Fiction > Book editions > London, 1888 - Prince Otto

72 PRINCE OTTO
gentleman, opening a door behind Gottliold,
received them fairly in the face. With his
parrot's beak for a nose, his pursed mouth, his
little goggling eyes, he was the picture of for-
mality ; and in ordinary circumstances, strutting
behind the drum of his corporation, he im-
pressed the beholder with a certain air of frozen
dignity and wisdom. But at the smallest con-
trariety, his trembling hands and disconnected
gestures betrayed the weakness at the root.
And now, when he was thus surprisingly re-
ceived in that library of Mittwalden Palace,
which was the customary haunt of silence, his
hands went up into the air as if he had been
shot, and he cried aloud with the scream of an
old woman.
' ! ' he gasped, recovering, ' Your High-
ness ! I beg ten thousand pardons. But your
Highness at such an hour in the library! — a
circumstance so unusual as your Highness's
presence was a thing I could not be expected to
foresee.'
' There is no harm done, Herr Cancellarius,'
said Otto.
' I came upon the errand of a moment :
some papers I left over night with the Herr
Doctor,' said the Chancellor of Grlinewald.
' Herr Doctor, if you will kindly give me them,
I will intrude no longer.'