PTER II

"ON THE COURT OF GRUeNEWALD," BEING A PORTION OF THE TRAVELLER'S
MANUSCRIPT

It may well be asked (_it was thus the English traveller began his
nineteenth chapter_) why I should have chosen Gruenewald out of so many
other states equally petty, formal, dull, and corrupt. Accident, indeed,
decided, and not I; but I have seen no reason to regret my visit. The
spectacle of this small society macerating in its own abuses was not
perhaps instructive, but I have found it exceedingly diverting.

The reigning Prince, Otto Johann Friedrich, a young man of imperfect
education, questionable valour, and no scintilla of capacity, has fallen
into entire public contempt. It was with difficulty that I obtained an
interview, for he is frequently absent from a court where his presence
is unheeded, and where his only role is to be a cloak for the amours of
his wife. At last, however, on the third occasion when I visited the
palace, I found this sovereign in the exercise of his inglorious
function, with the wife on one hand and the lover on the other. He is
not ill-looking; he has hair of a ruddy gold, which naturally curls, and
his eyes are dark, a combination which I always regard as the mark of
some congenital deficiency, physical or moral; his features are
irregular but pleasing; the nose perhaps a little short, and the mouth a
little womanish; his address is excellent, and he can express himself
with point. But to pierce below these externals is to come on a vacuity
of any sterling quality, a deliquescence of the moral nature, a
frivolity and inconsequence of purpose that mark the nearly perfect
fruit of a decadent age. He has a worthless smattering of many subjects,
but a grasp of none. "I soon weary of a pursuit," he said to me,
laughing; it would almost appear as if he took a pride in his incapacity
and lack of moral courage. The results of his dilettanteism are to be
seen in every field; he is a bad fencer, a second-rate horseman, dancer,
shot; he sings--I have heard him--and he sings like a child; he writes
intolerable verses in more than doubtful French; he acts like the common
amateur; and in short there is no end to the number of things that he
does, and does badly. His one manly taste is for the chase. In sum, he
is but a plexus of weaknesses; the singing chambermaid of the stage,
tricked out in man's apparel, and mounted on a circus horse. I have seen
this poor phantom of a prince riding out alone or with a few h