princes. From all the courts of Europe, which were as one great
family, different members came from time to time to stay, bringing with
them their respective _nuances_ of a different nationality, something
exotic in voice and manner, so far as all this was not merged in their
cosmopolitanism.

Othomar had been three months at sea with Herman; they had touched shore
in India, China, Japan and America. They had travelled incognito, so as
to escape all official receptions, and Othomar had borne no other title
than that of Prince Czykirski. The voyage had done Othomar much good: he
was even feeling so well that he had written to the Empress Elizabeth
that he would like to stay some time longer in the family-circle at
Altseeborgen, but that he would afterwards undertake his
long-contemplated journey to the European courts.

Their easy life in each other's company had done much to bring the
cousins closer together. Herman had learnt to see in Othomar, beneath
his stiffness and lack of ease, a young crown-prince who was afraid of
his future, but who possessed much reasonableness and was willing to
learn to acquiesce in life and to fortify himself for his coming yoke of
empire. He understood Othomar and felt sorry for him. He himself took a
vital pleasure in life: merely to breathe was an enjoyment; his
existence as a second son, with only his naval duties, which he loved by
heredity, as a descendant of the old sea-kings might well love them,
opened before him a prospect of nothing but continued, cloudless freedom
from care; that he was a king's son gave him nothing but satisfaction
and delight; and he appreciated his high estate with jovial pleasure,
skimming the cream from a chalice out of which Othomar in due time would
drink gall and wormwood. If at first he compared Othomar with his
brother, the Duke of Wendeholm--a crown-prince too, of Gothland
he--Herman now compared them no longer; his judgement had become more
reasonable: he understood that no comparison was possible. Liparia was a
tremendous, almost despotic empire; the people, especially in the south,
always very fickle, always kept in check by force, on account of their
childish uncertainty as to what, in their capriciousness, they would do
next. The Gothlanders, on the other hand, calmly liberal in temperament,
devoid of noisy vehemence, ranged themselves peacefully, with their
long-established, ample constitution, round King Siegfried, whom they
called the father