here you have lodged your sympathies, I will forbear the taunt."

"Otto, are you insane?" cried Gotthold, leaping up. "Because I ask you
how you came by certain moneys, and because you refuse----"

"Herr von Hohenstockwitz, I have ceased to invite your aid in my
affairs," said Otto. "I have heard all that I desire, and you have
sufficiently trampled on my vanity. It may be that I cannot govern, it
may be that I cannot love--you tell me so with every mark of honesty;
but God has granted me one virtue, and I can still forgive. I forgive
you; even in this hour of passion I can perceive my faults and your
excuses; and if I desire that in future I may be spared your
conversation, it is not, sir, from resentment--not resentment--but, by
Heaven, because no man on earth could endure to be so rated. You have
the satisfaction to see your sovereign weep; and that person whom you
have so often taunted with his happiness reduced to the last pitch of
solitude and misery. No,--I will hear nothing; I claim the last word,
sir, as your Prince; and that last word shall be--forgiveness."

And with that Otto was gone from the apartment, and Dr. Gotthold was
left alone with the most conflicting sentiments of sorrow, remorse, and
merriment; walking to and fro before his table, and asking himself, with
hands uplifted, which of the pair of them was most to blame for this
unhappy rupture. Presently, he took from a cupboard a bottle of Rhine
wine and a goblet of the deep Bohemian ruby. The first glass a little
warmed and comforted his bosom; with the second he began to look down
upon these troubles from a sunny mountain; yet a while, and filled with
this false comfort and contemplating life through a golden medium, he
owned to himself, with a flush, a smile, and a half-pleasurable sigh,
that he had been somewhat over plain in dealing with his cousin. "He
said the truth, too," added the penitent librarian, "for in my monkish
fashion I adore the Princess." And then, with a still deepening flush
and a certain stealth, although he sat all alone in that great gallery,
he toasted Seraphina to the dregs.

CHAPTER XI

PROVIDENCE VON ROSEN: ACT THE FIRST SHE BEGUILES THE BARON

At a sufficiently late hour, or, to be more exact, at three in the
afternoon, Madame von Rosen issued on the world. She swept downstairs
and out across the garden, a black mantilla thrown over her head, and
the long train of her black velvet dress ruthlessly sweeping i