Transcribed from the 1905 edition , email
PRINCE OTTO—A ROMANCE
A ROMANCE
by
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
a newedition
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1905
TO NELLY VAN DE GRIFT
(MRS. ADULFO SANCHEZ, OF MONTEREY)
At last, after so many years, I have the pleasure ofre-introducing you to ‘Prince Otto,’ whom you willremember a very little fellow, no bigger in fact than a fewsheets of memoranda written for me by your kind hand. Thesight of his name will carry you back to an old wooden houseembowered in creepers; a house that was far gone in therespectable stages of antiquity and seemed indissoluble from thegreen garden in which it stood, and that yet was a sea-travellerin its younger days, and had come round the Horn piecemeal in thebelly of a ship, and might have heard the seamen stamping andshouting and the note of the boatswain’s whistle. Itwill recall to you the nondescript inhabitants now so widelyscattered:—the two horses, the dog, and the four cats, someof them still looking in your face as you read theselines;—the poor lady, so unfortunately married to anauthor;—the China boy, by this time, perhaps, baiting hisline by the banks of a river in the Flowery Land;—and inparticular the Scot who was then sick apparently unto death, andwhom you did so much to cheer and keep in good behaviour.
You may remember that he was full of ambitions and designs: sosoon as he had his health again completely, you may remember thefortune he was to earn, the journeys he was to go upon, thedelights he was to enjoy and confer, and (among other matters)the masterpiece he was to make of ‘Prince Otto’!
Well, we will not give in that we are finally beaten. Weread together in those days the story of Braddock, and how, as hewas carried dying from the scene of his defeat, he promisedhimself to do better another time: a story that will always toucha brave heart, and a dying speech worthy of a more fortunatecommander. I try to be of Braddock’s mind. Istill mean to get my health again; I still purpose, by hook orcrook, this book or the next, to launch a masterpiece; and Istill intend—somehow, some time or other—to see yourface and to hold your hand.
Meanwhile, this little paper traveller goes forth instead,crosses the great seas and the long plains and the darkmountains, and comes at last to your door in Monterey, chargedwith tender greetings. Pray you, take him in. Hecomes from a house where (even as in your own) there are gatheredtogether some of the waifs of our company at Oakland: ahouse—for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distantstation—where you are well-beloved.
R. L. S.
Skerryvore,
Bournemouth.
BOOK I—PRINCE ERRANT
CHAPTER I—IN WHICH THE PRINCE DEPARTS ON ANADVENTURE
You shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygonestate of Grünewald. An independent principality, aninfinitesimal member of the German Empire, she played, forseveral centuries, her part in the discord of Europe; and, atlast, in the ripeness of time and at the spiriting of severalbald diplomatists, vanished like a morning ghost. Lessfortunate than Poland, she left not a regret behind her; and thevery memory of her boundaries has faded.
It was a p