With two troopers in front of him and two behind, Max climbed the steps readily enough. They wouldn't dare kill him, whatever they did. He tried to imagine himself the hero of some Scott or Dumas tale, with a grim cardinal somewhere above, and oubliettes and torture chambers besetting his path. But the absurdity of his imagination, so thoroughly Americanized, evoked a ringing laughter. The troopers eyed him curiously. He might laugh later, but it was scarcely probable. A tramp through a dark corridor and they came to the west wing of the castle. It was here that the old prince lived, comfortably and luxuriously enough, you may take my word for it.
A door opened, flooding the corridor with light. Max felt himself gently pushed over the threshold. He stood in the great living-room of the modern Doppelkinns. The first person he saw was the princess. She sat on an oriental divan. Her hands were folded; she sat very erect; her chin was tilted ominously; there was so little expression on her pale face that she might have been an incomplete statue. But Max was almost certain that there was just the faintest flicker of a smile in her eyes as she saw him enter. Glorious eyes! (It is a bad sign when a man begins to use the superlative adjectives!)
The other occupant of the room was an old man, fat and bald, with a nose like a russet pear. He was stalking—if it is possible for a short man to stalk—up and down the length of the room, and, judging from the sonorous, rumbling sound, was communing half-aloud. Betweenwhiles he was rubbing his tender nose, carefully and lovingly. When a man's nose resembles a russet pear it generally is tender. Whoever he was, Max saw that he was vastly agitated about something.
This old gentleman was (or supposed he was) the last of his line, the Prince of Doppelkinn, famous for his wines and his love of them. There was, so his subjects said, but one tender spot in the heart of this old man, and that was the memory of the wife of his youth. (How the years, the good and bad, crowd behind us, pressing us on and on!) However, there was always surcease in the cellars—that is, the Doppelkinn cellars.
"Ha!" he roared as he saw the blinking Max. "So this is the fellow!" He made an eloquent gesture. "Your Highness must be complimented upon your good taste. The fellow isn't bad-looking."
"When you listen to reason, Prince," replied the girl calmly, "you will apologize to the gentleman and give him his liberty."
"Oh, he is a gentleman, is he?"
"You might learn from him many of the common rules of courtesy,"—tranquilly.
"Who the devil are you?" the prince demanded of Max.
"I should be afraid to tell you. I hold that I am Max Scharfenstein, but the colonel here declares that my name is Ellis. Who are you?" Max wasn't the least bit frightened. These were not feudal times.