Prince Otto | Page 4

bare chamber of an inn, and the song of
birds and the music of the village-bells - these were the recollections of
the Grunewald tourist.
North and east the foothills of Grunewald sank with varying profile
into a vast plain. On these sides many small states bordered with the
principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the number. On
the south it marched with the comparatively powerful kingdom of
Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain bears, and
inhabited by a people of singular simplicity and tenderness of heart.
Several intermarriages had, in the course of centuries, united the
crowned families of Grunewald and Maritime Bohemia; and the last
Prince of Grunewald, whose history I purpose to relate, drew his
descent through Perdita, the only daughter of King Florizel the First of
Bohemia. That these intermarriages had in some degree mitigated the
rough, manly stock of the first Grunewalds, was an opinion widely held
within the borders of the principality. The charcoal burner, the
mountain sawyer, the wielder of the broad axe among the congregated
pines of Grunewald, proud of their hard hands, proud of their shrewd
ignorance and almost savage lore, looked with an unfeigned contempt
on the soft character and manners of the sovereign race.
The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to the
conjecture of the reader. But for the season of the year (which, in such
a story, is the more important of the two) it was already so far forward
in the spring, that when mountain people heard horns echoing all day
about the north-west corner of the principality, they told themselves
that Prince Otto and his hunt were up and out for the last time till the
return of autumn.
At this point the borders of Grunewald descend somewhat steeply, here
and there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless country
stands in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below. It was traversed
at that period by two roads alone; one, the imperial highway, bound to
Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope obliquely and by the
easiest gradients. The other ran like a fillet across the very forehead of

the hills, dipping into savage gorges, and wetted by the spray of tiny
waterfalls. Once it passed beside a certain tower or castle, built sheer
upon the margin of a formidable cliff, and commanding a vast prospect
of the skirts of Grunewald and the busy plains of Gerolstein. The
Felsenburg (so this tower was called) served now as a prison, now as a
hunting-seat; and for all it stood so lonesome to the naked eye, with the
aid of a good glass the burghers of Brandenau could count its windows
from the lime-tree terrace where they walked at night.
In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the horns
continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as the sun began
to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing triumph announced
the slaughter of the quarry. The first and second huntsman had drawn
somewhat aside, and from the summit of a knoll gazed down before
them on the drooping shoulders of the hill and across the expanse of
plain. They covered their eyes, for the sun was in their faces. The glory
of its going down was somewhat pale. Through the confused tracery of
many thousands of naked poplars, the smoke of so many houses, and
the evening steam ascending from the fields, the sails of a windmill on
a gentle eminence moved very conspicuously, like a donkey's ears. And
hard by, like an open gash, the imperial high-road ran straight sun-ward,
an artery of travel.
There is one of nature's spiritual ditties, that has not yet been set to
words or human music: 'The Invitation to the Road'; an air continually
sounding in the ears of gipsies, and to whose inspiration our nomadic
fathers journeyed all their days. The hour, the season, and the scene, all
were in delicate accordance. The air was full of birds of passage,
steering westward and northward over Grunewald, an army of specks to
the up-looking eye. And below, the great practicable road was bound
for the same quarter.
But to the two horsemen on the knoll this spiritual ditty was unheard.
They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every fold of the
subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and dismay in their impatient
gestures.
'I do not see him, Kuno,' said the first huntsman, 'nowhere - not a trace,
not a hair of the mare's tail! No, sir, he's off; broke cover and got away.
Why, for twopence I would hunt him with the dogs!'
'Mayhap, he's gone home,' said Kuno, but without conviction.

'Home!' sneered the other. 'I give him twelve