Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/151

 ground, were exchanging glances of delight; a row at the council was for them a rare and welcome feature.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Otto, when he had finished, ‘I have read with pain. This claim upon Obermünsterol is palpably unjust; it has not a tincture, not a show, of justice. There is not in all this ground enough for after-dinner talk, and you propose to force it as a casus belli.’

‘Certainly, your Highness,’ returned Gondremark, too wise to defend the indefensible, ‘the claim on Obermünsterol is simply a pretext.’

‘It is well,’ said the Prince. ‘Herr Cancellarius, take your pen. “The council,” he began to dictate—‘I withhold all notice of my intervention,’ he said, in parenthesis, and addressing himself more directly to his wife; ‘and I say nothing of the strange suppression by which this business has been smuggled past my knowledge. I am content to be in time—“The council, he resumed, on a further examination of the facts, and enlightened by the note in the last despatch from Gerolstein, have the pleasure to announce that they are entirely at one, both as to fact and sentiment, with the Grand Ducal Court of Gerolstein.” You have it? Upon these lines, sir, you will draw up the despatch.’

‘If your Highness will allow me,’ said the