The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 7

CHAPTER IV
WHILE THE PRINCE IS IN THE ANTE-ROOM…

Greatly comforted by the exploits of the morning, the Prince turned towards the Princess’s ante-room, bent on a more difficult enterprise. The curtains rose before him, the usher called his name, and he entered the room with an exaggeration of his usual mincing and airy dignity. There were about a score of persons waiting, principally ladies; it was one of the few societies in Grünewald where Otto knew himself to be popular; and while a maid of honour made her exit by a side door to announce his arrival to the Princess, he moved round the apartment, collecting homage and bestowing compliments with friendly grace. Had this been the sum of his duties, he had been an admirable monarch. Lady after lady was impartially honoured by his attention.

“Madam,” he said to one, “how does this happen? I find you daily more adorable.”

“And your Highness daily browner,” replied the lady. “We began equal; oh, there I will be bold: we have both beautiful complexions. But while I study mine, your Highness tans himself.”

“A perfect negro, madam; and what so fitly – being beauty’s slave?” said Otto. – “Madame Grafinski, when is our next play? I have just heard that I am a bad actor.”

“O ciel!” cried Madame Grafinski. “Who could venture? What a bear!”

“An excellent man, I can assure you,” returned Otto.

“O, never! O, is it possible!” fluted the lady. “Your Highness plays like an angel.”

“You must be right, madam; who could speak falsely and yet look so charming?” said the Prince. “But this gentleman, it seems, would have preferred me playing like an actor.”

A sort of hum, a falsetto, feminine cooing, greeted the tiny sally; and Otto expanded like a peacock. This warm atmosphere of women and flattery and idle chatter pleased him to the marrow.

“Madame von Eisenthal, your coiffure is delicious,” he remarked.

“Everyone was saying so,” said one.

“If I have pleased Prince Charming?” And Madame von Eisenthal swept him a deep curtsey with a killing glance of adoration.

“It is new?” he asked. “Vienna fashion.”

“Mint new,” replied the lady, “for your Highness’s return. I felt young this morning; it was a premonition. But why, Prince, do you ever leave us?”

“For the pleasure of the return,” said Otto. “I am like a dog; I must bury my bone, and then come back to gloat upon it.”

“O, a bone! Fie, what a comparison! You have brought back the manners of the wood,” returned the lady.

“Madam, it is what the dog has dearest,” said the Prince. “But I observe Madame von Rosen.”

And Otto, leaving the group to which he had been piping, stepped towards the embrasure of a window where a lady stood.

The Countess von Rosen had hitherto been silent, and a thought depressed, but on the approach of Otto she began to brighten. She was tall, slim as a nymph, and of a very airy carriage; and her face, which was already beautiful in repose, lightened and changed, flashed into smiles, and glowed with a lovely colour at the touch of animation. She was a good vocalist; and, even in speech, her voice commanded a great range of changes, the low notes rich with tenor quality, the upper ringing, on the brink of laughter, into music. A gem of many facets, and variable hues of fire; a woman who withheld the better portion of her beauty, and then, in a caressing second, flashed it like a weapon full on the beholder; now merely a tall figure and a sallow handsome face, with the evidences of a reckless temper; anon opening like a flower to life and colour, mirth and tenderness: – Madame von Rosen had always a dagger in reserve for the despatch of ill-assured admirers. She met Otto with the dart of tender gaiety.

“You have come to me at last, Prince Cruel,” she said. “Butterfly! Well, and am I not to kiss your hand?” she added.

“Madam, it is I who must kiss yours.” And Otto bowed and kissed it.

“You deny me every indulgence,” she said, smiling.

“And now what news in court?” inquired the Prince. “I come to you for my gazette.”

“Ditch-water!” she replied. “The world is all asleep, grown grey in slumber; I do not remember any waking movement since quite an eternity; and the last thing in the nature of a sensation was the last time my governess was allowed to box my ears. But yet I do myself and your unfortunate enchanted palace some injustice. Here is the last – O positively!” And she told him the story from behind her fan, with many glances, many cunning strokes of the narrator’s art. The others had drawn away, for it was understood that Madame von Rosen was in favour with the Prince. None the less, however, did the Countess lower her voice at times to within a semitone of whispering; and the pair leaned together over the narrative.

“Do you know,” said Otto, laughing, “you are the only entertaining woman on this earth!”

“O, you have found out so much,” she cried.

“Yes, madam, I grow wiser with advancing years,” he returned.

“Years!” she repeated. “Do you name the traitors? I do not believe in years; the calendar is a delusion.”

“You must be right, madam,” replied the Prince. “For six years that we have been good friends, I have observed you to grow younger.”

