“And it will be their pleasure to take it back,” said Armand kindly, “but not in that way—they must win it back from you.”
Bernheim drew himself up. “I understand, sir,” he said.—“Messieurs, I salute you.”
When they came out on the Avenue, a fine rain was blowing in clouds, but the Archduke declined the servant’s offer to ring the stables for a carriage. The street was deserted; not a pedestrian, nor even a cab, was in sight, either way. Both men wrapped their capes around them, and strode off toward the Epsau.
“A dirty night, sir,” the Colonel observed—“it might have been well to take the carriage.”
“I like it,” said Armand; “to walk in the rain or to ride in the snow.”
“The snow, yes—but we don’t have much of it in Dornlitz—one must go to the mountains in the North—to Lotzenia—for it.”
“My dear cousin’s country!”
“His titular estates—but not his country,” said Bernheim. “He has the old castle on the Dreer and a huge domain—that King Frederick’s father gave to Lotzen’s father in a foolish moment of generosity—but he hasn’t the heart of a single inhabitant; indeed, until his banishment there, I think he had never even seen the place. But with the old castle of Dalberg, across the valley—the cradle of your race, sir—it’s very different. Who rules there is the idol of the Lotzenians; he is their hereditary lord; and they can never forget that he belonged to them before he took the Crown, and that they helped him in the taking.”
“And now that there is no king, whom will they serve until the new lord comes?”
Bernheim raised his cap.