But I could
not. And being very tired, and now very cold, I huddled myself close up
to Fritz, to get the warmth of him, and shut my eyes again and went to
sleep.
CHAPTER 20
The Prisoner and the King
In order to a full understanding of what had occurred in the Castle of
Zenda, it is necessary to supplement my account of what I myself saw
and did on that night by relating briefly what I afterwards learnt
from Fritz and Madame de Mauban. The story told by the latter explained
clearly how it happened that the cry which I had arranged as a stratagem
and a sham had come, in dreadful reality, before its time, and had thus,
as it seemed at the moment, ruined our hopes, while in the end it
had favoured them. The unhappy woman, fired, I believe by a genuine
attachment to the Duke of Strelsau, no less than by the dazzling
prospects which a dominion over him opened before her eyes, had followed
him at his request from Paris to Ruritania. He was a man of strong
passions, but of stronger will, and his cool head ruled both. He was
content to take all and give nothing. When she arrived, she was not
long in finding that she had a rival in the Princess Flavia; rendered
desperate, she stood at nothing which might give, or keep for her, her
power over the duke.
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