We shall be gone all night.' 'Your Highness,' groaned the man, 'I have the charge of the small stables.

I am here alone.' 'Come,' said the Prince, 'you are no such martinet in duty.' And then seeing that the man was shaking from head to foot, Otto laid a hand upon his shoulder.

'If I meant you harm,' he said, 'should I be here ?' The fellow became instantly reassured.

He got the sack; and Otto led him round by several paths and avenues, conversing pleasantly by the way, and left him at last planted by a certain fountain where a goggle-eyed Triton spouted intermittently into a rippling laver.

Thence he proceeded alone to where, in a round clearing, a copy of Gian Bologna's Mercury stood tiptoe in the twilight of the stars.