Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/162

 sulted,’ said the Baron. ‘Look into your intellect, and tell me.’

‘I find nothing, nothing but tumult,’ she replied.

‘You find one word branded, madam,’ returned the Baron: Abdication!

‘O!’ she cried. ‘The coward! He leaves me to bear all, and in the hour of trial he stabs me from behind. There is nothing in him, not respect, not love, not courage—his wife, his dignity, his throne, the honour of his father, he forgets them all!’

‘Yes,’ pursued the Baron, ‘the word Abdication. I perceive a glimmering there.’

‘I read your fancy,’ she returned. ‘It is mere madness, midsummer madness. Baron, I am more unpopular than he. You know it. They can excuse, they can love, his weakness; but me, they hate.’

‘Such is the gratitude of peoples,’ said the Baron. ‘But we trifle. Here, madam, are my plain thoughts. The man who in the hour of danger speaks of abdication is, for me, a venomous animal. I speak with the bluntness of gravity, madam; this is no hour for mincing. The coward, in a station of authority, is more dangerous than fire. We dwell on a volcano; if this man can have his way, Grünewald before a week will have been deluged with innocent blood.