I forgive you; even in this hour of passion, I can perceive my
faults and your excuses; and if I desire that in future I may be
spared your conversation, it is not, sir, from resentment - not
resentment - but, by Heaven, because no man on earth could endure to
be so rated. You have the satisfaction to see your sovereign weep;
and that person whom you have so often taunted with his happiness
reduced to the last pitch of solitude and misery. No, - I will hear
nothing; I claim the last word, sir, as your Prince; and that last
word shall be - forgiveness.'
And with that Otto was gone from the apartment, and Doctor Gotthold
was left alone with the most conflicting sentiments of sorrow,
remorse, and merriment; walking to and fro before his table, and
asking himself, with hands uplifted, which of the pair of them was
most to blame for this unhappy rupture. Presently, he took from a
cupboard a bottle of Rhine wine and a goblet of the deep Bohemian
ruby. The first glass a little warmed and comforted his bosom; with
the second he began to look down upon these troubles from a sunny
mountain; yet a while, and filled with this false comfort and
contemplating life throughout a golden medium, he owned to himself,
with a flush, a smile, and a half-pleasurable sigh, that he had been
somewhat over plain in dealing with his cousin. 'He said the truth,
too,' added the penitent librarian, 'for in my monkish fashion I
adore the Princess.
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