"Not of a Roman virtue," chuckled the recluse.
Otto drew his chair nearer to the table, leaned upon it with his elbow, and looked his cousin squarely in the face. "In short," he asked, "not manly?"
"Well," Gotthold hesitated, "not manly, if you will." And then, with a laugh, "I did not know that you gave yourself out to be manly," he added.
"It was one of the points that I inclined to like about you; inclined, I believe, to admire. The names of virtues exercise a charm on most of us; we must lay claim to all of them, however incompatible; we must all be both daring and prudent; we must all vaunt our pride and go to the stake for our humility. Not so you. Without compromise you were yourself: a pretty sight. I have always said it: none so void of all pretence as Otto."
"Pretence and effort both!" cried Otto. "A dead dog in a ca.n.a.l is more alive. And the question, Gotthold, the question that I have to face is this: Can I not, with effort and self-denial, can I not become a tolerable sovereign?"
"Never," replied Gotthold. "Dismiss the notion. And besides, dear child, you would not try."
"Nay, Gotthold, I am not to be put by," said Otto. "If I am const.i.tutionally unfit to be a sovereign, what am I doing with this money, with this palace, with these guards? And I-a thief-am to execute the law on others?"
"I admit the difficulty," said Gotthold.
"Well, can I not try?" continued Otto. "Am I not bound to try? And with the advice and help of such a man as you-"
"Me!" cried the librarian. "Now, G.o.d forbid!"
Otto, though he was in no very smiling humour, could not forbear to smile. "Yet I was told last night," he laughed, "that with a man like me to impersonate, and a man like you to touch the springs, a very possible government could be composed."
"Now I wonder in what diseased imagination," Gotthold said, "that preposterous monster saw the light of day?"
"It was one of your own trade-a writer: one Roederer," said Otto.
"Roederer! an ignorant puppy!" cried the librarian.
"You are ungrateful," said Otto. "He is one of your professed admirers."
"Is he?" cried Gotthold, obviously impressed. "Come, that is a good account of the young man. I must read his stuff again. It is the rather to his credit, as our views are opposite. The east and west are not more opposite. Can I have converted him? But no; the incident belongs to Fairyland."
"You are not then," asked the Prince, "an authoritarian?"
"I? G.o.d bless me, no!" said Gotthold. "I am a red, dear child."
"That brings me then to my next point, and by a natural transition. If I am so clearly unfitted for my post," the Prince asked; "if my friends admit it, if my subjects clamour for my downfall, if revolution is preparing at this hour, must I not go forth to meet the inevitable?
should I not save these horrors and be done with these absurdities? in a word, should I not abdicate? O, believe me, I feel the ridicule, the vast abuse of language," he added, wincing, "but even a principulus like me cannot resign; he must make a great gesture, and come buskined forth, and abdicate."
"Ay," said Gotthold, "or else stay where he is. What gnat has bitten you to-day? Do you not know that you are touching, with lay hands, the very holiest inwards of philosophy, where madness dwells? Ay, Otto, madness; for in the serene temples of the wise, the inmost shrine, which we carefully keep locked, is full of spiders" webs. All men, all, are fundamentally useless; nature tolerates, she does not need, she does not use them: sterile flowers! All-down to the fellow swinking in a byre, whom fools point out for the exception-all are useless; all weave ropes of sand; or like a child that has breathed on a window, write and obliterate, write and obliterate, idle words! Talk of it no more. That way, I tell you, madness lies." The speaker rose from his chair and then sat down again. He laughed a little laugh, and then, changing his tone, resumed: "Yes, dear child, we are not here to do battle with giants; we are here to be happy like the flowers, if we can be. It is because you could, that I have always secretly admired you. Cling to that trade; believe me, it is the right one. Be happy, be idle, be airy. To the devil with all casuistry! and leave the state to Gondremark, as heretofore. He does it well enough, they say; and his vanity enjoys the situation."
"Gotthold," cried Otto, "what is this to me? Useless is not the question; I cannot rest at uselessness; I must be useful or I must be noxious-one or other. I grant you the whole thing, prince and princ.i.p.ality alike, is pure absurdity, a stroke of satire; and that a banker or the man who keeps an inn has graver duties. But now, when I have washed my hands of it three years, and left all-labour, responsibility, and honour and enjoyment too, if there be any-to Gondremark and to-Seraphina-" He hesitated at the name, and Gotthold glanced aside. "Well," the Prince continued, "what has come of it?
