The Prisoner of Zenda: Being the History of Three Months in the Life of an English Gentleman by Anthony Hope

Author:Anthony Hope
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: British -- Foreign countries -- Fiction, Impostors and imposture -- Fiction, Adventure stories
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2018-12-18T02:14:41+00:00

XII

I Re­ceive a Vis­it­or and Bait a Hook

About five miles from Zenda—on the op­pos­ite side from that on which the castle is situ­ated, there lies a large tract of wood. It is rising ground, and in the centre of the demesne, on the top of the hill, stands a fine mod­ern château, the prop­erty of a dis­tant kins­man of Fritz’s, the Count Stan­islas von Tar­len­heim. Count Stan­islas him­self was a stu­dent and a re­cluse. He sel­dom vis­ited the house, and had, on Fritz’s re­quest, very read­ily and cour­teously offered me its hos­pit­al­ity for my­self and my party. This, then, was our des­tin­a­tion; chosen os­tens­ibly for the sake of the boar hunt­ing (for the wood was care­fully pre­served, and boars, once com­mon all over Rurit­ania, were still to be found there in con­sid­er­able num­bers), really be­cause it brought us with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the Duke of Strel­sau’s more mag­ni­fi­cent dwell­ing on the oth­er side of the town. A large party of ser­vants, with horses and lug­gage, star­ted early in the morn­ing; we fol­lowed at mid­day, trav­el­ling by train for thirty miles, and then mount­ing our horses to ride the re­main­ing dis­tance to the château.

We were a gal­lant party. Be­sides Sapt and Fritz, I was ac­com­pan­ied by ten gen­tle­men. Every one of them had been care­fully chosen, and no less care­fully soun­ded, by my two friends, and all were de­votedly at­tached to the per­son of the king. They were told a part of the truth; the at­tempt on my life in the sum­mer­house was re­vealed to them, as a spur to their loy­alty and an in­cite­ment against Mi­chael. They were also in­formed that a friend of the king’s was sus­pec­ted to be for­cibly con­fined with­in the Castle of Zenda. His res­cue was one of the ob­jects of the ex­ped­i­tion; but, it was ad­ded, the king’s main de­sire was to carry in­to ef­fect cer­tain steps against his treach­er­ous broth­er, as to the pre­cise nature of which they could not at present be fur­ther en­lightened. Enough that the king com­manded their ser­vices, and would rely on their de­vo­tion when oc­ca­sion arose to call for it. Young, well-bred, brave, and loy­al, they asked no more. They were ready to prove their du­ti­ful obed­i­ence, and prayed for a fight as the best and most ex­hil­ar­at­ing mode of show­ing it.

Thus the scene was shif­ted from Strel­sau to the château of Tar­len­heim and Castle of Zenda, which frowned at us across the val­ley. I tried to shift my thoughts also, to for­get my love, and to bend all my en­er­gies to the task be­fore me. It was to get the king out of the castle alive. Force was use­less: in some trick lay the chance; and I had already an ink­ling of what we must do. But I was ter­ribly hampered by the pub­li­city which at­ten­ded my move­ments. Mi­chael must know by now of my ex­ped­i­tion; and I knew Mi­chael too well to sup­pose that his eyes would be blinded by the feint of the boar hunt. He would un­der­stand very well what the real quarry was.

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