Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/123

 The girl flushed with pleasure. ‘But Frédéric 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 almanack; 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 manœuvre. It is as simple as a sum. There can be no resistance.’