← catalogue

Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy

by Marie Corelli · English · Gutenberg #6921 · 1,161,334 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy

Author: Marie Corelli


        
Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6921]
                Most recently updated: November 3, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6921

Credits: Text file produced by Charles Adarondo and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team
        
        HTML file produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TEMPORAL POWER: A STUDY IN SUPREMACY ***




Produced by Charles Adarondo and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team







TEMPORAL POWER

A STUDY IN SUPREMACY

By Marie Corelli




CONTENTS

I. THE KING’S PLEASAUNCE

II. MAJESTY CONSIDERS AND RESOLVES

III. A NATION OR A CHURCH?

IV. SEALED ORDERS

V. “IF I LOVED YOU!”

VI. SERGIUS THORD

VII. THE IDEALISTS

VIII. THE KING’S DOUBLE

IX. THE PREMIER’S SIGNET

X. THE ISLANDS

XI. “GLORIA--IN EXCELSIS!”

XII. A SEA PRINCESS

XIII. SECRET SERVICE

XIV. THE KING’S VETO

XV. “MORGANATIC” OR--?

XVI. THE PROFESSOR ADVISES

XVII. AN “HONOURABLE” STATESMAN

XVIII. ROYAL LOVERS

XIX. OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE STATE

XX. THE SCORN OF KINGS

XXI. AN INVITATION TO COURT

XXII. A FAIR DEBUTANTE

XXIII. THE KING’S DEFENDER

XXIV. A WOMAN’S REASON

XXV. “I SAY--‘ROME’!”

XXVI. “ONE WAY--ONE WOMAN!”

XXVII. THE SONG OF FREEDOM

XXVIII. “FATE GIVES--THE KING!”

XXIX. THE COMRADE OF HIS FOES

XXX. KING AND SOCIALIST

XXXI. A VOTE FOR LOVE

XXXII. BETWEEN TWO PASSIONS

XXXIII. SAILING TO THE INFINITE

XXXIV. ABDICATION




CHAPTER I

THE KING’S PLEASAUNCE


“In the beginning,” so we are told, “God made the heavens and the
earth.”

The statement is simple and terse; it is evidently intended to be wholly
comprehensive. Its decisive, almost abrupt tone would seem to forbid
either question or argument. The old-world narrator of the sublime event
thus briefly chronicled was a poet of no mean quality, though moved by
the natural conceit of man to give undue importance to the earth as his
own particular habitation. The perfect confidence with which he explains
‘God’ as making ‘two great lights, the greater light to rule the day,
the lesser light to rule the night,’ is touching to the verge of pathos;
and the additional remark which he throws in, as it were casually,--‘He
made the stars also,’ cannot but move us to admiration. How childlike
the simplicity of the soul which could so venture to deal with the
inexplicable and tremendous problem of the Universe! How self-centred
and sure the faith which could so arrange the work of Infinite and
Eternal forces to suit its own limited intelligence! It is easy and
natural to believe that ‘God,’ or an everlasting Power of Goodness and
Beauty called by that name, ‘created the heavens and the earth,’ but one
is often tempted to think that an altogether different and rival element
must have been concerned in the making of Man. For the heavens and the
earth are harmonious; man is a discord. And not only is he a discord in
himself, but he takes pleasure in producing and multiplying discords.
Often, with the least possible amount of education, and on the slightest
provocation, he mentally sets Himself, and his trivial personal opinion
on religion, morals, and government, in direct opposition to the
immutable laws of the Universe, and the attitude he assumes towards the
mysterious Cause and Original Source of Life is nearly always one of
three things; contradiction, negation, or defiance. From the first to
the last he torments himself with inventions to outwit or subdue Nature,
and in the end dies, utterly defeated. His civilizations, his dynasties,
his laws, his manners, his customs, are all doomed to destruction and
oblivion as completely as an ant-hill which exists one night and is
trodden down the next. Forever and forever he works and plans in vain;
forever and forever Nature, the visible and active Spirit of God, rises
up and crushes her puny rebel.

There must be good reason for this ceaseless waste of human life,--this
constant and steady obliteration of man’s attempts, since there can be
no Effect without Cause. It is, as if like children at a school, we were
set a certain sum to do, and because we blunder foolishly over it
and add it up to a wrong total, it is again and again wiped off
the blackboard, and again and again rewritten for our more careful
consideration. Possibly the secret of our failure to conquer Nature lies
in ourselves, and our own obstinate tendency to work in only one groove
of what we term ‘advancement,’--namely our material self-interest.
Possibly we might be victors if we would, even to the very vanquishment
of Death!

So many of us think,--and so thought one man of sovereign influence
in this world’s affairs as, seated on the terrace of a Royal palace
fronting seaward, he pondered his own life’s problem for perhaps the
thousandth time.

“What is the use of thinking?” asked a wit at the court of Louis
XVI. “It only intensifies the bad opinion you have of others,--or of
yourself!”

He found this saying true. Thinking is a pernicious habit in which very
great personages are not supposed to indulge; and in his younger days he
had avoided it. He had allowed the time to take him as it found him, and
had gone with it unresistingly wherever it had led. It was the best way;
the wisest way; the way Solomon found most congenial, despite its end
in ‘vanity and vexation of spirit.’ But with the passing of the years a
veil had been dropped over that path of roses, hiding it altogether from
his sight; and another veil rose inch by inch before him, disclosing
a new and less joyous prospect on which he was not too-well-pleased to
look.

