owledgment,
because of his imperial candour, his boyish voice, his boyish eyes, the
pressure of his hand: the only thing he had given her; and she
experienced all this as a very strange, proud pleasure: the delight of
assimilating that candid youth, that maiden manhood, as a magic potion
that should restore her own youth to her.

7

They dined late that evening, as they had waited for Herman and the
others. The conversation at table turned upon the condition of the
lowlands, upon the peasants, who had lost their all. The duchess was
silent; the conversation did not interest her, but her silence was
smiling and tranquil.

That evening Othomar again studied the map with Ducardi, under the
lace-covered lamp. The evening had turned cold, the terrace-doors were
closed. The duchess did not feel inclined for billiards, but sat talking
softly with Dutri in the second drawing-room. She looked superb, serene
as a statue, in her dress of old lace, pale-yellow, her white bosom
rising evenly with her regular breathing; a single diamond star gleamed
in her front hair.

Othomar pointed with the pencil across the map:

"Then we can go like this, along this road.... Look, General Ducardi;
look here, Colonel von Fest: this is where I drove this afternoon with
the duchess; and here, I believe, is where Zanti lives. Did you know
that?"

The officers looked up, looked down at the spot to which the
crown-prince pointed, expressed surprise:

"I thought that he lived in the south, in Thracyna," said the young
Count of Thesbia.

Othomar repeated what the duchess had told him.

"Zanti!" cried Herman. "Balthazar Zanti? Why, but then it is he!... I
was talking this afternoon to a party of peasants; they told me of the
new huts which a new landlord was fitting up in the neighbourhood, but
they spoke in dialect and I could not understand them clearly; I thought
they said Xanti and I never suspected that it could be Balthazar Zanti.
So he's the man!"

"Huts?" asked Othomar.

"Yes, a village of huts, it seems; they said he was so rich and so
generous and was housing I don't know how many peasants, who had lost
all that they possessed."

"I now remember reading in the papers that Zanti had gone to live at
Vaza," said Leoni.

"I should like to see those huts: we can take them on our way
to-morrow," said Othomar.

General Ducardi compressed his bushy eyebrows:

"You know, highness, that his majesty is anything but enamoured of Z