Fiction > Book editions > London, 1888 - Prince Otto

PRINCE OTTO
larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills,
the splash of running water, the clean odour
of pine sawdust, the sound and smell of the
pleasant wind among the innumerable army of
the mountain pines, the dropping fire of hunts-
men, the dull stroke of the wood-axe, intoler-
able roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean
bare chamber of an inn, and the song of birds
and the music of the village-bells — these were
the recollections of the Grunewald tourist.
North and east the foothills of Grunewald
sank with varying profile into a vast plain. On
these sides many small states bordered with the
principahty, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy,
among the number. On the south it marched
with the comparatively powerful kingdom of
Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and
mountain bears, and inhabited by a people of
singular simphcity and, tenderness of heart.
Several intermarriages had, in the course of
centuries, united the crowned famihes of Grtine-
wald and maritime Bohemia; and the last Prince
of Grunewald, whose history I purpose to relate,
drew his descent through Perdita, the only
daughter of King Florizel the First of Bohemia.
That these intermarriages had in some degree
mitigated the rough, manly stock of the first
Grtinewalds, was an opinion widely held within
the borders of the principahty. The charcoal