"My dear Knobelsdorff," replied Johann Albrecht, with some irritation and almost in tears, "you must forgive my ill-humour; you surely do not wish me to be in good spirits. I can see no reason for being so. The Grand Duchess is going on well--true enough, and the child is a boy--that's a blessing too. But he has come into the world with an atrophy, a constriction, caused by amniotic threads. Nobody is to blame, it is a misfortune; but misfortunes for which nobody is to blame are the most terrible of all misfortunes, and the sight of their Sovereign ought to awaken in his people other feelings than those of sympathy. The Heir Apparent is delicate, needs constant care. It was a miracle that he survived that attack of pleurisy two years ago, and it will be nothing less than a miracle if he lives to attain his majority. Now Heaven grants me a second son--he seems strong, but he comes into the world with only one hand. The other is stunted, useless, a deformity, he will have to hide it. What a drawback! What an impediment! He will have to brave it out before the world all his life. We must let it gradually leak out, so that it may not cause too much of a shock on his first appearance in public. No, I cannot yet get over it. A prince with one hand ..." "'With one hand,'" said Herr von Knobelsdorff. "Did your Royal Highness use that expression twice deliberately?" "Deliberately?" "You did not, then?... For the Prince has two hands, yet as one is stunted, one might if one liked also describe him as a prince with one hand." "What then?" "And one must almost wish, not that your Royal Highness's second son, but that the heir to the throne were the victim of this small malformation." "What do you mean by that?" "Why, your Royal Highness will laugh at me; but I am thinking of the gipsy woman." "The gipsy woman? Please go on, my dear Baron!" "Of the gipsy woman--forgive me!--who a hundred years ago prophesied the birth of a Prince to your Royal Highness's house--a prince 'with one hand'--that is how tradition puts it--and attached to the birth of that prince a certain promise, couched in peculiar terms." The Grand Duke turned on his seat and stared, without saying a word, at Herr von Knobelsdorff, at the outer corner of whose eyes the radiating wrinkles were playing. Then, "Mighty entertaining!" he said, and resumed his former attitude.