'I cannot.'
'From what does all this spring?' said the Prince, stopping in his
walk. 'What am I to call it? Diffidence? The fear of ridicule?
Inverted vanity? What matter names, if it has brought me to this?
I could never bear to be bustling about nothing; I was ashamed of
this toy kingdom from the first; I could not tolerate that people
should fancy I believed in a thing so patently absurd! I would do
nothing that cannot be done smiling. I have a sense of humour,
forsooth! I must know better than my Maker. And it was the same
thing in my marriage,' he added more hoarsely. 'I did not believe
this girl could care for me; I must not intrude; I must preserve the
foppery of my indifference. What an impotent picture!'
'Ay, we have the same blood,' moralised Gotthold. 'You are drawing,
with fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic.'
'Sceptic? - coward!' cried Otto. 'Coward is the word. A
springless, putty-hearted, cowering coward!'
And as the Prince rapped out the words in tones of unusual vigour, a
little, stout, old gentleman, opening a door behind Gotthold,
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 formality; and in ordinary circumstances, strutting behind the
drum of his corporation, he impressed the beholder with a certain
air of frozen dignity and wisdom.
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