Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/195

 Grünewalder drunk! One man alone can save the country from this pass, and that is the double-dealer Gondremark, with whom I conjure you to make peace. It will not be you; it never can be you:—you, who can do nothing, as your wife said, but trade upon your station—you, who spent the hours in begging money! And in God’s name, what for? Why money? What mystery of idiocy was this?’

‘It was to no ill end. It was to buy a farm,’ quoth Otto sulkily.

‘To buy a farm!’ cried Gotthold. ‘Buy a farm!’

‘Well, what then?’ returned Otto. ‘I have bought it, if you come to that.’

Gotthold fairly bounded on his seat. ‘And how that?’ he cried.

‘How?’ repeated Otto, startled.

‘Ay, verily, how!’ returned the Doctor. ‘How came you by the money?’

The Prince’s countenance darkened. ‘That is my affair,’ said he.

‘You see you are ashamed,’ retorted Gotthold. ‘And so you bought a farm in the hour of our country’s need—doubtless to be ready for the abdication; and I put it that you stole the funds. There are not three ways of getting money: there are but two: to earn and steal. And now, when you have combined Charles the