The sea, stretching out in a broad shining expanse opposite to him,
sparkled dancingly in the warm sunshine, and the snowy sails of many
yachts and pleasure-boats dipped now and again into the glittering waves
like white birds skimming over the tiny flashing foam-crests. Dazzling
and well-nigh blinding to his eyes were the burning glow and exquisite
radiance of colour which seemed melted like gold and sapphire into
that bright half-circle of water and sky,--beautiful, and full of a
dream-like evanescent quality, such as marks all the loveliest scenes
and impressions of our life on earth. There was a subtle scent of
violets in the air,--and a gardener, cutting sheafs of narcissi from the
edges of the velvety green banks which rolled away in smooth undulations
upward from the terrace to the wider extent of the palace pleasaunce
beyond, scattered such perfume with his snipping shears as might have
lured another Proserpine from Hell. Cluster after cluster of white
blooms, carefully selected for the adornment of the Royal apartments,
he laid beside him on the grass, not presuming to look in the direction
where that other Workman in the ways of life sat silent and absorbed in
thought. That other, in his own long-practised manner, feigned not to
be aware of his dependant’s proximity,--and in this fashion they
twain--human beings made of the same clay and relegated, to the same
dust--gave sport to the Fates by playing at Sham with Heaven and
themselves. Custom, law, and all the paraphernalia of civilization, had
set the division and marked the boundary between them,--had forbidden
the lesser in world’s rank to speak to the greater, unless the greater
began conversation,--had equally forbidden the greater to speak to the
lesser lest such condescension should inflate the lesser’s vanity so
much as to make him obnoxious to his fellows. Thus,--of two men, who,
if left to nature would have been merely--men, and sincere enough at
that,--man himself had made two pretenders,--the one as gardener, the
other as--King! The white narcissi lying on the grass, and preparing to
die sweetly, like sacrificed maiden-victims of the flower-world,
could turn true faces to the God who made them,--but the men at
that particular moment of time had no real features ready for God’s
inspection,--only masks.

“C’est mon metier d’être Roi!” So said one of the many dead and gone
martyrs on the rack of sovereignty. Alas, poor soul, thou would’st
have been happier in any other ‘métier’ I warrant! For kingship is a
profession which cannot be abandoned for a change of humour, or cast
aside in light indifference and independence because a man is bored by
it and would have something new. It is a routine and drudgery to which
some few are born, for which they are prepared, to which they must
devote their span of life, and in which they must die. “How shall we
pass the day?” asked a weary Roman emperor, “I am even tired of killing
my enemies!”

‘Even’ that! And the strangest part of it is, that there are people who
would give all their freedom and peace of mind to occupy for a few
years an uneasy throne, and who actually live under the delusion that a
monarch is happy!

The gardener soon finished his task of cutting the narcissi, and though
he might not, without audacity, look at his Sovereign-master, his
Sovereign-master looked at him, furtively, from under half-closed
eyelids, watching him as he bound the blossoms together carefully, with
the view of giving as little trouble as possible to those whose duty
it would be to arrange them for the Royal pleasure. His work done, he
walked quickly, yet with a certain humble stealthiness,--thus admitting
his consciousness of that greater presence than his own,--down a broad
garden walk beyond the terrace towards a private entrance to the palace,
and there disappeared.

The King was left alone,--or apparently so, for to speak truly, he was
never alone. An equerry, a page-in-waiting,--or what was still more
commonplace as well as ominous, a detective,--lurked about him, ever
near, ever ready to spring on any unknown intruder, or to answer his
slightest call.

But to the limited extent of the solitude allowed to kings, this man
was alone,--alone for a brief space to consider, as he had informed
his secretary, certain documents awaiting his particular and private
perusal.

The marble pavilion in which he sat had been built by his father, the
late King, for his own pleasure, when pleasure was more possible than it
is now. Its slender Ionic columns, its sculptured friezes, its painted
ceilings, all expressed a gaiety, grace and beauty gone from the world,
perchance for ever. Open on three sides to the living picture of the
ocean, crimson and white roses clambered about it, and tall plume-like
mimosa shook fragrance from its golden blossoms down every breath of
wind. The costly table on which this particular Majesty of a nation
occasionally wrote his letters, would, if sold, have kept a little town
in food for a year,--the rich furs at his feet would have bought bread
for hundreds of starving families,--and every delicious rose that nodded
its dainty head towards him with the breeze would have given an hour’s
joy to a sick child. Socialists say this kind of thing with wildly
eloquent fervour, and blame all kings in passionate rhodomontade for the
tables, the furs and the roses,--but they forget--it is not the sad
and weary kings who care for these or any luxuries,--they would be far
happier without them. It is the People who insist on having kings that
should be blamed,--not the monarchs themselves. A king is merely the
people’s Prisoner of State,--they chain him to a throne,--they make
him clothe himself in sundry fantastic forms of attire and exhibit his
person thus decked out, for their pleasure,--they calculate, often with
greed and grudging, how much it will cost to feed him and keep him in
proper state on the national premises, that they may use him at their
will,--but they seldom or never seem to remember the fact that there is
a Man behind the King!

