Pagina 254 di 3800

Although he was in retirement and had now no influence in

political affairs, every high official appointed to the province

in which the prince's estate lay considered it his duty to visit

him and waited in the lofty antechamber just as the architect,

gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared

punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this

antechamber experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear

when the enormously high study door opened and showed the figure

of a rather small old man, with powdered wig, small withered

hands, and bushy gray eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes

hid the gleam of his shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.