Prince Otto
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Robert Louis Stevenson >> Prince Otto
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'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? God 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
principality 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 God, 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 God 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 hoarsely. '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 circumstances, 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
circumstance 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 manuscript 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.'
'Perfectly - O, perfectly quiet,' jerked the ancient puppet, with
every signal of untruth.
'I make a note of these words,' said the Prince gravely. 'You
assure me, your sovereign, that since the date of my departure
nothing has occurred of which you owe me an account.'
'I take your Highness, I take the Herr Doctor to witness,' cried
Greisengesang, 'that I have had no such expression.'
'Halt!' said the Prince; and then, after a pause: 'Herr
Greisengesang, you are an old man, and you served my father before
you served me,' he added. 'It consists neither with your dignity
nor mine that you should babble excuses and stumble possibly upon
untruths. Collect your thoughts; and then categorically inform me
of all you have been charged to hide.'
Gotthold, stooping very low over his desk, appeared to have resumed
his labours; but his shoulders heaved with subterranean merriment.
The Prince waited, drawing his handkerchief quietly through his
fingers.
'Your Highness, in this informal manner,' said the old gentleman at
last, 'and being unavoidably deprived of documents, it would be
difficult, it would be impossible, to do justice to the somewhat
grave occurrences which have transpired.'
'I will not criticise your attitude,' replied the Prince. 'I desire
that, between you and me, all should be done gently; for I have not
forgotten, my old friend, that you were kind to me from the first,
and for a period of years a faithful servant. I will thus dismiss
the matters on which you waive immediate inquiry. But you have
certain papers actually in your hand. Come, Herr Greisengesang,
there is at least one point for which you have authority. Enlighten
me on that.'
'On that?' cried the old gentleman. 'O, that is a trifle; a matter,
your Highness, of police; a detail of a purely administrative order.
These are simply a selection of the papers seized upon the English
traveller.'
'Seized?' echoed Otto. 'In what sense? Explain yourself.'
'Sir John Crabtree,' interposed Gotthold, looking up, 'was arrested
yesterday evening.'
'It this so, Herr Cancellarius?' demanded Otto sternly.
'It was judged right, your Highness,' protested Greisengesang. 'The
decree was in due form, invested with your Highness's authority by
procuration. I am but an agent; I had no status to prevent the
measure.'
'This man, my guest, has been arrested,' said the Prince. 'On what
grounds, sir? With what colour of pretence?'
The Chancellor stammered.
'Your Highness will perhaps find the reason in these documents,'
said Gotthold, pointing with the tail of his pen.
Otto thanked his cousin with a look. 'Give them to me,' he said,
addressing the Chancellor.
But that gentleman visibly hesitated to obey. 'Baron von
Gondremark,' he said, 'has made the affair his own. I am in this
case a mere messenger; and as such, I am not clothed with any
capacity to communicate the documents I carry. Herr Doctor, I am
convinced you will not fail to bear me out.'
'I have heard a great deal of nonsense,' said Gotthold, 'and most of
it from you; but this beats all.'
'Come, sir,' said Otto, rising, 'the papers. I command.'
Herr Greisengesang instantly gave way.
'With your Highness's permission,' he said, 'and laying at his feet
my most submiss apologies, I will now hasten to attend his further
orders in the Chancery.'
'Herr Cancellarius, do you see this chair?' said Otto. 'There is
where you shall attend my further orders. O, now, no more!' he
cried, with a gesture, as the old man opened his lips. 'You have
sufficiently marked your zeal to your employer; and I begin to weary
of a moderation you abuse.'
The Chancellor moved to the appointed chair and took his seat in
silence.
'And now,' said Otto, opening the roll, 'what is all this? it looks
like the manuscript of a book.'
'It is,' said Gotthold, 'the manuscript of a book of travels.'
'You have read it, Doctor Hohenstockwitz?' asked the Prince.
