titles,' he replied.

The girl flushed with pleasure. 'But Frederic is still the Prince,
_monsieur le flatteur_,' she said. 'You do not propose a
revolution?--you of all men?'

'Dear madam, when it is already made!' he cried. 'The Prince reigns
indeed in the almanac; but my Princess reigns and rules.' And he looked
at her with a fond admiration that made the heart of Seraphina swell.
Looking on her huge slave, she drank the intoxicating joys of power.
Meanwhile he continued, with that sort of massive archness that so ill
became him, 'She has but one fault; there is but one danger in the great
career that I foresee for her. May I name it? may I be so irreverent?
It is in herself--her heart is soft.'

'Her courage is faint, Baron,' said the Princess. 'Suppose we have
judged ill, suppose we were defeated?'

'Defeated, madam?' returned the Baron, with a touch of ill-humour. 'Is
the dog defeated by the hare? Our troops are all cantoned along the
frontier; in five hours the vanguard of five thousand bayonets shall be
hammering on the gates of Brandenau; and in all Gerolstein there are not
fifteen hundred men who can manoeuvre. It is as simple as a sum. There
can be no resistance.'

'It is no great exploit,' she said. 'Is that what you call glory? It is
like beating a child.'

'The courage, madam, is diplomatic,' he replied. 'We take a grave step;
we fix the eyes of Europe, for the first time, on Grunewald; and in the
negotiations of the next three months, mark me, we stand or fall. It is
there, madam, that I shall have to depend upon your counsels,' he added,
almost gloomily. 'If I had not seen you at work, if I did not know the
fertility of your mind, I own I should tremble for the consequence. But
it is in this field that men must recognise their inability. All the
great negotiators, when they have not been women, have had women at their
elbows. Madame de Pompadour was ill served; she had not found her
Gondremark; but what a mighty politician! Catherine de' Medici, too,
what justice of sight, what readiness of means, what elasticity against
defeat! But alas! madam, her Featherheads were her own children; and she
had that one touch of vulgarity, that one trait of the good-wife, that
she suffered family ties and affections to confine her liberty.'

These singular views of history, strictly _ad usum Seraphinae_, did not
weave their usual soothing spell over the Princess. It was plain that
she had