Dorothea’s blue eyes grew round with awe.
“Oh!” she cried breathlessly, too overcome by the suggestion to take it in all at once. But the next moment she gave her head a shake which stirred all the little golden curls that fringed her face. “I do not think I should like it,” she said. “I should be afraid of all those people. And King Maximilian—if he were to speak to me I think I should sink into the earth.”
A frown crossed the young man’s face.
“Is Maximilian so very terrible, then?” he asked. “Has any one taught you to dread him?”
“No, no. It is not that. But it is because he is the King. I should feel afraid of him—I do not know why. And yet I have often wished that I could see him, if I could be hidden behind something, so that he would not know I was there.”
“You do not feel unkindly towards him, then?”
“Unkindly? Oh, no! How could I, when he is our King? I bless him every night when I say my prayers, and ask God not to let him go mad, like his father.”
The young man trembled. He allowed one or two minutes to go by in silence, and when he spoke again his voice was low and indistinct.
“Do you think,” he said slowly—“do people say, that there is any likelihood of that?”
“I never heard that,” was the answer. “But of course it is in the blood, and they say that when that is so, it may break out at any moment. Do you think it is true that Doctor Krauss, the great mind doctor, is always on the watch, and follows the King secretly wherever he goes?”