'Nay, I but saw the title-page,' replied Gotthold. 'But the roll
was given to me open, and I heard no word of any secrecy.'
Otto dealt the Chancellor an angry glance.
'I see,' he went on. 'The papers of an author seized at this date
of the world's history, in a state so petty and so ignorant as
Grunewald, here is indeed an ignominious folly. Sir,' to the
Chancellor, 'I marvel to find you in so scurvy an employment. On
your conduct to your Prince I will not dwell; but to descend to be a
spy! For what else can it be called? To seize the papers of this
gentleman, the private papers of a stranger, the toil of a life,
perhaps - to open, and to read them. And what have we to do with
books? The Herr Doctor might perhaps be asked for his advice; but
we have no INDEX EXPURGATORIUS in Grunewald. Had we but that, we
should be the most absolute parody and farce upon this tawdry
earth.'
Yet, even while Otto spoke, he had continued to unfold the roll; and
now, when it lay fully open, his eye rested on the title-page
elaborately written in red ink. It ran thus:
MEMOIRS
OF A VISIT TO THE VARIOUS
COURTS OF EUROPE,
BY
SIR JOHN CRABTREE, BARONET.
Below was a list of chapters, each bearing the name of one of the
European Courts; and among these the nineteenth and the last upon
the list was dedicated to Grunewald.
'Ah! The Court of Grunewald!' said Otto, 'that should be droll
reading.' And his curiosity itched for it.
'A methodical dog, this English Baronet,' said Gotthold. 'Each
chapter written and finished on the spot. I shall look for his work
when it appears.'
'It would be odd, now, just to glance at it,' said Otto, wavering.
Gotthold's brow darkened, and he looked out of window.
But though the Prince understood the reproof, his weakness
prevailed. 'I will,' he said, with an uneasy laugh, 'I will, I
think, just glance at it.'
So saying, he resumed his seat and spread the traveller's manuscript
upon the table.
CHAPTER II - 'ON THE COURT OF GRUNEWALD,' BEING A PORTION OF THE
TRAVELLER'S MANUSCRIPT
IT may well be asked (IT WAS THUS THE ENGLISH TRAVELLER BEGAN HIS
NINETEENTH CHAPTER) why I should have chosen Grunewald out of so
many other states equally petty, formal, dull, and corrupt.
Accident, indeed, decided, and not I; but I have seen no reason to
regret my visit. The spectacle of this small society macerating in
its own abuses was not perhaps instructive, but I have found it
exceedingly diverting.
The reigning Prince, Otto Johann Friedrich, a young man of imperfect
education, questionable valour, and no scintilla of capacity, has
fallen into entire public contempt. It was with difficulty that I
obtained an interview, for he is frequently absent from a court
where his presence is unheeded, and where his only role is to be a
cloak for the amours of his wife. At last, however, on the third
occasion when I visited the palace, I found this sovereign in the
exercise of his inglorious function, with the wife on one hand, and
the lover on the other. He is not ill-looking; he has hair of a
ruddy gold, which naturally curls, and his eyes are dark, a
combination which I always regard as the mark of some congenital
deficiency, physical or moral; his features are irregular, but
pleasing; the nose perhaps a little short, and the mouth a little
womanish; his address is excellent, and he can express himself with
point. But to pierce below these externals is to come on a vacuity
of any sterling quality, a deliquescence of the moral nature, a
frivolity and inconsequence of purpose that mark the nearly perfect
fruit of a decadent age. He has a worthless smattering of many
subjects, but a grasp of none. 'I soon weary of a pursuit,' he said
to me, laughing; it would almost appear as if he took a pride in his
incapacity and lack of moral courage. The results of his
dilettanteism are to be seen in every field; he is a bad fencer, a
second-rate horseman, dancer, shot; he sings - I have heard him -
and he sings like a child; he writes intolerable verses in more than
doubtful French; he acts like the common amateur; and in short there
is no end to the number of the things that he does, and does badly.
