You will permit me, sir, to doubt it,' said Otto.

'Modesty is always admirable,' chuckled the theorist. 'But yet I assure
you, a man like you, with such a man as, say, Doctor Gotthold at your
elbow, would be, for all practical issues, my ideal ruler.'

At this rate the hours sped pleasantly for Otto. But the licentiate
unfortunately slept that night at Beckstein, where he was, being dainty
in the saddle and given to half stages. And to find a convoy to
Mittwalden, and thus mitigate the company of his own thoughts, the Prince
had to make favour with a certain party of wood-merchants from various
states of the empire, who had been drinking together somewhat noisily at
the far end of the apartment.

The night had already fallen when they took the saddle. The merchants
were very loud and mirthful; each had a face like a nor'west moon; and
they played pranks with each others' horses, and mingled songs and
choruses, and alternately remembered and forgot the companion of their
ride. Otto thus combined society and solitude, hearkening now to their
chattering and empty talk, now to the voices of the encircling forest.
The starlit dark, the faint wood airs, the clank of the horse-shoes
making broken music, accorded together and attuned his mind. And he was
still in a most equal temper when the party reached the top of that long
hill that overlooks Mittwalden.

Down in the bottom of a bowl of forest, the lights of the little formal
town glittered in a pattern, street crossing street; away by itself on
the right, the palace was glowing like a factory.

Although he knew not Otto, one of the wood-merchants was a native of the
state. 'There,' said he, pointing to the palace with his whip, 'there is
Jezebel's inn.'

'What, do you call it that?' cried another, laughing.

'Ay, that's what they call it,' returned the Grunewalder; and he broke
into a song, which the rest, as people well acquainted with the words and
air, instantly took up in chorus. Her Serene Highness Amalia Seraphina,
Princess of Grunewald, was the heroine, Gondremark the hero of this
ballad. Shame hissed in Otto's ears. He reined up short and sat stunned
in the saddle; and the singers continued to descend the hill without him.

The song went to a rough, swashing, popular air; and long after the words
became inaudible the swing of the music, rising and falling, echoed
insult in the Prince's brain. He fled the sounds. Hard by him on his
right a road s