Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/174

 ‘Then if I ask my favour?’ quoth the Prince.

‘Ask it, mon Prince,’ she answered. ‘Whatever it is, it is granted.’

‘I wish you,’ he returned, ‘this very night to make the farmer of our talk.’

‘Heaven knows your meaning!’ she exclaimed. ‘I know not, neither care; there are no bounds to my desire to please you. Call him made.’

‘I will put it in another way,’ returned Otto. ‘Did you ever steal?’

‘Often!’ cried the Countess. ‘I have broken all the ten commandments; and if there were more to-morrow, I should not sleep till I had broken these.’

‘This is a case of burglary: to say the truth, I thought it would amuse you,’ said the Prince.

‘I have no practical experience,’ she replied, ‘but O! the good-will! I have broken a work-box in my time, and several hearts, my own included. Never a house! But it cannot be difficult; sins are so unromantically easy! What are we to break?’

‘Madam, we are to break the treasury,’ said Otto and he sketched to her briefly, wittily, with here and there a touch of pathos, the story of his visit to the farm, of his promise to buy it, and of the refusal with which his demand for money had been met that morning at the