Not quite! At the top of the private staircase reserved for the royal family a guard commonly stood. He had moved a few feet from his post, however, and was watching the stage through the half-open door of a private loge. His rifle, with its fixed bayonet, leaned against the stair-rail.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto passed behind him with outward calmness. At the top of the public staircase, however, he hesitated. Here, everywhere, were brass-buttoned officials of the Opera House. A garderobe woman stared at him curiously. There was a noise from the house, too,—a sound of clapping hands and “bravos.” The little Prince looked at the woman with appeal in his eyes. Then, with his heart thumping, he ran past her, down the white marble staircase, to where the great doors promised liberty.
Olga, the wardrobe woman, came out from behind her counter, and stood looking down the marble staircase after the small flying figure.
“Blessed Saints!” she said, wondering. “How much that child resembled His Royal Highness!”
The old soldier who rented opera glasses at the second landing, and who had left a leg in Bosnia, leaned over the railing. “Look at that!” he exclaimed. “He will break a leg, the young rascal! Once I could have—but there, he is safe! The good God watches over fools and children.”
“It looked like the little Prince,” said the wardrobe woman. “I have seen him often—he has the same bright hair.”
But the opera-glass man was not listening. He had drawn a long sausage from one pocket and a roll from the other, and now, retiring to a far window, he stood placidly eating—a bite of sausage, a bite of bread. His mind was in Bosnia, with his leg. And because old Adelbert’s mind was in Bosnia, and because one hears with the mind, and not with the ear, he did not hear the sharp question of the sentry who ran down the stairs and paused for a second at the cloak-room. Well for Olga, too, that old Adelbert did not hear her reply.
“He has not passed here,” she said, with wide and honest eyes; but with an ear toward old Adelbert. “An old gentleman came a moment ago and got a sandwich, which he had left in his overcoat. Perhaps this is whom you are seeking?”
The sentry cursed, and ran down the staircase, the nails in his shoes striking sharply on the marble.
At the window, old Adelbert cut off another slice of sausage with his pocket-knife and sauntered back to his table of opera glasses at the angle of the balustrade. The hurrying figure of the sentry below caught his eye. “Another fool!” he grumbled, looking down. “One would think new legs grew in place of old ones, like the claws of the sea-creatures!”