KING.
Yes, in another manner. Send them out to the powder mills by the Oranienburger gate. They can make cartridges for my grenadiers out of them. [He goes out.]
GRUMBKOW, SECKENDORF, EVERSMANN (aside). Festivities?
[They go out.]
SCENE VII
The scene changes to the room of Act I.
BARONET HOTHAM comes in cautiously through the centre door, followed by KAMKE.
HOTHAM.
A hall with four doors? Quite right. The Princess' room there? And the Queen's here? Thanks, good friend. [KAMKE goes out.] Baronet Hotham is preserving his incognito to the extent of becoming entirely invisible. I've smuggled myself into the country from London—by way of Hanover—as if I were a bale of prohibited merchandise. [Wipes his forehead.] The deuce take this equestrian official business, where a man needs have the manners of a dandy with the unfeeling bones of a postilion. For four days I've scarcely been out of the saddle. [He throws himself into a chair.] Gad! if the nations knew how a man has to win his way through to the Foreign Office by years of courier-riding, they'd not think it strange that their statesmen, grown mature, seem disinclined to trip the light fantastic. Faith, it weighs one's pocket heavily, this carrying a kingdom about with one. [He slaps his right coat-pocket.] Here lies the crown of England. [Now the left coat-pocket.] Here the crown of Scotland—and here, in my waistcoat pocket, is Ireland. What shall I take from herein exchange? [He looks about.] Is the gilding real? It looks deuced niggardly and close-fisted. There's space enough in these great halls, but I'll wager there are many mice here. It's as quiet as an English Sunday. [Rises.] There's some one coming.
[Rises PRINCE opens the centre door, then halts on the threshold as if in despair.]