And his Serene Highness gave orders to drive to the east over Woldegk;
and when they had passed Woldegk and reached Wolfshagen, Jochen
Coachman turned around once more on his old horse and said, “Rand,
here’s the end again, we can’t go any further.”
And Princess Christel, who had overheard it, said: “Your Grace, this
is the first time I have travelled through our estates; I’d never have
thought it was such a short way.”
“Christel,” said his Serene Highness, “you’re a woman, and you don’t
know much. What do you suppose? There’s a good lot more toward noon.
Feldberg and Mirow and Fürstenberg, all that is in my domain, and then
beyond Mirow there’s quite a lengthy bit stretching into our neighbour
Schwerin’s possessions that makes a good show.”
“Nay, your Highness,” said Rand, who had overheard, “it doesn’t make
much of a show, for the sand just pours into a person’s eyes, as _I_
ought to know, for I was born and bred there.”
His Serene Highness very nearly lost his temper at Rand’s foolish
twaddle. He leaned far out of the gilt coach, and called out: “Jochen
Boenhas, we’ll go home now! And to-morrow we’ll take the Fürstenberg
hemlock grove and Mirow.”
And it was done exactly as his Serene Highness had said, for he was a
high-spirited prince, and when he had once said, “I say!” then sure
enough he _had_ said it.
So the next day they went beyond Fürstenberg to the hemlock grove,
and when Rand turned to look into the carriage and say, “Your Grace,
here we are at the end again,” then his Serenity looked sinister, and
shouted “Wesenbarg!” to console himself; but in spite of Wesenbarg, he
came back to Neu-Strelitz in an utterly discontented spirit, and Rand
and sister Christel stood in the hall together, shaking their heads and
saying, “Where will this end?”
And the evening and the morning were the third day, and his Highness
did not reign during that night, for he slept. The bitterns kept
silent, and all the ghosts that had of late taken to haunting the
palace at Neu-Strelitz had their off-night.
The next morning the _valet de chambre_ came down to the princess
and said: “Thank goodness! we have slept in peace for one night, and
reigned right along without let or hindrance, and to-day we are going
to travel westward, toward Neu-Brandenburg, and that finishes up the
whole business.”
And Princess Christel said, “The Lord be praised! Then he will have
peace; he is too ambitious a prince.” And three hours later they passed
the inn near Neu-Brandenburg, and Sachtleben’s old bay horse, having
got to the end of his rope, one of the innkeeper’s horses was hitched
up, and his Serene Highness walked up and down before the door, and
looked across the sunny lake over to the woods of Broda, and said to
his sister Christel in High German--for the innkeeper’s wife stood
near, and he must needs show her his Serenity at its finest--
“What say you, Princess? Shall we build our Belvedere on the other side
of this pleasant lake?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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