It is not easy to govern nowadays, since there is no real autocracy,
and no strong soul likely to create one. But the original idea of
sovereignty was grand and wise;--the strongest man and bravest, raised
aloft on shields and bucklers with warrior cries of approval from the
people who voluntarily chose him as their leader in battle,--their
utmost Head of affairs. Progress has demolished this ideal, with many
others equally fine and inspiring; and now all kings are so, by right of
descent merely. Whether they be infirm or palsied, weak or wise, sane or
crazed, still are they as of old elected; only no more as the Strongest,
but simply as the Sign-posts of a traditional bygone authority. This
King however, here written of, was not deficient in either mental or
physical attributes. His outward look and bearing betokened him as far
more fit to be lifted in triumph on the shoulders of his battle-heroes,
a real and visible Man, than to play a more or less cautiously inactive
part in the modern dumb-show of Royalty. Well-built and muscular, with
a compact head regally poised on broad shoulders, and finely formed
features which indicated in their firm modelling strong characteristics
of pride, indomitable resolution and courage, he had an air of rare and
reposeful dignity which made him much more impressive as a personality
than many of his fellow-sovereigns. His expression was neither foolish
nor sensual,--his clear dark grey eyes were sane and steady in their
regard and had no tricks of shiftiness. As an ordinary man of the
people his appearance would have been distinctive,--as a King, it was
remarkable.

He had of course been called handsome in his childhood,--what heir to a
Throne ever lived that was not beautiful, to his nurse at least?--and in
his early youth he had been grossly flattered for his cleverness as well
as his good looks. Every small attempt at witticism,--every poor joke he
could invent, adapt or repeat, was laughed at approvingly in a chorus of
admiration by smirking human creatures, male and female, who bowed
and bobbed up and down before the lad like strange dolphins disporting
themselves on dry land. Whereat he grew to despise the dolphins, and
no wonder. When he was about seventeen or eighteen he began to ask odd
questions of one of his preceptors, a learned and ceremonious personage
who, considering the extent of his certificated wisdom, was yet so
singularly servile of habit and disposition that he might have won a
success on the stage as Chief Toady in a burlesque of Court life. He was
a pale, thin old man, with a wizened face set well back amid wisps of
white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its working muscles
visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His way of shaking
hands expressed his moral flabbiness in the general dampness, looseness
and limpness of the act,--not that he often shook hands with his pupil,
for though that pupil was only a boy made of ordinary flesh and blood
like other boys, he was nevertheless heir to a Throne, and in strict
etiquette even friendly liberties were not to be too frequently taken
with such an Exalted little bit of humanity. The lad himself, however,
had a certain mischievous delight in making him perform this courtesy,
and being young and vigorous, would often squeeze the old gentleman’s
hesitating fingers in his strong clasp so energetically as to cause him
the severest pain. Student of many philosophies as he was, the worthy
pedagogue would have cried out, or sworn profane oaths in his agony, had
it been any other than the ‘Heir-Apparent’ who thus made him wince with
torture,--but as matters stood, he merely smiled--and bore it. The young
rascal of a prince smiled too,--taking note of his obsequious hypocrisy,
which served an inquiring mind with quite as good a field for
logical speculation as any problem in Euclid. And he went on with his
questions,--questions, which if not puzzling, were at least irritating
enough to have secured him a rap on the knuckles from his tutor’s cane,
had he been a grocer’s lad instead of the eldest son of a Royal house.

“Professor,” he said on one occasion, “What is man?”

“Man,” replied the professor sedately, “is an intelligent and reasoning
being, evolved by natural processes of creation into his present
condition of supremacy.”

“What is Supremacy?”

“The state of being above, or superior to, the rest of the animal
creation.”

“And is he so superior?”

“He is generally so admitted.”

“Is my father a man?”

“Assuredly! The question is superfluous.”

“What makes him a King?”

“Royal birth and the hereditary right to his great position.”

“Then if man is in a condition of supremacy over the rest of creation, a
king is more than a man if he is allowed to rule men?”

“Sir, pardon me!--a king is not more than a man, but men choose him as
their ruler because he is worthy.”

“In what way is he worthy? Simply because he is born as I am, heir to a
throne?”

“Precisely.”

“He might be an idiot or a cripple, a fool or a coward,--he would still
be King?”

“Most indubitably.”

“So that if he were a madman, he would continue to hold supremacy over a
nation, though his groom might be sane?”

“Your Royal Highness pursues the question with an unwise
flippancy;”--remonstrated the professor with a pained, forced smile.
“If an idiot or a madman were unfortunately born to a throne, a regency
would be appointed to control state affairs, but the heir would, in
spite of natural incapability, remain the lawful king.”

“A strange sovereignty!” said the young prince carelessly. “And a still
stranger patience in the people who would tolerate it! Yet over all
men,--kings, madmen, and idiots alike,--there is another ruling force,
called God?”

“There is a force,” admitted the professor dubiously--“But in the
present forward state of things it would not be safe to attempt to
explain the nature of that force, and for the benefit of the illiterate
masses we call it God. A national worship of something superior to
themselves has always been proved politic and necessary for the people.
I have not at any time resolved myself as to why it should be so; but so
it is.”

“Then man, despite his ‘supremacy’ must have something more supreme than
himself to keep him in order, if it be only a fetish wherewith to tickle
his imagination?” suggested the prince with a touch of satire,--“Even
kings must bow, or pretend to bow, to the King of kings?”

“Sir, you have expressed the fact with felicity;” replied the professor
gravely--“His Majesty, your august father, attends public worship with
punctilious regularity, and you are accustomed to accompany him. It is a
rule which you will find necessary to keep in practice, as an example to
your subjects when you are called upon to reign.”