His one manly taste is for the chase. In sum, he is but a plexus of
weaknesses; the singing chambermaid of the stage, tricked out in
man's apparel, and mounted on a circus horse. I have seen this poor
phantom of a prince riding out alone or with a few huntsmen,
disregarded by all, and I have been even grieved for the bearer of
so futile and melancholy an existence. The last Merovingians may
have looked not otherwise.
The Princess Amalia Seraphina, a daughter of the Grand-Ducal house
of Toggenburg-Tannhauser, would be equally inconsiderable if she
were not a cutting instrument in the hands of an ambitious man. She
is much younger than the Prince, a girl of two-and-twenty, sick with
vanity, superficially clever, and fundamentally a fool. She has a
red-brown rolling eye, too large for her face, and with sparks of
both levity and ferocity; her forehead is high and narrow, her
figure thin and a little stooping. Her manners, her conversation,
which she interlards with French, her very tastes and ambitions, are
alike assumed; and the assumption is ungracefully apparent: Hoyden
playing Cleopatra. I should judge her to be incapable of truth. In
private life a girl of this description embroils the peace of
families, walks attended by a troop of scowling swains, and passes,
once at least, through the divorce court; it is a common and, except
to the cynic, an uninteresting type. On the throne, however, and in
the hands of a man like Gondremark, she may become the authoress of
serious public evils.
Gondremark, the true ruler of this unfortunate country, is a more
complex study. His position in Grunewald, to which he is a
foreigner, is eminently false; and that he should maintain it as he
does, a very miracle of impudence and dexterity. His speech, his
face, his policy, are all double: heads and tails. Which of the two
extremes may be his actual design he were a bold man who should
offer to decide. Yet I will hazard the guess that he follows both
experimentally, and awaits, at the hand of destiny, one of those
directing hints of which she is so lavish to the wise.
On the one hand, as MAIRE DU PALAIS to the incompetent Otto, and
using the love-sick Princess for a tool and mouthpiece, he pursues a
policy of arbitrary power and territorial aggrandisement. He has
called out the whole capable male population of the state to
military service; he has bought cannon; he has tempted away
promising officers from foreign armies; and he now begins, in his
international relations, to assume the swaggering port and the
vague, threatful language of a bully. The idea of extending
Grunewald may appear absurd, but the little state is advantageously
placed, its neighbours are all defenceless; and if at any moment the
jealousies of the greater courts should neutralise each other, an
active policy might double the principality both in population and
extent. Certainly at least the scheme is entertained in the court
of Mittwalden; nor do I myself regard it as entirely desperate. The
margravate of Brandenburg has grown from as small beginnings to a
formidable power; and though it is late in the day to try
adventurous policies, and the age of war seems ended, Fortune, we
must not forget, still blindly turns her wheel for men and nations.
Concurrently with, and tributary to, these warlike preparations,
crushing taxes have been levied, journals have been suppressed, and
the country, which three years ago was prosperous and happy, now
stagnates in a forced inaction, gold has become a curiosity, and the
mills stand idle on the mountain streams.
