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Updated: June 11, 2025
"Learn it, O King, learn it! On what padded bed falls William Adolphus!" My laugh broke again through the morning loud and harsh. Then I laid myself to the oars, and we shot across to the bank of Waldenweiter. He shook my hand and sprang out lightly. "I must change my clothes and have my scene, and then to Forstadt," said he. "Good-day to you, sire. Yet remember the lesson of the moralist.
Really I believe that the whole thing was done as handsomely as possible, and the proceedings are duly recorded in a book of red leather, clasped in gold and embellished with many pictures, which the Municipality of Forstadt presented to Elsa in remembrance of the auspicious event. It lies now under a glass case, and, I understand, excites much interest among ladies who come to see my house.
While I lay ill, Princess Heinrich was the dominant influence in the administration of affairs. When I recovered, I found that Coralie Mansoni was no longer playing in Forstadt, and had left the town some weeks before. I put no questions to my mother. I also found that Varvilliers had resigned his official position in the French service, and remained in Forstadt as a private person.
"It's Princess Heinrich's house," he objected with a smile. "For the time, yes. Then come to me at Forstadt." "Yes; unless I have disappeared again." He put his hand on the bows of my canoe and thrust me out into the stream. Then he stood baring his head and crumpling up the soft hat in his fist. I noticed now that his hair was gray all over his head.
The arrangement was that Elsa and I should be left to roam about the woods together, to become well known to one another, and after about three weeks to fall in love. When all was finished, I should receive my bride in state at Forstadt, and the wedding would be solemnized.
"All the fashionable folk in Forstadt will think it much more important," said I, laughing. "Especially the young men, Elsa." "As if I should care about that!" she cried scornfully.
The spirit of Styria reigned in the nursery, rather than the softer code of our more Western country; I doubt whether discipline were stricter in any house in Forstadt than in the royal palace. They roused me at eight on my coronation day. My mother herself came to my bedside, and knelt down for a few minutes by it. Krak stood in the background, grim and gloomy.
They in Forstadt would have liked to marry me every year. Why not? I was to them a sign, a symbol, something they saw and spoke of, but not a man. I reviewed the troops every year. Why should I not be married every year? It would be but the smallest extension of my functions, and all on the lines of logic. I could imagine Princess Heinrich according amplest approval to the scheme.
On my fifteenth birthday Prince von Hammerfeldt, now in his seventy-fifth year, came from Forstadt to Artenberg to offer me congratulations. Though a boy may have such thoughts as I have tried to describe, for the most part he would be flogged to death sooner than utter them; to the Prince above all men an instinct bade me be silent.
Forstadt and I let me share, since I may not engross the credit were much better than going back to Bartenstein. She was looking at me with an uneasy, almost suspicious air. "What made you ask that question?" she said abruptly. I looked round the room. Among the many groups in talk there were faces turned toward us, regarding us with a discreet good-humoured amusement.
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