“Flatterer,” cried she, and then, with a change, “But why should I say so,” she added, “when I protest I think the same? A week ago I had a council with my father director, the glass; and the glass replied, ‘Not yet!’ I confess my face in this way once a month. O! a very solemn moment. Do you know what I shall do when the mirror answers, ‘Now’?”

“I cannot guess,” said he.

“No more can I,” returned the Countess. “There is such a choice! Suicide, gambling, a nunnery, a volume of memoirs, or politics – the last, I am afraid.”

“It is a dull trade,” said Otto.

“Nay,” she replied, “it is a trade I rather like. It is, after all, first cousin to gossip, which no one can deny to be amusing. For instance, if I were to tell you that the Princess and the Baron rode out together daily to inspect the cannon, it is either a piece of politics or scandal, as I turn my phrase. I am the alchemist that makes the transmutation. They have been everywhere together since you left,” she continued, brightening as she saw Otto darken; “that is a poor snippet of malicious gossip – and they were everywhere cheered – and with that addition all becomes political intelligence.”

“Let us change the subject,” said Otto.

“I was about to propose it,” she replied, “or rather to pursue the politics. Do you know? this war is popular – popular to the length of cheering Princess Seraphina.”

“All things, madam, are possible,” said the Prince; “and this among others, that we may be going into war, but I give you my word of honour I do not know with whom.”

“And you put up with it?” she cried. “I have no pretensions to morality; and I confess I have always abominated the lamb, and nourished a romantic feeling for the wolf. O, be done with lambiness! Let us see there is a prince, for I am weary of the distaff.”

“Madam,” said Otto, “I thought you were of that faction.”

“I should be of yours, mon Prince, if you had one,” she retorted. “Is it true that you have no ambition? There was a man once in England whom they call the kingmaker. Do you know,” she added, “I fancy I could make a prince?”

“Some day, madam,” said Otto, “I may ask you to help make a farmer.”

“Is that a riddle?” asked the Countess.

“It is,” replied the Prince, “and a very good one too.”

“Tit for tat. I will ask you another,” she returned. “Where is Gondremark?”

“The Prime Minister? In the prime-ministry, no doubt,” said Otto.

“Precisely,” said the Countess; and she pointed with her fan to the door of the Princess’s apartments. “You and I, mon Prince, are in the ante-room. You think me unkind,” she added. “Try me and you will see. Set me a task, put me a question; there is no enormity I am not capable of doing to oblige you, and no secret that I am not ready to betray.”

“Nay, madam, but I respect my friend too much,” he answered, kissing her hand. “I would rather remain ignorant of all. We fraternise like foemen soldiers at the outposts, but let each be true to his own army.”

“Ah,” she cried, “if all men were generous like you, it would be worth while to be a woman!” Yet, judging by her looks, his generosity, if anything, had disappointed her; she seemed to seek a remedy, and, having found it, brightened once more. “And now,” she said, “may I dismiss my sovereign? This is rebellion and a cas pendable; but what am I to do? My bear is jealous!”

“Madam, enough!” cried Otto. “Ahasuerus reaches you the sceptre; more, he will obey you in all points. I should have been a dog to come to whistling.”

And so the Prince departed, and fluttered round Grafinski and von Eisenthal. But the Countess knew the use of her offensive weapons, and had left a pleasant arrow in the Prince’s heart. That Gondremark was jealous – here was an agreeable revenge! And Madame von Rosen, as the occasion of the jealousy, appeared to him in a new light.

CHAPTER V
… GONDREMARK IS IN MY LADY’S CHAMBER

The Countess von Rosen spoke the truth. The great Prime Minister of Grünewald was already closeted with Seraphina. The toilet was over; and the Princess, tastefully arrayed, sat face to face with a tall mirror. Sir John’s description was unkindly true, true in terms and yet a libel, a misogynistic masterpiece. Her forehead was perhaps too high, but it became her; her figure somewhat stooped, but every detail was formed and finished like a gem; her hand, her foot, her ear, the set of her comely head, were all dainty and accordant; if she was not beautiful, she was vivid, changeful, coloured, and pretty with a thousand various prettinesses; and her eyes, if they indeed rolled too consciously, yet rolled to purpose. They were her most attractive feature, yet they continually bore eloquent false witness to her thoughts; for while she herself, in the depths of her immature, unsoftened heart, was given altogether to man-like ambition and the desire of power, the eyes were by turns bold, inviting, fiery, melting, and artful, like the eyes of a rapacious siren. And artful, in a sense, she was. Chafing that she was not a man, and could not shine by action, she had, conceived a woman’s part, of answerable domination; she sought to subjugate for by-ends, to rain influence and be fancy free; and, while she loved not man, loved to see man obey her. It is a common girl’s ambition. Such was perhaps that lady of the glove, who sent her lover to the lions. But the snare is laid alike for male and female, and the world most artfully contrived.

