'I feel it,'
she said. 'But how? He has the power.'
'The power, madam? The power is in the army,' he replied; and then
hastily, ere she could intervene, 'we have to save ourselves,' he
went on; 'I have to save my Princess, she has to save her minister;
we have both of us to save this infatuated youth from his own
madness. He in the outbreak would be the earliest victim; I see
him,' he cried, 'torn in pieces; and Grunewald, unhappy Grunewald!
Nay, madam, you who have the power must use it; it lies hard upon
your conscience.'
'Show me how!' she cried. 'Suppose I were to place him under some
constraint, the revolution would break upon us instantly.'
The Baron feigned defeat. 'It is true,' he said. 'You see more
clearly than I do. Yet there should, there must be, some way.' And
he waited for his chance.
'No,' she said; 'I told you from the first there is no remedy. Our
hopes are lost: lost by one miserable trifler, ignorant, fretful,
fitful - who will have disappeared to-morrow, who knows? to his
boorish pleasures!'
Any peg would do for Gondremark. 'The thing!' he cried, striking
his brow. 'Fool, not to have thought of it! Madam, without perhaps
knowing it, you have solved our problem.'
'What do you mean? Speak!' she said.
He appeared to collect himself; and then, with a smile, 'The
Prince,' he said, 'must go once more a-hunting.
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