He buried his face in his hands, unable to look at her, waiting only for the confirmation of his sentence. Sophia paused, allowing her emotion to quiet itself, and then spoke in a firm voice:
‘The separation granted by the court between Prince Petros and myself is confirmed,’ she said. ‘But the Crown, having pity for the Prince’s youth, and bearing in mind that he was no more than the tool of another, commutes his sentence of perpetual imprisonment to perpetual banishment from the realm of Rhodopé. He is free to go and to do as he will outside our dominions. He will leave Mavromáti this afternoon in the royal yacht Felatrune, to the commander of which orders shall be given to go where the Prince directs. He will be removed secretly, so that no public disrespect shall be shown him. I thank you, my Lord Chief Justice and gentlemen. The court is adjourned.’
She stepped down from the Bench, and went to the front of the dock, holding out her hand.
‘Good-bye, Petros,’ she said, and with a sudden flood of tears he bent and kissed it.
CHAPTER XII.
THE EDUCATION OF THE HEIR-APPARENT.
Prince Leonard early exhibited that same craving for diversion and excitement which had made the childhood of his mother so full of incident to her teachers. He could not, as she had done, request reluctant tutors to elope with him, but he made their lives burdensome by a scientific curiosity to observe their conduct under such trying circumstances as the cold aspersion of unsuspected booby-traps. Indeed, such was the continuous pressure of his animal spirits, and his greed of adventure, that the gentlemen who held these brief appointments were as precariously situated as engine-drivers the boilers of whose machines might be expected momentarily to burst. He was an excellent rider, born to the saddle, and at the age of eleven his handicap at golf was only nine. He had a fanatical abhorrence of his lessons, and his natural linguistic powers, and the royal birthright of memory, made whatever intellectual task he was good enough to undertake extremely easy to him. He had the fair skin and dark hair of his mother, and in the whole realm of Rhodopé there was not a more lovable or so unmanageable a boy.
When he was just thirteen, he indulged in a series of escapades that made Sophia take him seriously. The first of these was that he challenged, fought with, and wrought havoc upon the pasty person of the son of the Mayor of Amandos, an act undignified in one of his station, and performed in a manner distressingly public. The two, stripped to their shirts and trousers, had fought three rounds in the square in front of the cathedral, while Sophia, with whom Leonard had been driving to a public function, paid a call of condolence on the wife of the Mayor, a victim to neuralgia. The Princess and she had been sitting in a room overlooking the square, when the hubbub from outside, and shouts of ‘Go it, Prince Leonard! Three to one on the Prince!’ caused them simultaneously to rise, and run in apprehensive haste to the window. The carriage, which had waited in the street, was tenantless, the Prince’s hat and sailor jacket were lying in the road, a crowd of street-boys made an enthusiastic ring, and the heir-apparent to the throne had his opponent’s head comfortably in chancery. The wife of the Mayor gazed but for one moment, and then shrieking out, ‘The monster! he will kill my child!’ rushed distractedly from the room. Sophia followed, and on the stairs ran into the boy’s tutor, who, being totally unable to stop him fighting, had very sensibly hastened to tell his mother. The Mayoress bore her battered offspring away, and Sophia returned to the carriage with Leonard.
‘Oh, mother, didn’t I give it him!’ cried the boy. ‘My knuckles are quite sore with hitting his great head. He couldn’t have lasted another round.’
‘Put on your jacket at once, Leonard,’ said his mother sternly. ‘You, the Prince, fighting in the public street! I wonder you are not ashamed!’
‘But I couldn’t help it,’ cried Leonard. ‘I had to fight him. He said things about you.’