Near her, in a low chair, Gondremark had arranged his limbs into a cat-like attitude, high-shouldered, stooping, and submiss. The formidable blue jowl of the man, and the dull bilious eye, set perhaps a higher value on his evident desire to please. His face was marked by capacity, temper, and a kind of bold, piratical dishonesty which it would be calumnious to call deceit. His manners, as he smiled upon the Princess, were over-fine, yet hardly elegant.

“Possibly,” said the Baron, “I should now proceed to take my leave. I must not keep my sovereign in the ante-room. Let us come at once to a decision.”

“It cannot, cannot be put off?” she asked.

“It is impossible,” answered Gondremark. “Your Highness sees it for herself. In the earlier stages we might imitate the serpent; but for the ultimatum, there is no choice but to be bold like lions. Had the Prince chosen to remain away, it had been better; but we have gone too far forward to delay.”

“What can have brought him?” she cried. “To-day of all days?”

“The marplot, madam, has the instinct of his nature,” returned Gondremark. “But you exaggerate the peril. Think, madam, how far we have prospered, and against what odds! Shall a Featherhead? – but no!” And he blew upon his fingers lightly with a laugh.

“Featherhead,” she replied, “is still the Prince of Grünewald.”

“On your sufferance only, and so long as you shall please to be indulgent,” said the Baron. “There are rights of nature; power to the powerful is the law. If he shall think to cross your destiny – well, you have heard of the brazen and the earthen pot.”

“Do you call me pot? You are ungallant, Baron,” laughed the Princess.

“Before we are done with your glory, I shall have called you by many different titles,” he replied.

The girl flushed with pleasure. “But Frédéric is still the Prince, monsieur le flatteur,” she said. “You do not propose a revolution? – you of all men?”

“Dear madam, when it is already made!” he cried. “The Prince reigns indeed in the almanac; but my Princess reigns and rules.” And he looked at her with a fond admiration that made the heart of Seraphina swell. Looking on her huge slave, she drank the intoxicating joys of power. Meanwhile he continued, with that sort of massive archness that so ill became him, “She has but one fault; there is but one danger in the great career that I foresee for her. May I name it? may I be so irreverent? It is in herself – her heart is soft.”

“Her courage is faint, Baron,” said the Princess. “Suppose we have judged ill, suppose we were defeated?”

“Defeated, madam?” returned the Baron, with a touch of ill-humour. “Is the dog defeated by the hare? Our troops are all cantoned along the frontier; in five hours the vanguard of five thousand bayonets shall be hammering on the gates of Brandenau; and in all Gerolstein there are not fifteen hundred men who can manœuvre. It is as simple as a sum. There can be no resistance.”

“It is no great exploit,” she said. “Is that what you call glory? It is like beating a child.”

“The courage, madam, is diplomatic,” he replied. “We take a grave step; we fix the eyes of Europe, for the first time, on Grünewald; and in the negotiations of the next three months, mark me, we stand or fall. It is there, madam, that I shall have to depend upon your counsels,” he added, almost gloomily. “If I had not seen you at work, if I did not know the fertility of your mind, I own I should tremble for the consequence. But It is in this field that men must recognise their inability. All the great negotiators, when they have not been women, have had women at their elbows. Madame de Pompadour was ill served; she had not found her Gondremark; but what a mighty politician! Catherine de’ Medici, too, what justice of sight, what readiness of means, what elasticity against defeat! But alas! madam, her Featherheads were her own children; and she had that one touch of vulgarity, that one trait of the good-wife, that she suffered family ties and affections to confine her liberty.”

These singular views of history, strictly ad usum Seraphinæ, did not weave their usual soothing spell over the Princess. It was plain that she had taken a momentary distaste to her own resolutions; for she continued to oppose her counsellor, looking upon him out of half-closed eyes and with the shadow of a sneer upon her lips. “What boys men are!” she said; “what lovers of big words! Courage, indeed! If you had to scour pans, Herr von Gondremark, you would call it, I suppose, Domestic Courage?”

“I would, madam,” said the Baron stoutly, “if I scoured them well. I would put a good name upon a virtue; you will not overdo it; they are not so enchanting in themselves.”

“Well, but let me see,” she said. “I wish to understand your courage. Why we asked leave, like children! Our grannie in Berlin, our uncle in Vienna, the whole family, have patted us on the head and sent us forward. Courage? I wonder when I hear you!”

