Fiction > Book editions > London, 1885 - Prince Otto

A ROMANCE 185
' Otto, are you insane ? ' cried Gottliold,
leaping up. ' Because I ask you how you came
by certain moneys, and because you refuse '
' Herr von Hohenstockwitz, I have ceased to
invite your aid in my affairs,' said Otto. ' I have
heard all that I desire, and you have sufficiently
trampled on my vanity. It may be that I cannot
govern, it may be that I cannot love — you tell
me so with every mark of honesty ; but God has
granted me one virtue, and I can still forgive. I
forgive you ; even in this hour of passion, I can
perceive my faults and your excuses ; and if I
desire tliat in future I may be spared your con-
versation, it is not, sir, from resentment — not
resentment — but, by Heaven, because no man on
earth could endure to be so rated. You have
the satisfaction to see your sovereign weep ; and
that person whom you have so often taunted
with his happiness reduced to the last pitch of
solitude and misery. No, — I will hear nothing ;
I claim the last word, sir, as your Prince ; and
that last word shall be — forgiveness.'
And with that Otto was gone from the apart-
ment, and Doctor Gottliold was left alone with
the most conflicting sentiments of sorrow, re-
morse, and merriment ; walking to and fro before
his table, and asking himself, with hands uplifted,
which of the pair of them was most to blame for
this unhappy rupture. Presently, he took from