The young man raised his eyebrows deprecatingly, with a slight ironical
smile, and dropped the subject. But the learned professor as in duty
bound, reported the conversation to his pupil’s father; with the
additional observation that he feared, he very humbly and respectfully
feared, that the developing mind of the prince appeared undesirably
disposed towards discursive philosophies, which were wholly unnecessary
for the position he was destined to occupy. Whereupon the King took his
son to task on the subject with a mingling of kindness and humour.

“Do not turn philosopher!” he said--“For philosophy will not so much
content you with life, as with death! Philosophy will chill your best
impulses and most generous enthusiasms,--it will make you over-cautious
and doubtful of your friends,--it will cause you to be indifferent to
women in the plural, but it will hand you over, a weak and helpless
victim to the _one_ woman,--when she comes,--as she is bound to come.
There is no one so hopelessly insane as a philosopher in love! Love
women, but not _a_ woman!”

“In so doing I should follow the wisest of examples,--yours, Sir!”
 replied the prince with a familiarity more tender than audacious, for
his father was a man of fine presence and fascinating manner, and
knew well the extent of his power to charm and subjugate the fairer
sex,--“But I have a fancy that love,--if it exists anywhere outside the
dreams of the poets,--is unknown to kings.”

The monarch bent his brows frowningly, and his eyes were full of a deep
and bitter melancholy.

“You mistake!” he said slowly--“Love,--and by that name I mean a wholly
different thing from Passion,--comes to kings as to commoners,--but
whereas the commoner may win it if he can, the king must reject it. But
it comes,--and leaves a blank in the proudest life when it goes!”

He turned away abruptly, and the conversation was not again resumed. But
when he died, those who prepared his body for burial, found a gold chain
round his neck, holding the small medallion portrait of a woman, and a
curl of soft fair hair. Needless to say the portrait was not that of the
late Queen-Consort, who had died some years before her Royal spouse, nor
was the hair hers,--but when they brought the relic to the new King, he
laid it back with his own hands on his father’s lifeless breast, and let
it go into the grave with him. For, being no longer the crowned Servant
of the State, he had the right as a mere dead man, to the possession of
his love-secret.

So at least thought his son and successor, who at times was given to
wondering whether if, like his father, he had such a secret he would
be able to keep it as closely and as well. He thought not. It would be
scarcely worth while. It can only be the greatest love that is always
silent,--and in the greatest,--that is, the ideal and self-renouncing
love,--he did not believe; though in his own life’s experience he had
been given a proof that such love is possible to women, if not to men.
When he was about twenty, he had loved, or had imagined he loved, a
girl,--a pretty creature, who did not know him as a prince at all,
but simply as a college student. He used to walk with her hand in hand
through the fields by the river, and gather wild flowers for her to
wear in her little white bodice. She had shy soft eyes, and a timid, yet
trusting look, full of tenderness and pathos. Moved by a romantic sense
of honour and chivalry, he promised to marry her, and thereupon wrote an
impulsive letter to his father informing him of his intention. Of course
he was summoned home from college at once,--he was reminded of his high
destiny--of the Throne that would be his if he lived to occupy it,--of
the great and serious responsibilities awaiting him,--and of how
impossible it was that the Heir-Apparent to the Crown should marry a
commoner.

“Why not?” he cried passionately--“If she be good and true she is as fit
to be a queen as any woman royally born! She is a queen already in her
own right!”

But while he was being argued with and controlled by all the authorities
concerned in king’s business, his little sweetheart herself put an end
to the matter. Her parents told her all unpreparedly, and with no doubt
unnecessary harshness, the real position of the college lad with whom
she had wandered in the fields so confidingly; and in the bewilderment
of her poor little broken heart and puzzled brain, she gave herself
to the river by whose flowering banks she had sworn her maiden
vows,--though she knew it not,--to her future King; and so, drowning her
life and love together, made a piteous exit from all difficulty. Before
she went forth to die, she wrote a farewell to her Royal lover, posting
the letter herself on her way to the river, and, by the merest chance he
received it without a spy’s intervention. It was but one line, scrawled
in a round youthful hand, and blotted with many tears.

“Sir--my love!--forgive me!”

It would be unwise to say what that little scrap of ill-formed writing
cost the heir to a throne when he heard how she had died,--or how he
raged and swore and wept. It was the first Wrong forced on him as Right,
by the laws of the realm; and he was young and generous and honest, and
not hardened to those laws then. Their iniquity and godlessness appeared
to him in plain ugly colours undisguised. Since that time he had
perforce fallen into the habit and routine of his predecessors, though
he was not altogether so ‘constitutional’ a sovereign as his father had
been. He had something of the spirit of one who had occupied his throne
five hundred years before him; when strength and valour and wit and
boldness, gave more kings to the world than came by heritage. He did
unconventional things now and then; to the grief of flunkeys, and the
alarm of Court parasites. But his kingdom was of the South, where hot
blood is recognized and excused, and fiery temper more admired than
censured, and where,--so far as social matters went,--his word, whether
kind, cold, or capricious, was sufficient to lead in any direction that
large flock of the silly sheep of fashion who only exist to eat, and
to be eaten. Sometimes he longed to throw himself back into bygone
centuries and stand as his earliest ancestor stood, sword in hand, on
a height overlooking the battle-field, watching the swaying rush of
combat,--the glitter of spears and axes--the sharp flight of arrows--the
tossing banners, the grinding chariots, the flying dust and carnage
of men! There was something to fight for in those days,--there was
no careful binding up of wounds,--no provision for the sick or the
mutilated,--nothing, nothing, but ‘Victory or Death!’ How much grander,
how much finer the old fierce ways of war than now, when any soldier
wounded, may write the details of his bayonet-scratch or bullet-hole
to the cheap press, and the surgeon prys about with Rontgen-ray
paraphernalia and scalpel, to discover how much or how little escape
from dissolution a man’s soul has had in the shock of contest with his
foe! Of a truth these are paltry days!--and paltry days breed paltry
men. Afraid of sickness, afraid of death, afraid of poverty, afraid of
offences, afraid to think, afraid to speak, Man in the present era
of his boasted ‘progress’ resembles nothing so much as a whipped
child,--cowering under the outstretched arm of Heaven and waiting in
whimpering terror for the next fall of the scourge. And it is on this
point especially, that the monarch who takes part in this unhesitating
chronicle of certain thoughts and movements hidden out of sight,--yet
deeply felt in the under-silences of the time,--may claim to be
unconventional;--he was afraid of nothing,--not even of himself as King!