“My Princess is unlike herself,” returned the Baron. “She has forgotten where the peril lies. True, we have received encouragement on every hand; but my Princess knows too well on what untenable conditions; and she knows besides how, in the publicity of the diet, these whispered conferences are forgotten and disowned. The danger is very real” – he raged inwardly at having to blow the very coal he had been quenching – “none the less real in that it is not precisely military, but for that reason the easier to be faced. Had we to count upon your troops, although I share your Highness’s expectations of the conduct of Alvenau, we cannot forget that he has not been proved in chief command. But where negotiation is concerned, the conduct lies with us; and with your help, I laugh at danger.”

“It may be so,” said Seraphina, sighing. “It is elsewhere that I see danger. The people, these abominable people – suppose they should instantly rebel? What a figure we should make in the eyes of Europe to have undertaken an invasion while my own throne was tottering to its fall!”

“Nay, madam,” said Gondremark, smiling, “here you are beneath yourself. What is it that feeds their discontent? What but the taxes? Once we have seized Gerolstein, the taxes are remitted, the sons return covered with renown, the houses are adorned with pillage, each tastes his little share of military glory, and behold us once again a happy family! ‘Ay,’ they will say in each other’s long ears, ‘the Princess knew what she was about; she was in the right of it; she has a head upon her shoulders; and here we are, you see, better off than before.’ But why should I say all this? It is what my Princess pointed out to me herself; it was by these reasons that she converted me to this adventure.”

“I think, Herr von Gondremark,” said Seraphina, somewhat tartly, “you often attribute your own sagacity to your Princess.”

For a second Gondremark staggered under the shrewdness of the attack; the next, he had perfectly recovered. “Do I?” he said. “It is very possible. I have observed a similar tendency in your Highness.”

It was so openly spoken, and appeared so just, that Seraphina breathed again. Her vanity had been alarmed, and the greatness of the relief improved her spirits. “Well,” she said, “all this is little to the purpose. We are keeping Frédéric without, and I am still ignorant of our line of battle. Come, co-admiral, let us consult… How am I to receive him now? And what are we to do if he should appear at the council?”

“Now,” he answered. “I shall leave him to my Princess for just now! I have seen her at work. Send him off to his theatricals! But in all gentleness,” he added. “Would it, for instance, would it displease my sovereign to affect a headache?”

“Never!” said she. “The woman who can manage, like the man who can fight, must never shrink from an encounter. The knight must not disgrace his weapons.”

“Then let me pray my belle dame sans merci,” he returned, “to affect the only virtue that she lacks. Be pitiful to the poor young man; affect an interest in his hunting; be weary of politics; find in his society, as it were, a grateful repose from dry considerations. Does my Princess authorise the line of battle?”

“Well, that is a trifle,” answered Seraphina. “The council – there is the point.”

“The council?” cried Gondremark. “Permit me, madam.” And he rose and proceeded to flutter about the room, counterfeiting Otto both in voice and gesture not unhappily. “What is there to-day, Herr von Gondremark? Ah, Herr Cancellarius, a new wig! You cannot deceive me; I know every wig in Grünewald; I have the sovereign’s eye. What are these papers about? O, I see. O, certainly. Surely, surely. I wager none of you remarked that wig. By all means. I know nothing about that. Dear me, are there as many as all that? Well, you can sign them; you have the procuration. You see, Herr Cancellarius, I knew your wig. And so,” concluded Gondremark, resuming his own voice, “our sovereign, by the particular grace of God, enlightens and supports his privy councillors.”

But when the Baron turned to Seraphina for approval he found her frozen. “You are pleased to be witty, Herr von Gondremark,” she said, “and have perhaps forgotten where you are. But these rehearsals are apt to be misleading. Your master, the Prince of Grünewald, is sometimes more exacting.”

Gondremark cursed her in his soul. Of all injured vanities, that of the reproved buffoon is the most savage; and when grave issues are involved, these petty stabs become unbearable. But Gondremark was a man of iron; he showed nothing; he did not even, like the common trickster, retreat because he had presumed, but held to his point bravely. “Madam,” he said, “if, as you say, he prove exacting, we must take the bull by the horns.”

“We shall see,” she said, and she arranged her skirt like one about to rise. Temper, scorn, disgust, all the more acrid feelings, became her like jewels; and she now looked her best.

“Pray God they quarrel,” thought Gondremark. “The damned minx may fail me yet, unless they quarrel. It is time to let him in. Zz – fight, dogs!” Consequent on these reflections, he bent a stiff knee, and chivalrously kissed the Princess’s hand. “My Princess,” he said, “must now dismiss her servant. I have much to arrange against the hour of council.”

“Go,” she said, and rose.

And as Gondremark tripped out of a private door, she touched a bell, and gave the order to admit the Prince.