Fiction > Book editions > London, 1888 - Prince Otto

i66 PRINCE OTTO
The fellow became instantly reassured. He
got the sack ; and Otto led him round by several
paths and avenues, conversing pleasantly by the
way, and left him at last planted by a certain
fountain where a goggle-eyed Triton spouted
intermittently into a ripphng laver. Thence he
proceeded alone to where, in a round clearing, a
copy of Gian Bologna's Mercury stood tiptoe in
the twilight of the stars. The night was warm
and windless. A shaving of new moon had
lately arisen ; but it was still too small and too
low down in heaven to contend with the immense
host of lesser luminaries ; and the rough face of
the earth was drenched with starlight. Down
one of the alleys, which widened as it receded,
he could see a part of the lamplit terrace where
a sentry silently paced, and beyond that a corner
of the town with interlacing street-lights. But
all around him the young trees stood mystically
blurred in the dim shine ; and in the stock-still
quietness the upleaping god appeared ahve.
In this dimness and silence of the nisht.
Otto's conscience became suddenly and staringly
luminous like the dial of a city clock. He
averted the eyes of his mind, but the finger,
rapidly travelling, pointed to a series of misdeeds
that took his breath away. What was he doing
in that place? The money had been wrongly
squandered, but that was largely by his own