“I know it,” she replied, but it was still unheartily.
And then, as brave men are entitled, by prescriptive right as old as the world’s history, to the alliance and the active help of Fortune, the punctual goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess’s ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus:
“At the first council, procuration to be withdrawn.
So, after three years of exercise, the right of signature was to be stripped from Seraphina. It was more than an insult; it was a public disgrace; and she did not pause to consider how she had earned it, but morally bounded under the attack as bounds the wounded tiger.
“Enough,” she said; “I will sign the order. When shall he leave?”
“It will take me twelve hours to collect my men, and it had best be done at night. Tomorrow midnight, if you please?” answered the Baron.
“Excellent,” she said. “My door is always open to you, Baron. As soon as the order is prepared, bring it me to sign.”
“Madam,” he said, “alone of all of us you do not risk your head in this adventure. For that reason, and to prevent all hesitation, I venture to propose the order should be in your hand throughout.”
“You are right,” she replied.
He laid a form before her, and she wrote the order in a clear hand, and reread it. Suddenly a cruel smile came on her face. “I had forgotten his puppet,” said she. “They will keep each other company.” And she interlined and initiated the condemnation of Doctor Gotthold.
“Your Highness has more memory than your servant,” said the Baron; and then he, in his turn, carefully perused the fateful paper. “Good!” said he.
“You will appear in the drawing-room, Baron?” she asked.
“I thought it better,” said he, “to avoid the possibility of a public affront. Anything that shook my credit might hamper us in the immediate future.”
“You are right,” she said; and she held out her hand as to an old friend and equal.
IX
The Price of the River Farm; in Which Vainglory Goes Before a Fall
The pistol had been practically fired. Under ordinary circumstances the scene at the council table would have entirely exhausted Otto’s store both of energy and anger; he would have begun to examine and condemn his conduct, have remembered all that was true, forgotten all that was unjust in Seraphina’s onslaught; and by half an hour after would have fallen into that state of mind in which a Catholic flees to the confessional and a sot takes refuge with the bottle. Two matters of detail preserved his spirits. For, first, he had still an infinity of business to transact; and to transact business, for a man of Otto’s neglectful and procrastinating habits, is the best anodyne for conscience. All afternoon he was hard at it with the Chancellor, reading, dictating, signing, and despatching papers; and this kept him in a glow of self-approval. But, secondly, his vanity was still alarmed; he had failed to get the money; tomorrow before noon he would have to disappoint old Killian; and in the eyes of that family which counted him so little, and to which he had sought to play the part of the heroic comforter, he must sink lower than at first. To a man of Otto’s temper, this was death. He could not accept the situation. And even as he worked, and worked wisely and well, over the hated details of his principality, he was secretly maturing a plan by which to turn the situation. It was a scheme as pleasing to the man as it was dishonourable in the prince; in which his frivolous nature found and took vengeance for the gravity and burden of the afternoon. He chuckled as he thought of it: and Greisengesang heard him with wonder, and attributed his lively spirits to the skirmish of the morning.
Led by this idea, the antique courtier ventured to compliment his sovereign on his bearing. It reminded him, he said, of Otto’s father.
“What?” asked the Prince, whose thoughts were miles away.
“Your Highness’s authority at the board,” explained the flatterer.
“Oh, that! Oh yes,” returned Otto; but for all his carelessness, his vanity was delicately tickled, and his mind returned and dwelt approvingly over the details of his victory. “I quelled them all,” he thought.
When the more pressing matters had been dismissed, it was already late, and Otto kept the Chancellor to dinner, and was entertained with a leash of ancient histories and modern compliments. The Chancellor’s career had been based, from the first off-put, on entire subserviency; he had crawled into honours and employments; and his mind was prostitute. The instinct of the creature served him well with Otto. First, he let fall a sneering word or two upon the female intellect; thence he proceeded to a closer engagement; and before the third course he was artfully dissecting Seraphina’s character to her approving husband. Of course no names were used; and of course the identity of that abstract or ideal man, with whom she was currently contrasted, remained an open secret. But this stiff old gentleman had a wonderful instinct for evil, thus to wind his way into man’s citadel; thus to harp by the hour on the virtues of his hearer and not once alarm his self-respect. Otto was all roseate, in and out, with flattery and Tokay and an approving conscience. He saw himself in the most attractive colours. If even Greisengesang, he thought, could thus espy the loose stitches in Seraphina’s character, and thus disloyally impart them to the opposite camp, he, the discarded husband—the
