Long Live the King! | Page 5

a white apron, with two yellow braids over her shoulders, was listening
with all the coyness of forty years and six children at home to the
love-making of a man in a false black beard.
The Archduchess, sitting well back, was nodding. Just outside the royal
box, on the red-velvet sofa, General Mettlich, who was the Chancellor,
and had come because he had been invited and stayed outside because
he said he liked to hear music, not see it, was sound asleep. His martial
bosom, with its gold braid, was rising and falling peacefully. Beside

him lay the Prince's crown, a small black derby hat.
The Princess Hilda looked across, and smiled and nodded at Ferdinand
William Otto. Then she went back to the music; she held the score in
her hand and followed it note by note. She was studying music, and her
mother, who was the Archduchess, was watching her. But now and
then, when her mother's eyes were glued to the stage, Hilda stole a
glance at the upper balconies where impecunious young officers leaned
over the rail and gazed at her respectfully.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto considered it all very wearisome. If one
could only wander around the corridor or buy a sandwich from the
stand at the foot of the great staircase - or, better still, if one could only
get to the street, alone, and purchase one of the fig women that Miss
Braithwaite so despised! The Crown Prince felt in his pocket, where his
week's allowance of pocket-money lay comfortably untouched.
The Archduchess, shielded by the velvet hangings with the royal arms
on them, was now quite comfortably asleep. From the corridor came
sounds indicating that the Chancellor preferred making noises to
listening to them. There were signs on the stage that Frau Hugli, braids,
six children, and all, was about to go into the arms of the man with the
false beard.
The Crown Prince meditated. He could go out quickly, and be back
before they knew it. Even if he only wandered about the corridor, it
would stretch his short legs. And outside it was a fine day. It looked
already like spring.
With the trepidation of a canary who finds his cage door open, and,
hopping to the threshold, surveys the world before venturing to explore
it, Prince Ferdinand William Otto rose to his feet, tiptoed past the
Archduchess Annunciata, who did not move, and looked around him
from the doorway.
The Chancellor slept. In the royal dressing-room behind the box a lady
in waiting was sitting and crocheting. She did not care for opera. A
maid was spreading the royal ladies' wraps before the fire. The

princesses had shed their furred carriage boots just inside the door.
They were in a row, very small and dainty.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto picked up his hat and concealed it by
his side. Then nonchalantly, as if to stretch his legs by walking ten feet
up the corridor and back, he passed the dressing-room door. Another
moment, and he was out of sight around a bend of the passageway, and
before him lay liberty.
Not quite! At the top of the private staircase reserved for the royal
family a guard commonly stood. He had moved a few feet from his
post, however, and was watching the stage through the half-open door
of a private loge. His rifle, with its fixed bayonet, leaned against the
stair-rail.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto passed behind him with outward
calmness. At the top of the public staircase, however, he hesitated. Here,
everywhere, were brass-buttoned officials of the Opera House. A
garderobe woman stared at him curiously. There was a noise from the
house, too, - a sound of clapping hands and "bravos." The little Prince
looked at the woman with appeal in his eyes. Then, with his heart
thumping, he ran past her, down the white marble staircase, to where
the great doors promised liberty.
Olga, the wardrobe woman, came out from behind her counter, and
stood looking down the marble staircase after the small flying figure.
"Blessed Saints!" she said, wondering. "How much that child
resembled His Royal Highness!"
The old soldier who rented opera glasses at the second landing, and
who had left a leg in Bosnia, leaned over the railing. "Look at that!" he
exclaimed. "He will break a leg, the young rascal! Once I could have -
but there, he is safe! The good God watches over fools and children."
"It looked like the little Prince," said the wardrobe woman. "I have seen
him often - he has the same bright hair."

But the opera-glass man was not listening. He had drawn a long
sausage from one pocket and a roll from the other, and now, retiring to
a far window, he stood placidly eating -