With the lanterns shining around him—surely a weird and remarkable scene which would, if described by the journalists, have caused a great sensation in Europe—the Crown-Prince was brought slowly back to consciousness, until at last he sat up, dazed and wondering.
His first words to me were:
"That fellow! Where is he? That—that glass globe!"
Glass globe! Surely His Highness's mind was wandering.
An hour later he was comfortably in bed in the great old-world room in the castle, attended by a local doctor—upon whom I set the seal of official silence—and before dawn he had completely recovered.
Yet, even to me, he declared that he retained absolutely no knowledge of what had occurred.
"I went out quickly, and I—well, I don't know what happened," he told me soon after dawn, as he lay in bed. Strangely enough, he made no mention of the man, Karl Krahl.
Later on he summoned the Countess von Kienitz, and for twenty minutes or so he had an animated discussion with her. Being outside the room, however, I was unable to hear distinctly.
Well, I succeeded, by bribes and threats, in hushing up the whole affair and keeping it out of the papers, while by those who knew of the incident it was soon forgotten.
I suppose it must have been fully three months later when one evening, having taken some documents over to the Emperor for signature at the Berlin Schloss, I returned to the Prince's private room in the Palace, when, to my great surprise, I found the man Karl Krahl seated there. He looked very pale and worn, quite unlike the rather athletic figure he presented at the forester's house.