‘O,’ cried Ottilia, in obvious disillusion, ‘a man of middle age! And they said he was so handsome when he was young!’
‘And bald, too,’ added Fritz.
Otto passed his hand among his locks. At that moment he was far from happy, and even the tedious evenings at Mittwalden Palace began to smile upon him by comparison.
‘O, six-and-thirty!’ he protested. ‘A man is not yet old at six-and-thirty. I am that age myself.’
‘I should have taken you for more, sir,’ piped the old farmer. ‘But if that be so, you are of an age with Master Ottekin, as people call him; and, I would wager a crown, have done more service in your time. Though it seems young by comparison with men of a great age like me, yet it’s some way through life for all that; and the mere fools and fiddlers are beginning to grow weary and to look old. Yes, sir, by six-and-thirty, if a man be a follower of God’s laws, he should have made himself a home and a good name to live by; he should have got a wife and a blessing on his marriage; and his works, as the Word says, should begin to follow him.’
‘Ah, well, the Prince is married,’ cried Fritz, with a coarse burst of laughter.
‘That seems to entertain you, sir,’ said Otto.
‘Ay,’ said the young boor. ‘Did you not know that? I thought all Europe knew it!’ And he added a pantomime of a nature to explain his accusation to the dullest.
‘Ah, sir,’ said Mr. Gottesheim, ‘it is very plain that you are not from hereabouts! But the truth is, that the whole princely family and Court are rips and rascals, not one to mend another. They live, sir, in idleness and—what most commonly follows it—corruption. The Princess has a lover—a Baron, as he calls himself, from East Prussia; and the Prince is so little of a man, sir, that he holds the candle. Nor is that the worst of it, for this foreigner and his paramour are suffered to transact the State affairs, while the Prince takes the salary and leaves all things to go to wrack. There will follow upon this some manifest judgment which, though I am old, I may survive to see.’
‘Good man, you are in the wrong about Gondremark,’ said Fritz, showing a greatly increased animation; ‘but for all the rest, you speak the God’s truth like a good patriot. As for the Prince, if he would take and strangle his wife, I would forgive him yet.’