eance for the gravity and burthen of the afternoon. He chuckled as
he thought of it: and Greisengesang heard him with wonder, and attributed
his lively spirits to the skirmish of the morning.

Led by this idea, the antique courtier ventured to compliment his
sovereign on his bearing. It reminded him, he said, of Otto's father.

'What?' asked the Prince, whose thoughts were miles away.

'Your Highness's authority at the board,' explained the flatterer.

'O, that! O yes,' returned Otto; but for all his carelessness, his
vanity was delicately tickled, and his mind returned and dwelt
approvingly over the details of his victory. 'I quelled them all,' he
thought.

When the more pressing matters had been dismissed, it was already late,
and Otto kept the Chancellor to dinner, and was entertained with a leash
of ancient histories and modern compliments. The Chancellor's career had
been based, from the first off-put, on entire subserviency; he had
crawled into honours and employments; and his mind was prostitute. The
instinct of the creature served him well with Otto. First, he let fall a
sneering word or two upon the female intellect; thence he proceeded to a
closer engagement; and before the third course he was artfully dissecting
Seraphina's character to her approving husband. Of course no names were
used; and of course the identity of that abstract or ideal man, with whom
she was currently contrasted, remained an open secret. But this stiff
old gentleman had a wonderful instinct for evil, thus to wind his way
into man's citadel; thus to harp by the hour on the virtues of his hearer
and not once alarm his self-respect. Otto was all roseate, in and out,
with flattery and Tokay and an approving conscience. He saw himself in
the most attractive colours. If even Greisengesang, he thought, could
thus espy the loose stitches in Seraphina's character, and thus
disloyally impart them to the opposite camp, he, the discarded
husband--the dispossessed Prince--could scarce have erred on the side of
severity.

In this excellent frame he bade adieu to the old gentleman, whose voice
had proved so musical, and set forth for the drawing-room. Already on
the stair, he was seized with some compunction; but when he entered the
great gallery and beheld his wife, the Chancellor's abstract flatteries
fell from him like rain, and he re-awoke to the poetic facts of life.
She stood a good way off below a shining lustre, her back turne