CHAPTER II

MAJESTY CONSIDERS AND RESOLVES


The little episode of his first love, combined with his ungovernable
fury and despair at its tragic conclusion, had of course the natural
result common in such a case, to the fate of all who are destined to
occupy thrones. A marriage was ‘arranged’ for him; and pressing reasons
of state were urged for the quick enforcement and carrying out of the
‘arrangement.’ The daughter of a neighbouring potentate was elected
to the honour of his alliance,--a beautiful girl with a pale, cold
clear-cut face and brilliant eyes, whose smile penetrated the soul with
an icy chill, and whose very movement, noiseless and graceful as it was,
reminded one irresistibly of slowly drifting snow. She was attended
to the altar, as he was, by all the ministers and plenipotentiaries of
state that could possibly be gathered together from the four quarters of
the globe as witnesses to the immolation of two young human lives on
the grim sacrificial stone of a Dynasty; and both prince and princess
accepted their fate with mutually silent and civil resignation. Their
portraits, set facing each other with a silly smile, or taken in
a linked arm-in-arm attitude against a palatial canvas background,
appeared in every paper published throughout the world, and every
scribbler on the Press took special pains to inform the easily
deluded public that the Royal union thus consummated was ‘a romantic
love-match.’ For the People still have heart and conscience,--the
People, taken in the rough lump of humanity, still believe in love, in
faith, in the dear sweetness of home affections. The politicians who
make capital out of popular emotion, know this well enough,--and are
careful to play the tune of their own personal interest upon the gamut
of National Sentiment in every stump oration. For how terrible it
would be if the People of any land learned to judge their preachers and
teachers by the lines of fact alone! Inasmuch as fact would convincingly
prove to them that their leaders prospered and grew rich, while they
stayed poor; and they might take to puzzling out reasons for this
inadequacy which would inevitably cause trouble. For this, and divers
other motives politic, the rosy veil of sentiment is always
delicately flung more or less over every new move on the national
debating-ground,--and whether marriageable princes and princesses love
or loathe each other, still, when they come to wed, the words ‘romantic
love-match’ must be thrown in by an obliging Press in order to satisfy
the tender scruples of a people who would certainly not abide the
thought of a Royal marriage contracted in mutual aversion. Thus much
soundness and right principle there is at least, in what some superfine
persons call the ‘common’ folk,--the folk whose innermost sense of truth
and straightforwardness, not even the proudest statesman dare outrage.

But with what unuttered and unutterable scorn the youthful victims
of the Royal pairing accepted the newspaper-assurances of the devoted
tenderness they entertained for each other! With what wearied
impatience both prince and princess received the ‘Wedding Odes’ and
‘Epithalamiums,’ written by first-class and no-class versifiers for the
occasion! What shoals of these were cast aside unread, to occupy the
darkest dingiest corner of one of the Royal ‘refuse’ libraries! The
writers of such things expected great honours, no doubt, each and every
man-jack of them,--but apart from the fact that the greatest literature
has always lived without any official recognition or endowment from
kings,--being in itself the supremest sovereignty,--poets and rhymesters
alike never seem to realize that no one is, or can be, so sickened by an
‘Ode’ as the man or woman to whom it is written!

The brilliant marriage ceremony concluded, the august bride and
bridegroom took their departure, amid frantically cheering crowds, for
a stately castle standing high among the mountains, a truly magnificent
pile, which had been placed at their disposal for the ‘honeymoon’ by
one of the wealthiest of the King’s subjects,--and there, as soon as
equerries, grooms-in-waiting, flunkeys, and every other sort of indoor
and outdoor retainer would consent to leave them alone together, the
Royal wife came to her Royal husband, and asked to be allowed to speak
a few words on the subject of their marriage, ‘for the first and last
time,’ said she, with a straight glance from the cold moonlight mystery
of her eyes. Beautiful at all times, her beauty was doubly enhanced by
the regal attitude and expression she unconsciously assumed as she made
the request, and the prince, critically studying her form and features,
could not but regard himself as in some respects rather particularly
favoured by the political and social machinery which had succeeded in
persuading so fair a creature to resign herself to the doubtful destiny
of a throne. She had laid aside her magnificent bridal-robes of ivory
satin and cloth-of-gold,--and appeared before him in loose draperies of
floating white, with her rich hair unbound and rippling to her knees.

“May I speak?” she murmured, and her voice trembled.

“Most assuredly!”--he replied, half smiling--“You do me too much honour
by requesting the permission!”

