Page:The Prime Minister by Hall Caine.djvu/16

viii Prince of Austria; the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife; a little Austrian baroness who was lady-in-waiting, and (I think, but am not sure) one of the younger sons of the Kaiser, whom I had frequently seen in the same company. They had sleighed over from St. Moritz and were to go back after tea.

Knowing I was staying in the house the Princess kindly sent up to ask me to join her party, and going downstairs I found the rather large company in the timbered hall by the side of a crackling wood fire, seated in the manner of country folk about a big pine tea-table. My recollections of that tea-party centre in the impression left on my dramatic sense by the contrast and, as subsequent events show, the conflict of family relations and dynastic interests. There was the Archduke, a stiff-set, stolid, gloomy, not very inspiring person, commonly understood to be intensely hostile to England and France, and closely bound to Germany and the person of the Kaiser. And there was the brighter and more expansive Belgian Princess, daughter of the late King and cousin of the present one. If the war came which was even then, threatening (it was mentioned that afternoon, I remember, that Austria had eight hundred thousand men under arms) and Germany carried out the intention that was being openly avowed by her military writers, of marching over Belgium to get at France, what would happen to the members of that family group? How would they stand to each other in the tragic developments of the plots and counterplots that are the chief industries of what Mr. Gerard calls "the King business." In particular, how would the daughter of Belgium stand