side as he lay on his sofa staring through the open windows into the
green depths of the park of plane-trees. The birds chirped outside;
sometimes Berengar's small, shrill voice sounded among them, as he
played with a couple of his little friends. The empress read aloud, but
it tired Othomar, it made his head ache....

After a long conversation between the three doctors and the emperor and
empress, Professor Barzia was summoned from Altara for a consultation:
the professor was a nerve-specialist of European fame.

In the emperor's room the emperor, the empress and Count Myxila sat
waiting for the result of the examination and the subsequent
consultation. It lasted long. They did not speak while they waited: the
empress sat staring before her with her quiet expression of
acquiescence; the emperor walked irritably to and fro. The old
chancellor, with his stern, proud face and bald head, stood pensively
near the window.

Then the doctors were announced. They appeared, Professor Barzia leading
the way, the others following. The empress fancied that she read the
worst on the professor's pale, rigid features; one of the physicians,
however, nodded his big, kind head compassionately from behind his
colleague, to reassure her.

"Well?" asked the emperor.

"We have carefully examined his imperial highness, sir," the professor
began. "The prince is quite free from organic disease, though his
constitution is generally delicate."

"What's wrong with him then?" asked Oscar.

"The prince's nervous system seems to us, sir, to have undergone an
alarming strain."

"His nerves? But he's never nervous, he's always calm," exclaimed the
emperor, stubbornly.

"All the more reason, sir, to appreciate the prince's self-restraint.
His highness has evidently kept himself going for a long time; and the
effort has been too much for him at last. He is calm now, as your
majesty says. But his calmness does not alter the fact that his nerves
are completely run down. His highness has clearly been overtaxing his
strength."

"And in what way?" asked the emperor, haughtily.

"That, sir, would no doubt be better known to those at court than to me,
who come fresh from my study and my hospitals. Your majesty will be able
to answer that question yourself. I can only give you a few indications.
His highness told me that he remembered sometimes feeling those fits of
giddiness and exhaustion even before the great floods in the north. That
was in