“Indeed,” cried Otto, “I never said a word of such a thing.”
“Not you!” cried Fritz. “Never a word to compromise! You was sowing seed: ground-bait, our president calls it. But it’s hard to deceive me, for I know all the agitators and their ways, and all the doctrines; and between you and me,” lowering his voice, “I am myself affiliated. Oh yes, I am a secret society man, and here is my medal.” And drawing out a green ribbon that he wore about his neck, he held up, for Otto’s inspection, a pewter medal bearing the imprint of a Phoenix and the legend Libertas. “And so now you see you may trust me,” added Fritz, “I am none of your alehouse talkers; I am a convinced revolutionary.” And he looked meltingly upon Otto.
“I see,” replied the Prince; “that is very gratifying. Well, sir, the great thing for the good of one’s country is, first of all, to be a good man. All springs from there. For my part, although you are right in thinking that I have to do with politics, I am unfit by intellect and temper for a leading role. I was intended, I fear, for a subaltern. Yet we have all something to command, Mr. Fritz, if it be only our own temper; and a man about to marry must look closely to himself. The husband’s, like the prince’s, is a very artificial standing; and it is hard to be kind in either. Do you follow that?”
“Oh yes, I follow that,” replied the young man, sadly chopfallen over the nature of the information he had elicited; and then brightening up: “Is it,” he ventured, “is it for an arsenal that you have bought the farm?”
“We’ll see about that,” the Prince answered, laughing. “You must not be too zealous. And in the meantime, if I were you, I would say nothing on the subject.”
“Oh, trust me, sir, for that,” cried Fritz, as he pocketed a crown. “And you’ve let nothing out; for I suspected—I might say I knew it—from the first. And mind you, when a guide is required,” he added, “I know all the forest paths.”
Otto rode away, chuckling. This talk with Fritz had vastly entertained him; nor was he altogether discontented with his bearing at the farm; men, he was able to tell himself, had behaved worse under smaller provocation. And, to harmonise all, the road and the April air were both delightful to his soul.
Up and down, and to and fro, ever mounting through the wooded foothills, the broad white high road wound onward into Grünewald. On either hand the pines stood coolly rooted—green moss prospering, springs welling forth between their knuckled spurs; and though some were broad and stalwart, and others spiry and slender, yet all stood firm in the same attitude and with the same expression, like a silent army presenting arms.
The road lay all the way apart from towns and villages, which it left on either hand. Here and there, indeed, in the bottom of green glens, the Prince could spy a few congregated roofs, or perhaps above him, on a shoulder, the solitary cabin of a woodman. But the highway was an international undertaking and with its face set for distant cities, scorned the little life of Grünewald. Hence it was exceeding solitary. Near the frontier Otto met a detachment of his own troops marching in the hot dust; and he was recognised and somewhat feebly cheered as he rode by. But from that time forth and for a long while he was alone with the great woods.
Gradually the spell of pleasure relaxed; his own thoughts returned, like stinging insects, in a cloud; and the talk of the night before, like a shower of buffets, fell upon his memory. He looked east and west for any comforter; and presently he was aware of a crossroad coming steeply downhill, and a horseman cautiously descending. A human voice or presence, like a spring in the desert, was now welcome in itself, and Otto drew bridle to await the coming of this stranger. He proved to be a very red-faced, thick-lipped countryman, with a pair of fat saddlebags and a stone bottle at his waist; who, as soon as the Prince hailed him, jovially, if somewhat thickly, answered. At the same time he gave a beery yaw in the saddle. It was clear his bottle was no longer full.
“Do you ride towards Mittwalden?” asked the Prince.
“As far as the crossroad to Tannenbrunn,” the man replied. “Will you bear company?”
“With pleasure. I have even waited for you on the chance,” answered Otto.
By this time they were close alongside; and the man, with the countryfolk instinct, turned his cloudy vision first of all on his companion’s mount. “The devil!” he cried. “You ride a bonny mare, friend!” And then, his curiosity being satisfied about the essential, he turned his attention to that merely secondary matter, his companion’s face. He started. “The Prince!” he cried, saluting, with another yaw that came near dismounting him. “I beg your pardon, your Highness, not to have reco’nised you at once.”
The Prince was vexed out of his self-possession. “Since you know me,” he said, “it is unnecessary we should ride together. I will precede you, if you please.” And he was about to set spur to the grey mare, when the half-drunken fellow, reaching over, laid his hand upon the rein.
“Hark you,” he said, “prince or no prince, that is not how one man should conduct himself with another. What!
