Mind you, my character didn’t change; these flashes were only momentary. But I certainly began to believe that we would carry off the imposture, and the terror that I had originally felt about it subsided to a mere craven apprehension of what the end of it all might be—when payday came and the real Carl Gustaf had come back into his own.

However, that was in the future, and in the meantime I was floating with the tide, as is my habit, and letting my puppet-handlers think that butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. For their part, they seemed to be delighted with my progress, and one day, about three weeks after I had come to Schönhausen, on an evening when Bismarck joined the rest of us at supper, I did something which convinced Rudi and Bersonin that the first round was won at least.

We were sitting down to table, myself at the head, as usual, and Bismarck plumped down in his chair before I did. Now I was so used by this time to being seated first that I simply stared at him, more in curiosity, I imagine, than anything else; and he, catching my glance, actually began to get to his feet. Rudi, who missed nothing, couldn’t repress a chuckle and a delighted slap of his thigh.

“Right royal, Otto,” says he to Bismarck. “He had you feeling like a bad-mannered little schoolboy there, I’ll swear. Bravo, your highness, you’ll do.”

This was rather more familiarity with me than Rudi had allowed himself since my duel with de Gautet. It didn’t matter to me, of course, but Bersonin was shocked, and muttered that Rudi was forgetting himself. It occurred to me then that I was not the only one who was beginning to believe in my own royalty. Anyway, I played up by remarking to Bersonin casually that the Freiherr was still at an age when impudence took precedence before dignity, and was this hock that we were to drink again tonight?

Bismarck observed all this impassively, but I felt sure he was secretly impressed by the naturalness of my princely behaviour, and even more by his own momentary reaction to it.

I should say in passing that Bismarck’s appearance that night was a rare one. For days at a time I never saw him, but from casual conversation among the others I gathered that he was frequently in Berlin—he was a member of their Parliament, apparently, when he wasn’t kidnapping useful Englishmen and plotting lèse majesté. I also learned that he had a wife in the capital, which surprised me; somehow I had come to think of him as brooding malevolently in his lonely castle, wishing he was Emperor of Germany. I remembered Lola had thought he was a cold fish where women were concerned, but it seemed that this was only a pose; before his marriage, apparently, he had been saddling up with all the wenches on his estate and breeding bastards like a buck rabbit. They called him the Schönhausen Ogre in those days, but of late he had been devoting himself to politics and his new wife, Bersonin said, and taking a serious interest in his farm property. A likely tale, thinks I; his only interest in politics was to get personal power, no matter how, and to gorge himself with food, drink, and women along the way. Nasty brute.