CHAPTER VII
OMPERTZ DRIVES A BARGAIN
“NO news of Prince Ludwig?” the Duke enquired.
The Chancellor shook his head. “None. He seems to have cut himself off from news. It is tiresome.”
“After all,” said his highness, “there is no great hurry.”
“There is hurry,” Rollmar contradicted. There were occasions when he did not concern himself to be too deferential to his master, and this was one of them. “It is quite time that the Prince at least showed himself. The effect on the Princess of this indifference may be disastrous.”
“I hardly think that,” the Duke objected with a weak man’s decision; a stupid man’s confidence in his own judgment. “Omne ignotum——”
“The application of the aphorism is wide,” rejoined Rollmar bluntly, “but it does not embrace royalties.”
“Oh?” questioned the Duke, feeling that it had very often included himself.
“No,” the schoolmaster maintained with an expression of something like contempt for his royal pupil. “Decidedly not where political expediency is in the air. If it were a simple lieutenant of cavalry, now, instead of the heir to a throne, the pro magnifico might apply. A young soldier has possibilities to every woman, a prince only to those of the middle classes.”
“You don’t know Ruperta.”