Fiction > Book editions > London, 1888 - Prince Otto

86 PRINCE OTTO
ticians, for a remarkable prevision of events.
All this, however, without grace, pleasantry, or
charm, heavily set forth, with a dull countenance.
In our numerous conversations, although he has
always heard me with deference, I have been
conscious throughout of a sort of ponderous
finessing hard to tolerate. He prodiices none of
the effect of a gentleman ; devoid not merely of
pleasantry, but of all attention or communicative
warmth of bearing. No gentleman, besides,
would so parade his amours with the Princess ;
still less repay the Prince for his long-suffering
with a studied insolence of demeanour and the
fabrication of insulting nicknames, such as Prince
Featherhead, which run from ear to ear and
create a laugh throughout the country. Gon-
dremark has thus some of the clumsier characters
of the self-made man, combined with an inordi-
nate, almost a besotted, pride of intellect and
birth. Heavy, bilious, selfish, inornate, he sits
upon this court and. country hke an incubus.
But it is probable that he preserves softer
gifts for necessary purposes. Indeed, it is cer-
tain, although he vouchsafed none of it to me,
that this cold and stolid pohtician possesses to a
great degree the art of ingratiation, and can be
all things to all men. Hence there has probably
sprung up the idle legend that in private life
he is a gross romping voluptuary. Nothing, at