As he spoke, he bowed profoundly, but she, raising her eyes, fixed them
full upon him with a strange look of mingled pride and pain.

“Do not,” she said, “let us play at formalities! Let us be honest
with each other for to-night at least! All our life together must from
henceforth be more or less of a masquerade, but let us for to-night be
as true man and true woman, and frankly face the position into which we
have been thrust, not by ourselves, but by others.”

Profoundly astonished, the prince was silent. He had not thought this
girl of nineteen possessed any force of character or any intellectual
power of reasoning. He had judged her as no doubt glad to become a great
princess and a possible future queen, and he had not given her credit
for any finer or higher feeling.

“You know,”--she continued--“you must surely know--” here, despite the
strong restraint she put upon herself, her voice broke, and her slight
figure swayed in its white draperies as if about to fall. She looked at
him with a sense of rising tears in her throat,--tears of which she
was ashamed,--for she was full of a passionate emotion too strong for
weeping--a contempt of herself and of him, too great for mere clamour.
Was he so much of a man in the slow thick density of his brain she
thought, as to have no instinctive perception of her utter misery? He
hastened to her and tried to take her hands, but she drew herself away
from him and sank down in a chair as if exhausted.

“You are tired!” he said kindly--“The tedious ceremonial--the still more
tedious congratulations,--and the fatiguing journey from the capital to
this place have been too much for your strength. You must rest!”

“It is not that!”--she answered--“not that! I am not tired,--but--but--I
cannot say my prayers tonight till you know my whole heart!”

A curious reverence and pity moved him. All day long he had been in
a state of resentful irritation,--he had loathed himself for having
consented to marry this girl without loving her,--he had branded himself
inwardly as a liar and hypocrite when he had sworn his marriage vows
‘before God,’ whereas if he truly believed in God, such vows taken
untruthfully were mere blasphemy;--and now she herself, a young thing
tenderly brought up like a tropical flower in the enervating hot-house
atmosphere of Court life, yet had such a pure, deep consciousness of God
in her, that she actually could not pray with the slightest blur of a
secret on her soul! He waited wonderingly.

“I have plighted my faith to you before God’s altar to-day,” she said,
speaking more steadily,--“because after long and earnest thought, I saw
that there was no other way of satisfying the two nations to which we
belong, and cementing the friendly relations between them. There is
no woman of Royal birth,--so it has been pointed out to me--who is so
suitable, from a political point of view, to be your wife as I. It is
for the sake of your Throne and country that you must marry--and I
ask God to forgive me if I have done wrong in His sight by wedding
you simply for duty’s sake. My father, your father, and all who are
connected with our two families desire our union, and have assured
me that, it is right and good for me to give up my life to yours. All
women’s lives must be martyred to the laws made by men,--or so it seems
to me,--I cannot expect to escape from the general doom apportioned to
my sex. I therefore accept the destiny which transfers me to you as a
piece of human property for possession and command,--I accept it freely,
but I will not say gladly, because that would not be true. For I do not
love you,--I cannot love you! I want you to know that, and to feel it,
that you may not ask from me what I cannot give.”

There were no tears in her eyes; she looked at him straightly and
steadfastly. He, in his turn, met her gaze fully,--his face had paled
a little, and a shadow of pained regret and commiseration darkened his
handsome features.

“You love someone else?” he asked, softly.

She rose from her chair and confronted him, a glow of passionate pride
flushing her cheeks and brow.

“No!” she said--“I would not be a traitor to you in so much as
a thought! Had I loved anyone else I would never have married
you,--no!--though you had been ten times a prince and king! No! You
do not understand. I come to you heartwhole and passionless, without
a single love-word chronicled in my girlhood’s history, or a single
incident you may not know. I have never loved any man, because from
my very childhood I have hated and feared all men! I loathe their
presence--their looks--their voices--their manners,--if one should touch
my hand in ordinary courtesy, my instincts are offended and revolted,
and the sense of outrage remains with me for days. My mother knows of
this, and says I am ‘unnatural,’--it may be so. But unnatural or not, it
is the truth; judge therefore the extent of the sacrifice I make to God
and our two countries in giving myself to you!”

The prince stood amazed and confounded. Did she rave? Was she mad?
He studied her with a curious, half-doubting scrutiny, and noted the
composure of her attitude, the cold serenity of her expression,--there
was evidently no hysteria, no sur-excitation of nerves about this calm
statuesque beauty which in every line and curve of loveliness silently
mutinied against him, and despised him. Puzzled, yet fascinated, he
sought in his mind for some clue to her meaning.

“There are women” she went on--“to whom love, or what is called love, is
necessary,--for whom marriage is the utmost good of existence. I am not
one of these. Had I my own choice I would live my life away from all
men,--I would let nothing of myself be theirs to claim,--I would give
all I am and all I have to God, who made me what I am. For truly and
honestly, without any affectation at all, I look upon marriage, not as
an honour, but a degradation!”

Had she been less in earnest, he might have smiled at this, but her
beauty, intensified as it was by the fervour of her feeling, seemed
transfigured into something quite supernatural which for the moment
dazzled him.

“Am I to understand--” he began.

She interrupted him by a swift gesture, while the rich colour swept over
her face in a warm wave.

“Understand nothing”--she said,--“but this--that I do not love you,
because I can love no man! For the rest I am your wife; and as your
wife I give myself to you and your nation wholly and in all things--save
love!”

He advanced and took her hands in his.

“This is a strange bargain!” he said, and gently kissed her.

