Andro went out and the strange, indolent vacancy overcame Othomar once
more. The sun shone over the park, the deer gleamed with coats like
cigar-coloured satin. The last fortnight passed once more before
Othomar's eyes. And it was as though, in the vistas of that very short
past, he saw spreading out like one great whole, one vast picture of
human distress, the misery which he had beheld and endeavoured to
soften. And the great affliction that filled the land made his heart
beat full of pity. A slack feeling of melancholy, that there was so much
affliction and that he was so impotent, once more rose within him, as it
never failed to do when he was alone and able to reflect. Then he felt
himself small, insignificant, fit for nothing; and something in his soul
fell feebly, helplessly from a factitious height, without energy and
without will. Then that something lay there in despair and upon it,
heavy with all its sorrow, the whole empire, crushing it with its
weight.

Serious strikes had broken out in the eastern quicksilver-mines, beyond
the Gigants. He remembered once making a journey there and suffering
when he saw the strange, ashy-pale faces of the workmen, who stared at
him with great, hollow eyes and who underwent a slow death through their
own livelihood, in a poisonous atmosphere. And he knew that what he had
then seen was a holiday sight, the most prosperous sight that they were
able to show him; that he would never see the black depths of their
wretchedness, because he was the crown-prince. And he could do nothing
for them and, if they raised their heads still more fiercely than they
were doing now, the troops, which had already started for the district,
would shoot them down like dogs.

He panted loudly, as though to pant away the weight upon his chest, but
it fell back again. The image of his father came before his mind, high,
certain, conscious of himself, unwavering, always knowing what to do,
confident that majesty was infallible, writing signatures with big, firm
letters, curtly: "Oscar." Everything signed like that, "Oscar," was
immaculate in its righteousness as fate itself. How different was he,
the son! Then did the old race of might and authority begin to yield
with him, as with a sudden crack of the spine, an exhaustion of the
marrow?

Then he saw his mother, a Roumanian princess, loving her near ones so
dearly; womanliness, motherliness personified, in their small circle; to
the people, haug