Taxes, army, cannon-why, it"s like a box of lead soldiers! And the people sick at the folly of it, and fired with the injustice! And war, too-I hear of war-war in this teapot! What a complication of absurdity and disgrace! And when the inevitable end arrives-the revolution-who will be to blame in the sight of G.o.d, who will be gibbeted in public opinion? I! Prince Puppet!"
"I thought you had despised public opinion," said Gotthold.
"I did," said Otto sombrely, "but now I do not. I am growing old. And then, Gotthold, there is Seraphina. She is loathed in this country that I brought her to and suffered her to spoil. Yes, I gave it her as a plaything, and she has broken it: a fine Prince, an admirable Princess!
Even her life-I ask you, Gotthold, is her life safe?"
"It is safe enough to-day," replied the librarian: "but since you ask me seriously, I would not answer for to-morrow. She is ill-advised."
"And by whom? By this Gondremark, to whom you counsel me to leave my country," cried the Prince. "Rare advice! The course that I have been following all these years, to come at last to this. O, ill-advised! if that were all! See now, there is no sense in beating about the bush between two men: you know what scandal says of her?"
Gotthold, with pursed lips, silently nodded.
"Well, come, you are not very cheering as to my conduct as the Prince; have I even done my duty as a husband?" Otto asked.
"Nay, nay," said Gotthold, earnestly and eagerly, "this is another chapter. I am an old celibate, an old monk. I cannot advise you in your marriage."
"Nor do I require advice," said Otto, rising. "All of this must cease."
And he began to walk to and fro with his hands behind his back.
"Well, Otto, may G.o.d guide you!" said Gotthold, after a considerable silence. "I cannot."
"From what does all this spring?" said the Prince, stopping in his walk.
"What am I to call it? Diffidence? The fear of ridicule? Inverted vanity? What matter names, if it has brought me to this? I could never bear to be bustling about nothing; I was ashamed of this toy kingdom from the first; I could not tolerate that people should fancy I believed in a thing so patently absurd! I would do nothing that cannot be done smiling. I have a sense of humour, forsooth! I must know better than my Maker. And it was the same thing in my marriage," he added more hoa.r.s.ely. "I did not believe this girl could care for me; I must not intrude; I must preserve the foppery of my indifference. What an impotent picture!"
"Ay, we have the same blood," moralised Gotthold. "You are drawing, with fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic."
"Sceptic?-coward!" cried Otto. "Coward is the word. A springless, putty-hearted, cowering coward!"
And as the Prince rapped out the words in tones of unusual vigour, a little, stout, old gentleman, opening a door behind Gotthold, received them fairly in the face. With his parrot"s beak for a nose, his pursed mouth, his little goggling eyes, he was the picture of formality; and in ordinary circ.u.mstances, strutting behind the drum of his corporation, he impressed the beholder with a certain air of frozen dignity and wisdom.
But at the smallest contrariety, his trembling hands and disconnected gestures betrayed the weakness at the root. And now, when he was thus surprisingly received in that library of Mittwalden Palace, which was the customary haunt of silence, his hands went up into the air as if he had been shot, and he cried aloud with the scream of an old woman.
"O!" he gasped, recovering, "Your Highness! I beg ten thousand pardons.
But your Highness at such an hour in the library!-a circ.u.mstance so unusual as your Highness"s presence was a thing I could not be expected to foresee."
"There is no harm done, Herr Cancellarius," said Otto.
"I came upon the errand of a moment: some papers I left over-night with the Herr Doctor," said the Chancellor of Grunewald. "Herr Doctor, if you will kindly give me them, I will intrude no longer."
Gotthold unlocked a drawer and handed a bundle of ma.n.u.script to the old gentleman, who prepared, with fitting salutations, to take his departure.
"Herr Greisengesang, since we have met," said Otto, "let us talk."
"I am honoured by his Highness"s commands," replied the Chancellor.
"All has been quiet since I left?" asked the Prince, resuming his seat.
"The usual business, your Highness," answered Greisengesang; "punctual trifles: huge, indeed, if neglected, but trifles when discharged. Your Highness is most zealously obeyed."
"Obeyed, Herr Cancellarius?" returned the Prince. "And when have I obliged you with an order? Replaced, let us rather say. But to touch upon these trifles; instance me a few."
"The routine of government, from which your Highness has so wisely dissociated his leisure . . . " began Greisengesang.
"We will leave my leisure, sir," said Otto. "Approach the facts."
"The routine of business was proceeded with," replied the official, now visibly twittering.
"It is very strange, Herr Cancellarius, that you should so persistently avoid my questions," said the Prince. "You tempt me to suppose a purpose in your dulness. I have asked you whether all was quiet; do me the pleasure to reply."