She answered nothing,--only a faint shiver trembled through her as she
endured the caress. For a moment or two he surveyed her in silence,--it
was a singular and novel experience for him, as a future king, to be the
lawful possessor of a woman’s beauty, and yet with all his sovereignty
to be unable to waken one thrill of tenderness in the frozen soul
imprisoned in such exquisite flesh and blood. He was inclined to
disbelieve her assertions,--surely he thought, there must be emotion,
feeling, passion in this fair creature, who, though she seemed a goddess
newly descended from inaccessible heights of heaven was still _only_
a woman? And upon the whole he was not ill-pleased with the curious
revelation she had made of herself. He preferred the coldness of women
to their volcanic eruptions, and would take more pains to melt the snow
of reserve than to add fuel to the flame of ardour.

“You have been very frank with me,” he said at last, after a pause, as
he loosened her hands and moved a little apart from her--“And whether
your physical and mental hatred of my sex is a defect in your nature,
or an exceptional virtue, I shall not quarrel with it. I am myself not
without faults; and the chiefest of these is one most common to all men.
I desire what I may not have, and covet what I do not possess. So! We
understand each other!”

She raised her eyes--those beautiful deep eyes with the moonlight
glamour in them,--and for an instant the shining Soul of her, pure and
fearless, seemed to spring up and challenge to spiritual combat him who
was now her body’s master. Then, bending her head with a graceful yet
proud submission, she retired.

From that time forth she never again spoke on this, or any other subject
of an intimate or personal nature, with her Royal spouse. Cold as an
iceberg, pure as a diamond, she accepted both wifehood and motherhood as
martyrdom, with an evident contempt for its humiliation, and without one
touch of love for either husband or children. She bore three sons, of
whom the eldest, and heir to the throne was, at the time this history
begins, just twenty. The passing of the years had left scarcely a trace
upon her beauty, save to increase it from the sparkling luminance of
a star to the glory of a full-orbed moon of loveliness,--and she had
easily won a triumph over all the other women around her, in the power
she possessed to command and retain the admiration of men. She was one
of those brilliant creatures who, like the Egyptian Cleopatra, never
grow old,--for she was utterly exempt from the wasting of the nerves
through emotion. Her eyes were always bright and clear; her skin
dazzling in its whiteness, save where the equably flowing blood flushed
it with tenderest rose,--her figure remained svelte, lithe and
graceful in all its outlines. Finely strung, yet strong as steel in her
temperament, all thoughts, feelings and events seemed to sweep over her
without affecting or disturbing her mind’s calm equipoise. She lived her
life with extreme simplicity, regularity, and directness, thus driving
to despair all would-be scandal-mongers; and though many gifted and
famous men fell madly in love with their great princess, and often, in
the extremity of a passion which amounted to disloyalty, slew themselves
for her sake, she remained unmoved and pitiless.

Her husband occasionally felt some compassion for the desperate fellows
who thus immolated themselves on the High Altar of her perfections,
though it must be admitted that he received the news of their deaths
with tolerable equanimity, knowing them to have been fools, and as such,
better out of the world than in it. During the first two or three years
of his marriage he had himself been somewhat of their disposition, and
as mere man, had tried by every means in his power to win the affection
of his beautiful spouse, and to melt the icy barrier which she, despite
their relations with each other, had resolutely kept up between herself
and him. He had made the attempt, not because he actually loved her, but
simply because he desired the satisfaction of conquest. Finding the
task hopeless, he resigned himself to his fate, and accepted her at the
costly valuation she set upon herself; though for pastime he would often
pay court to certain ladies of easy virtue, with the vague idea that
perhaps the spirit of jealousy might enter that cold shrine of womanhood
where no other demon could force admission, and wake up the passions
slumbering within. But she appeared not to be at all aware of his
many and open gallantries; and only at stray moments, when her frosty
flashing glance fell upon him engaged in some casual flirtation, would a
sudden smarting sense of injury make him conscious of her contempt.

But he could reasonably find no fault with her, save the fault of being
faultless. She was a perfect hostess, and fulfilled all the duties of
her exalted position with admirable tact and foresight,--she was ever
busy in the performance of good and charitable deeds,--she was an
excellent mother, and took the utmost personal care that her sons should
be healthily nurtured and well brought up,--she never interfered in any
matter of state or ceremony,--she simply seemed to move as a star moves,
shining over the earth but having no part in it. Irresponsive as she
was, she nevertheless compelled admiration,--her husband himself admired
her, but only as he would have admired a statue or a painting. For his
was an impulsive and generous nature, and his marriage had kept his
heart empty of the warmth of love, and his home devoid of the light of
sympathy. Even his children had been born more as the sons of the nation
than his own,--he was not conscious of any very great affection for
them, or interest in their lives. And he had sought to kindle at many
strange fires the heavenly love-beacon which should have flamed its
living glory into his days; so it had naturally chanced that he had
spent by far the larger portion of his time on the persuasion of mere
Whim,--and as vastly inferior women to his wife had made him spend it.

But at this particular juncture, when the curtain is drawn up on certain
scenes and incidents in his life-drama, a change had been effected in
his opinions and surroundings. For eighteen years after his marriage, he
had lived on the first step of the Throne as its next heir; and when
he passed that step and ascended the Throne itself, he seemed to have
crossed a vast abyss of distance between the Old and the New. Behind him
the Past rolled away like a cloud vanishing, to be seen no more,--before
him arose the dim vista of wavering and uncertain shadows, which no
matter how they shifted and changed,--no matter how many flashes of
sunshine flickered through them,--were bound to close in the thick gloom
of the inevitable end,--Death. This is what he was chiefly thinking of,
seated alone in his garden-pavilion facing the sea on that brilliant
southern summer morning,--this,--and with the thought came many others
no less sad and dubious,--such as whether for example, his eldest son
might not already be eager for the crown?--whether even now, though
he had only reigned three years, his people were not more or less
dissatisfied under his rule?

