Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/125

 own resolutions; for she continued to oppose her counsellor, looking upon him out of half-closed eyes and with the shadow of a sneer upon her lips. ‘What boys men are!’ she said; ‘what lovers of big words! Courage, indeed! If you had to scour pans, Herr Von Gondremark, you would call it, I suppose, Domestic Courage?’

‘I would, madam,’ said the Baron stoutly, ‘if I scoured them well. I would put a good name upon a virtue; you will not overdo it: they are not so enchanting in themselves.’

‘Well, but let me see,’ she said. ‘I wish to understand your courage. Why we asked leave, like children! Our grannie in Berlin, our uncle in Vienna, the whole family, have patted us on the head and sent us forward. Courage? I wonder when I hear you!’

‘My Princess is unlike herself,’ returned the Baron. ‘She has forgotten where the peril lies. True, we have received encouragement on every hand; but my Princess knows too well on what untenable conditions; and she knows besides how, in the publicity of the diet, these whispered conferences are forgotten and disowned. The danger is very real’—he raged inwardly at having to blow the very coal he had been quenching—‘none the less real in that it is not