomar and Valérie divined this intention, but the secret caused no constraint between them; they were both so accustomed to hearing the names of well-known princes or princesses connected with theirs and even to seeing them mentioned in the papers: announcements of betrothals which were immediately contradicted; they had even jested together about the number of times that public opinion had married them to this one or to that, each time to somebody else; sometimes even the news came as a surprise to themselves, which they found in the newspapers and laughed at. They paid no heed therefore to the rare mischievous remarks of Prince Olaf or Prince Christofel, sturdy lads of seventeen and fifteen, who thought it great fun to tease. And all this time Queen Olga, so sensible and reasonable, brought not the least influence to bear upon them. She had invited them together, but she did nothing more. Perhaps she observed silently how they behaved towards each other and wrote just one letter on the subject to her sister, but she kept quite outside the meshes which were weaving between their two crowned lives. Yet it was difficult for her to stand aloof. She was fond of Valérie and thought that this marriage would be in every way good. But added to that came urgent letters from Sigismundingen and even from Vienna, where they wished for nothing more eagerly than to see the young archduchess Duchess of Xara. For this, apart from the natural inclination of the Austrian court to set store by a renewed alliance with Liparia, there were other reasons of a more intimate character.
The sun had appeared through the clouds in the afternoon and made the grey of the sky and the water turn blue with the hazy blueness of a northern summer. The sea glowed and put on scales of gold; the weather-beaten castle stood blistering its broad granite pile in the sun, as an old man does his back. The striped canvas awning was lowered on the top terrace, which led into the great hall through three glass doors. Rugs lay scattered over the ground. Princess Sofie and the Archduchess Valérie sat in great wickerwork chairs, painting in water-colours. From the hall sounded, monotonously, the soft exercises of Princess Elizabeth, the crown-princess' eldest daughter, who was practising. Princess Wanda sat on the ground, romping a trifle boisterously with her youngest two nephews, Erik and Karl. On a long wicker chair lay Prince Herman, with both legs up; next to him was a little table heaped with newspapers and periodicals, some of which had fallen to the ground; a great tumbler of sherry-cobbler stood on the wicker ledge of his chair; the blue smoke rose from a cigarette between his fingers.
Sofie and Valérie compared their sketches and laughed. They looked at the sky, which was bisected by the awning: the clouds, woolly white, surged one above the other; the sea was dazzling with its golden scales, like a giant cuirass.
"What are you two painting there?" asked Herman, who was turning the pages of an illustrated paper.
"Clouds," replied Valérie, "nothing but clouds. I have persuaded Sofie to make studies of clouds with me. Presently, if you're not too lazy, you must come and look at my album." She gave a little laugh. "It contains nothing but clouds!"
"By Jove!" drawled Herman. "How very odd!..."
"Yes," said Sofie, dreamily, "clouds are very nice, but you never know how to catch them: they change every instant."
"Erik," said Herman, "just ask Aunt Valérie to lend me her album."
"No, no," cried Wanda, "go and fetch it yourself, lazybones!..."
But Erik wanted to go; and there came a great struggle. Wanda hugged the little fellow tight in her arms; Karl joined in: there was a general romp and Wanda, laughing, fell sideways to the ground.
"But, Wanda!" said Sofie, reprovingly.
Valérie stood up and went to Herman:
"With all this, you're not seeing my clouds, you lazy boy. I suppose I must take pity on you. Look...."
Herman now suddenly drew himself up and took the album:
"How funny!" he said. "Yellow and white and violet and pink. All sunsets!"
"And sunrises. I dare say I see more of them than you do!"
"The things you see in clouds, Valérie! It's astonishing. How one person differs from another! I should never take it into my head to go and sketch clouds. You ought to come for a cruise with me one day; then you could make whole collections of clouds."
"Why didn't you propose that earlier?" said Valérie, jestingly. "Then I might have joined you and Xara."
"But where is Othomar?" said Herman.
Valérie said that she did not know....
Herman sipped his sherry-cobbler. Wanda wanted a taste, but Herman refused and told her to ring for a glass for herself. Wanda insisted; he seized her by the wrists.
"But Wanda!" Sofie repeated, reprovingly, languidly, drawing her hand over her forehead and laying down her brush.
Wanda laughed gaily:
"But Wanda!" she mimicked.
And they all laughed at Sofie, including Sofie herself:
"Did I speak like that?" she asked, with her languid voice. "I don't know: I get so sleepy here, so lazy...."
They were all making fun of Sofie, when voices sounded from the hall, shrill, old voices. It was the two dowagers, with Othomar; the old ladies were talking in a courtly, mincing way to the young prince, who brought them chairs. The aunts had had a siesta after lunch; they now made their reappearance, with tapestrywork in large reticules. All greeted them with great respect, beneath which lurked a spark of mischief.
"Pardon, lieber Herzog," murmured old Princess Elsa, the older of the two, "I would rather have that little chair...."
Princess Marianne also wanted a small, straight chair; the old ladies thanked Othomar with an obeisance for his gallantry, sat down stiffly and began their embroidery: great coats-of-arms for chair-backs. They were very stately, with clear-cut but wrinkled faces, greytoursand black lace caps; they wore crackling watered-silk gowns, of old-fashioned cut. Now and then they exchanged a quick, sharp word, with a sudden crackling movement of their sharp cockatoo-profiles; they gazed thoughtfully for a moment out to sea, as though they were bound to see something important arriving out of the distance; then they resumed their work. Their old-fashioned, stately, tight-laced, shrivelled figures formed a strange contrast with the easiness of the young people in their simple serge summer suits: they made Princess Wanda's tangled hair and rumpled blouse look perfectly disreputable.
