AT luncheon the next day the Grand Duke was in one of his tantrums. He sneered at Erica and the ladies of the court, he insulted the gentlemen-in-waiting and the heads of the royal household, he cursed the servants. As usual, he ate enormously; as usual, his face grew redder and redder; as usual, his temper rose as the luncheon progressed. At first the others made some attempts to start and carry a conversation. But finding that to speak was to make one’s self a target for sneer and jeer, all became silent. Erica endured with unprecedented meekness. Her thoughts were far away, and she had a feeling about her immediate surroundings which she did not attempt to explain to herself—a feeling that they were slowly fading from her real life.
When he could eat no more, Casimir pushed back his chair from the table and lighted a cigar. “Was ever man damned to such a life as this!” he snarled. “Surrounded by chuckleheads and numskulls, we go through life cracking our jaws with yawning. And here you sit or stand, mute, smirking, and bowing us on towards insanity!” He looked savagely round. “Well!” he exclaimed, “has nobody anything to say?”
All except Erica were trembling. They were accustomed to these outbursts; they knew that their lives and limbs were safe. But their sovereign was thundering, and it was their duty to fear and tremble. Besides, they might lose their places at court, might be banished from its glory, might be deprived of the honor and the happiness of receiving these humiliations and insults from exalted rank.
Choking with rage, Casimir rose and stamped from the room. In his cabinet he flung himself on a sofa and cursed and ground his cigar between his teeth. As he had never in his life been curbed, and as there was no public opinion to control him, no standard of private conduct to constrain him, he acted precisely as he felt, when he was not posing before the people. He despised the people, of course; but they paid the taxes, and they paid because they believed him a superior being, a shepherd without whom they, the lowly flock, would be in a miserable plight. He was most careful to keep up appearances before them, to do nothing that would discourage their loyalty to the throne, their tolerance of its tax-gatherers.
The cause of Casimir’s present outburst was Grafton’s failure to keep his appointment. “Has he gone away?” thought Casimir. “Or is he playing on my notorious craze for Rembrandts?” He sent his personal servant to the Hôtel de l’Europe privately to inquire. When he learned that Grafton was still there he began to fear that he was mistaken in thinking he had come to Zweitenbourg with a definite purpose. How to reopen the negotiation—that was the question.
He sent for Erica. “Read!” he said. “No; talk! Are you glad Aloyse is coming to-night?” This with a sneer.
“I had forgotten it,” replied Erica, calmly.
“Forgotten it? Forgotten your sweetheart? Forgotten! Haven’t you seen this morning’s Gazette? It’s a love-match, the Gazette says, ‘The handsome and brilliant heir to the throne and his beautiful cousin have been lovers since childhood.’” Casimir laughed harshly. “Love! And you could forget my high-spirited, handsome, intellectual heir? Wonderful!”
“I had an adventure in the park yesterday that I’ve been thinking about ever since,” said Erica. And she went on to tell the story of the boar, saying as little as possible of Grafton, and being careful to put that little prudently.
The Grand Duke was so interested that he sat up, forgot his indigestion and his boredom and his departed youth. “And who was this man?” he asked. “He must be rewarded.”