The song went to a rough, swashing, popular air; and long after the words became inaudible the swing of the music, rising and falling, echoed insult in the Prince’s brain. He fled the sounds. Hard by him on his right a road struck towards the palace, and he followed it through the thick shadows and branching alleys of the park. It was a busy place on a fine summer’s afternoon, when the court and burghers met and saluted; but at that hour of the night in the early spring it was deserted to the roosting birds. Hares rustled among the covert; here and there a statue stood glimmering, with its eternal gesture; here and there the echo of an imitation temple clattered ghostly to the trampling of the mare. Ten minutes brought him to the upper end of his own home garden, where the small stables opened, over a bridge, upon the park. The yard clock was striking the hour of ten; so was the big bell in the palace bell-tower; and, farther off, the belfries of the town. About the stable all else was silent but the stamping of stalled horses and the rattle of halters. Otto dismounted; and as he did so a memory came back to him: a whisper of dishonest grooms and stolen corn, once heard, long forgotten, and now recurring in the nick of opportunity. He crossed the bridge, and, going up to a window, knocked six or seven heavy blows in a particular cadence, and, as he did so, smiled. Presently a wicket was opened in the gate, and a man’s head appeared in the dim starlight.
‘Dear heart a’ mercy!’ cried the groom. ‘Who’s that?’
‘It is I, the Prince,’ replied Otto. ‘Bring a lantern, take in the mare, and let me through into the garden.’
The man remained silent for a while, his head still projecting through the wicket.
‘His Highness!’ he said at last. ‘And why did your Highness knock so strange?’
‘It is a superstition in Mittwalden,’ answered Otto, ‘that it cheapens corn.’
With a sound like a sob the groom fled. He was very white when he returned, even by the light of the lantern; and his hand trembled as he undid the fastenings and took the mare.
‘Your Highness,’ he began at last, ‘for God’s sake . . . ’ And there he paused, oppressed with guilt.
‘For God’s sake, what?’ asked Otto cheerfully. ‘For God’s sake let us have cheaper corn, say I. Good-night!’ And he strode off into the garden, leaving the groom petrified once more.