'
'I share your Highness's repugnance,' answered he. 'But what would
you have? We are defenceless, else.'
'I see it, but this is sudden. It is a public crime,' she said,
nodding at him with a sort of horror.
'Look but a little deeper,' he returned, 'and whose is the crime?'
'His!' she cried. 'His, before God! And I hold him liable. But
still - '
'It is not as if he would be harmed,' submitted Gondremark.
'I know it,' she replied, but it was still unheartily.
And then, as brave men are entitled, by prescriptive right as old as
the world's history, to the alliance and the active help of Fortune,
the punctual goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the
Princess's ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a
line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil
billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to
scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of
the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For
Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran
thus: 'At the first council, procuration to be withdrawn. - CORN.
GREIS.'
So, after three years of exercise, the right of signature was to be
stript from Seraphina. It was more than an insult; it was a public
disgrace; and she did not pause to consider how she had earned it,
but morally bounded under the attack as bounds the wounded tiger.
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