The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 7. Robert Louis Stevenson
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.”
“Is 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. Oh, 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, Dr. 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 Grünewald, 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 Grünewald. 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:
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 Grünewald.
“Ah! The Court of Grünewald!” 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 GRÜNEWALD,” 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 Grünewald 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 rôle 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 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-Tannhäuser, 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 Grünewald, to which he is a foreigner, is eminently false; and that he should maintain it as he does,