Chapter
7
WAS THE SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY OF PRINCE FERDINAND. HE and the king were no longer prisoners in the palace. They went abroad almost as they pleased, though they were always well guarded. The iron hand of General Count Sarnya had kept peace in the kingdom, an armed, suspicious peace that had filled the jails and the cemeteries with "Martyrs" and "friends of the people" and other witless ones who got no thanks for their pains and seldom even a decent burial.
Ferdinand enjoyed the pomp and ceremony attendant upon the celebration of this anniversary. He loved the fawning and the eulogizing. He would probably have loved it even had he known that it was false, but he did not. He was too self-centered and egotistical to realize how cordially he was hated. He would not have cared much,
