My father rushed up to me after dark.  Embracing me and holding me by the hand, he congratulated me with his whole heart.  The desire of his life was accomplished; the thing he had plotted for ages had come to pass.  He praised me infinitely.  My glorious future, he said, was to carry a princess to England and sit among the, highest there, the husband of a lady peerless in beauty and in birth, who, in addition to what she was able to do for me by way of elevation in my country, could ennoble in her own territory.  I had the option of being the father of English nobles or of German princes; so forth.  I did not like the strain; yet I clung to him.  I was compelled to ask whether he had news of any sort worth hearing.

‘None,’ said he calmly; ’none.  I have everything to hear, nothing to relate; and, happily, I can hardly speak for joy.’  He wept.

He guaranteed to have the margravine at the chateau within a week, which seemed to me a sufficient miracle.  The prince, he said, might require three months of discretionary treatment.  Three further months to bring the family round, and the princess would be mine.  ’But she is yours! she is yours already!’ he cried authoritatively.  ’She is the reigning intellect there.  I dreaded her very intellect would give us all the trouble, and behold, it is our ally!  The prince lives with an elbow out of his income.  But for me it would be other parts of his person as well, I assure you, and the world would see such a princely tatterdemalion as would astonish it.  Money to him is important.  He must carry on his mine.  He can carry on nothing without my help.  By the way, we have to deal out cheques?’

I assented.

In spite of myself, I caught the contagion of his exuberant happiness and faith in his genius.  The prince had applauded his energetic management of the affairs of the mine two or three times in my hearing.  It struck me that he had really found his vocation, and would turn the sneer on those who had called him volatile and reckless.  This led me to a luxurious sense of dependence on him, and I was willing to live on dreaming and amused, though all around me seemed phantoms, especially the French troupe, the flower of the Parisian stage:  Regnault, Carigny, Desbarolles, Mesdames Blanche Bignet and Dupertuy, and Mdlle.  Jenny Chassediane, the most spirituelle of Frenchwomen.  ’They are a part of our enginery, Richie,’ my father said.  They proved to be an irresistible attraction to the margravine.  She sent word to my father that she meant to come on a particular day when, as she evidently knew, I should not be present.  Two or three hours later I had Prince Otto’s cartel in my hands.  Jorian DeWitt, our guest at this season, told me subsequently, and with the utmost seriousness, that I was largely indebted to Mdlle.  Jenny for a touching French song of a beau chevalier she sang before Ottilia in my absence.  Both he and my father believed in the efficacy of this kind of enginery, but, as the case happened, the beau chevalier was down low enough at the moment his highborn lady listened to the song.