Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/194

 ‘Hard? Why, there’s the touchstone! O, I know my poets!’ cried the Doctor. ‘We are but dust and fire, too arid to endure life’s scorching; and love, like the shadow of a great rock, should lend shelter and refreshment, not to the lover only, but to his mistress and to the children that reward them; and their very friends should seek repose in the fringes of that peace. Love is not love that cannot build a home. And you call it love to grudge and quarrel and pick faults? You call it love to thwart her to her face, and bandy insults? Love!’

‘Gotthold, you are unjust. I was then fighting for my country,’ said the Prince.

‘Ay, and there’s the worst of all,’ returned the Doctor. ‘You could not even see that you were wrong; that being where they were, retreat was ruin.’

Why, you supported me!’ cried Otto.

‘I did. I was a fool like you,’ replied Gotthold. ‘But now my eyes are open. If you go on as you have started, disgrace this fellow Gondremark, and publish the scandal of your divided house, there will befall a most abominable thing in Grünewald. A revolution, friend—a revolution.’

‘You speak strangely for a red,’ said Otto.

‘A red republican, but not a revolutionary,’ returned the Doctor. ‘An ugly thing is a