o
music.

What was she to do? She held the paper by which all depended. Otto and
Gondremark and Ratafia, and the state itself, hung light in her balances,
as light as dust; her little finger laid in either scale would set all
flying: and she hugged herself upon her huge preponderance, and then
laughed aloud to think how giddily it might be used. The vertigo of
omnipotence, the disease of Caesars, shook her reason. 'O the mad
world!' she thought, and laughed aloud in exultation.

A child, finger in mouth, had paused a little way from where she sat, and
stared with cloudy interest upon this laughing lady. She called it
nearer; but the child hung back. Instantly, with that curious passion
which you may see any woman in the world display, on the most odd
occasions, for a similar end, the Countess bent herself with singleness
of mind to overcome this diffidence; and presently, sure enough, the
child was seated on her knee, thumbing and glowering at her watch.

'If you had a clay bear and a china monkey,' asked Von Rosen, 'which
would you prefer to break?'

'But I have neither,' said the child.

'Well,' she said, 'here is a bright florin, with which you may purchase
both the one and the other; and I shall give it you at once, if you will
answer my question. The clay bear or the china monkey--come?'

But the unbreeched soothsayer only stared upon the florin with big eyes;
the oracle could not be persuaded to reply; and the Countess kissed him
lightly, gave him the florin, set him down upon the path, and resumed her
way with swinging and elastic gait.

'Which shall I break?' she wondered; and she passed her hand with delight
among the careful disarrangement of her locks. 'Which?' and she
consulted heaven with her bright eyes. 'Do I love both or neither? A
little--passionately--not at all? Both or neither--both, I believe; but
at least I will make hay of Ratafia.'

By the time she had passed the iron gates, mounted the drive, and set her
foot upon the broad flagged terrace, the night had come completely; the
palace front was thick with lighted windows; and along the balustrade,
the lamp on every twentieth baluster shone clear. A few withered tracks
of sunset, amber and glow-worm green, still lingered in the western sky;
and she paused once again to watch them fading.

'And to think,' she said, 'that here am I--destiny embodied, a norn, a
fate, a providence--and have no guess upon which side I shall declare