A third old lady came sailing up; she seemed as though she were related to the two dowagers, but was actually Countess von Altenburg, who used to be mistress of the household to Princess Elsa. Behind her were two footmen, carrying trays with coffee and pastry, the old princesses'goûter. The countess made a stately curtsey before the young princes.
"The territory is occupied," whispered Herman to Valérie.
They had all sat down again and among themselves were teasing Othomar with his three Fates, as they called them, unheard by the aunts or the countess, who was rather deaf. A noisy babel of tongues ensued: the aunts spoke German and screamed, to make themselves heard, something about the calmness of the sea into the poor old ears of the countess, who poured out the coffee and nodded that she understood. The younger princes talked English for the most part; Herman sometimes spoke a word or two of Liparian to Othomar; and the children, who had gone to play on a lower terrace, chattered noisily in Gothlandic and French indifferently.
The footmen had brought out afternoon tea and placed it before Princess Sofie, when a lady-in-waiting appeared. She bowed to the young crown-princess and said, in Gothlandic:
"Her majesty requests your royal highness to come to her in the small drawing-room."
"Mamma has sent for me," said Princess Sofie, in English, rising from her chair. "Wanda, will you pour out the tea? Children, will you go upstairs and get dressed? Wanda, tell them again, will you?"
The crown-princess went through the hall, a great, round, dome-shaped apartment, full of stags' antlers, elks' heads, hunting-trophies, and then up a staircase. In the queen's anteroom the footman opened the door for her. Queen Olga was sitting alone; she was some years older than her sister, the Empress of Liparia, taller and more heavily built; her features, however, had much in common with Elizabeth's, but were more filled out.
"Sofie," she at once began, in German, "I have had a letter from Sigismundingen...."
The Duchess of Wendeholm had sat down:
"Anything to do with Valérie?" she asked, in alarm.
"Yes," the queen said, with a reflective glance. "Poor child!..."
"But what is it, Mamma?"
"There, read for yourself...."
The queen handed the letter to her daughter-in-law, who read it hurriedly. The letter was from the Archduchess Eudoxie, Valérie's mother, written with a feverish, excited hand, and said, in phrases which tried to seem indifferent but which betrayed a great satisfaction, that Prince Leopold of Lohe-Obkowitz was at Nice with Estelle Desvaux, the well-known actress, that he was proposing to resign his titular rights in favour of his younger brother and that he would then marry his mistress. The letter requested the queen or the crown-princess to tell this to Valérie, in the hope that it would not prove too great a shock to her. Further, the letter ended with violent attacks upon Prince Leopold, who had caused such a scandal, but at the same time with manifest expressions of delight that now perhaps Valérie would no longer dream of becoming the lady of a domain measuring six yards square! The archduke added a postscript to say that this was not a vague report but a certainty and that Prince Leopold himself had told it to their own relations at Nice, who had written to Sigismundingen.
"Has Valérie ever spoken to you about Prince Lohe?" asked the queen.
"Only once in a way, mamma," replied the Duchess of Wendeholm, handing back the letter. "But we all know well enough that this news will be a great blow to her. Is she not in the least prepared for it?"
"Probably not: you see, we had none of us heard or read anything about it! Shall I tell her? Poor child!..."
"Shall I do so, mamma? As I told you, Valériehasspoken to me...."
"Very well, you do it...."
The duchess reflected, looked at the clock:
"It is so late now: I'll tell her after dinner; we are none of us dressed yet.... What do you think?"
"Very well then, after dinner...."
The crown-princess went out: it was time to hurry and dress. At seven o'clock a loud, long bell sounded. They assembled in the hall; the dining-room looked out with its large bow-windows upon the pine-forest. It was a long table: King Siegfried, a hale old sovereign with a full, grey beard; Queen Olga; the Crown-prince Gunther, tall, fair, two-and-thirty; Princess Sofie and her children; Othomar, sitting between his aunt and Valérie; Herman and Wanda; Olaf and Christofel; the two dowagers with Countess von Altenburg; equerries, ladies-in-waiting, chamberlains, Princess Elizabeth's governess, the little princes' tutors....
The conversation was cheerful and unconstrained. The ladies wore simple evening-frocks; the king was in dress-clothes, the younger princes and equerries in dinner-jackets. The young princesses wore light summer dresses of white serge or pinkmousseline-de-laine; they had stuck a flower or two from the conservatory into their waist-bands.
Valérie talked merrily; Herman once more teased her about her cloud-sketches, but Othomar said that he admired them very much. Queen Olga and Princess Sofie exchanged a glance and were quieter than the others. The king also looked very thoughtfully at the young people. After dinner the family dispersed; the crown-prince and Herman went for a row on the sea, with the younger princes and the children, in two boats. Wanda and Valérie, their arms wound around each other's waists, strolled up and down along the front-terrace; the awning was already drawn up for the night. The sea was still blue, the sky pearl-grey and no longer so bright; above the horizon the sun still burnt ragged rents in the widely scattered clouds.