On the other hand, in his second capacity of popular tribune,
Gondremark- is the incarnation of the free lodges, and sits at the
centre of an organised conspiracy against the state. To any such
movement my sympathies were early acquired, and I would not
willingly let fall a word that might embarrass or retard the
revolution. But to show that I speak of knowledge, and not as the
reporter of mere gossip, I may mention that I have myself been
present at a meeting where the details of a republican Constitution
were minutely debated and arranged; and I may add that Gondremark
was throughout referred to by the speakers as their captain in
action and the arbiter of their disputes. He has taught his dupes
(for so I must regard them) that his power of resistance to the
Princess is limited, and at each fresh stretch of authority
persuades them, with specious reasons, to postpone the hour of
insurrection. Thus (to give some instances of his astute diplomacy)
he salved over the decree enforcing military service, under the plea
that to be well drilled and exercised in arms was even a necessary
preparation for revolt. And the other day, when it began to be
rumoured abroad that a war was being forced on a reluctant
neighbour, the Grand Duke of Gerolstein, and I made sure it would be
the signal for an instant rising, I was struck dumb with wonder to
find that even this had been prepared and was to be accepted. I
went from one to another in the Liberal camp, and all were in the
same story, all had been drilled and schooled and fitted out with
vacuous argument. 'The lads had better see some real fighting,'
they said; 'and besides, it will be as well to capture Gerolstein:
we can then extend to our neighbours the blessing of liberty on the
same day that we snatch it for ourselves; and the republic will be
all the stronger to resist, if the kings of Europe should band
themselves together to reduce it.' I know not which of the two I
should admire the more: the simplicity of the multitude or the
audacity of the adventurer. But such are the subtleties, such the
quibbling reasons, with which he blinds and leads this people. How
long a course so tortuous can be pursued with safety I am incapable
of guessing; not long, one would suppose; and yet this singular man
has been treading the mazes for five years, and his favour at court
and his popularity among the lodges still endure unbroken.
I have the privilege of slightly knowing him. Heavily and somewhat
clumsily built, of a vast, disjointed, rambling frame, he can still
pull himself together, and figure, not without admiration, in the
saloon or the ball-room. His hue and temperament are plentifully
bilious; he has a saturnine eye; his cheek is of a dark blue where
he has been shaven. Essentially he is to be numbered among the man-
haters, a convinced contemner of his fellows. Yet he is himself of
a commonplace ambition and greedy of applause. In talk, he is
remarkable for a thirst of information, loving rather to hear than
to communicate; for sound and studious views; and, judging by the
extreme short-sightedness of common politicians, for a remarkable
provision of events. All this, however, without grace, pleasantry,
or charm, heavily set forth, with a dull countenance. In our
numerous conversations, although he has always heard me with
deference, I have been conscious throughout of a sort of ponderous
finessing hard to tolerate. He produces none of the effect of a
gentleman; devoid not merely of pleasantry, but of all attention or
communicative warmth of bearing. No gentleman, besides, would so
parade his amours with the Princess; still less repay the Prince for
his long-suffering with a studied insolence of demeanour and the
fabrication of insulting nicknames, such as Prince Featherhead,
which run from ear to ear and create a laugh throughout the country.
Gondremark has thus some of the clumsier characters of the self-made
man, combined with an inordinate, almost a besotted, pride of
intellect and birth. Heavy, bilious, selfish, inornate, he sits
upon this court and country like an incubus.
But it is probable that he preserves softer gifts for necessary
purposes. Indeed, it is certain, although he vouchsafed none of it
to me, that this cold and stolid politician possesses to a great
degree the art of ingratiation, and can be all things to all men.
Hence there has probably sprung up the idle legend that in private
life he is a gross romping voluptuary. Nothing, at least, can well
be more surprising than the terms of his connection with the
Princess. Older than her husband, certainly uglier, and, according
to the feeble ideas common among women, in every particular less
pleasing, he has not only seized the complete command of all her
thought and action, but has imposed on her in public a humiliating
part. I do not here refer to the complete sacrifice of every rag of
her reputation; for to many women these extremities are in
themselves attractive. But there is about the court a certain lady
of a dishevelled reputation, a Countess von Rosen, wife or widow of
a cloudy count, no longer in her second youth, and already bereft of
some of her attractions, who unequivocally occupies the station of
the Baron's mistress. I had thought, at first, that she was but a
hired accomplice, a mere blind or buffer for the more important
sinner. A few hours' acquaintance with Madame von Rosen for ever
dispelled the illusion. She is one rather to make than to prevent a
scandal, and she values none of those bribes - money, honours, or
employment - with which the situation might be gilded. Indeed, as a
person frankly bad, she pleased me, in the court of Grunewald, like
a piece of nature.
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