His father, the late King, had died suddenly,--so suddenly that there
was neither help nor hope for him among the hastily summoned physicians.
Stricken numb and speechless, he kept his anguished eyes fixed to the
last upon his son, as one who should say--“Alas, and to thee also, falls
this curse of a Crown!” Once dead, he was soon forgotten,--the pomp
of the Royal obsequies merely made a gala-day for the light-hearted
Southern populace, who hailed the accession of their new King with
as much gladness as a child, who, having broken one doll, straightway
secures another as good, if not better. As Heir-Apparent the succeeding
sovereign had won great popularity, and was much more generally beloved
than his father had been,--so that it was on an extra high wave of
jubilation and acclamation that he and his beautiful consort were borne
to the Throne.

Three years had passed since then; and so far his reign had been
untroubled by much difficulty. Difficulty there was, but he was kept
in ignorance of it,--troubles were brooding, but he was not informed
of them. Things likely to be disagreeable were not conveyed to his
ears,--and matters which, had he been allowed to examine into them,
might have aroused his indignation and interference, were diplomatically
hushed up. He was known to possess much more than the limited
intelligence usually apportioned to kings; and certainly, as his tutor
had said of him in his youth, he was dangerously “disposed towards
discursive philosophies.” He was likewise accredited with a conscience,
which many diplomats consider to be a wholly undesirable ingredient in
the moral composition of a reigning monarch. Therefore, those who move
a king, as in the game of chess, one square at a time and no more,--were
particularly cautious as to the ‘way’ in which they moved him. He had
shown himself difficult to manage once or twice; and interested persons
could not pursue their usual course of self-aggrandisement with him,
as he was not susceptible to flattery. He had a way of asking straight
questions, and what was still worse, expecting straight answers, such as
politicians never give.

Nevertheless he had, up to the present, ruled his conduct very much on
the lines laid down by his predecessors, and during his brief reign
had been more or less content to passively act in all things as
his ministers advised. He had bestowed honours on fools because his
ministers considered it politic,--he had given his formal consent to
the imposition of certain taxes on his people, because his ministers
had judged such taxes necessary,--in fact he had done everything he was
expected to do, and nothing that he was not expected to do. He had not
taken any close personal thought as to whether such and such a political
movement was, or was not, welcome to the spirit of the nation, nor had
he weighed intimately in his own mind the various private interests of
the members of his Government, in passing, or moving the rejection
of, any important measure affecting the well-being of the community at
large. And he had lately,--perhaps through the objectionable ‘discursive
philosophies’ before mentioned,--come to consider himself somewhat of a
stuffed Dummy or figure-head; and to wonder what would be the result,
if with caution and prudence, he were to act more on his own initiative,
and speak as he often thought it would be wise and well to speak? He
was but forty-five years old,--in the prime of life, in the plenitude of
health and mental vigour,--was he to pass the rest of his days guarded
by detectives, flunkeys and physicians, with never an independent
word or action throughout his whole career to mark him Man as well as
Monarch? Nay, surely that would be an insult to the God who made him!
But the question which arose in his mind and perplexed him was, How
to begin? How, after passive obedience, to commence resistance? How to
break through the miserable conventionalism, the sordid commonplace of
a king’s surroundings? For it is only in medieval fairy-tales that kings
are permitted to be kingly.

Yet, despite custom and usage, he was determined to make a new departure
in the annals of modern sovereignty. Three years of continuous slavery
on the treadmill of the Throne had been sufficient to make him thirst
for freedom,--freedom of speech,--freedom of action. He had tacitly
submitted to a certain ministry because he had been assured that the
said ministry was popular,--but latterly, rumours of discontent and
grievance had reached him,--albeit indistinctly and incoherently,--and
he began to be doubtful as to whether it might not be the Press which
supported the existing state of policy, rather than the People. The
Press! He began to consider of what material this great power in his
country was composed. Originally, the Press in all countries, was
intended to be the most magnificent institution of the civilized
world,--the voice of truth, of liberty, of justice--a voice which in its
clamant utterances could neither be bribed nor biassed to cry out false
news. Originally, such was meant to be its mission;--but nowadays, what,
in all honesty and frankness, is the Press? What was it, for example, to
this king, who from personal knowledge, was able to practically estimate
and enumerate the forces which controlled it thus:--Six, or at the most
a dozen men, the proprietors and editors of different newspapers sold in
cheap millions to the people. Most of these newspapers were formed into
‘companies’; and the managers issued ‘shares’ in the fashion of tea
merchants and grocers. False news, if of a duly sensational character,
would sometimes send up the shares in the market,--true information
would equally, on occasion, send them down. These premises granted,
might it not follow that for newspaper speculators, the False would
often prove more lucrative than the True? And, concerning the persons
who wrote for these newspapers,--of what calling and election were they?
Male and female, young and old, they were generally of a semi-educated
class lacking all distinctive ability,--men and women who were, on an
average, desperately poor, and desperately dissatisfied. To earn daily
bread they naturally had to please the editors set in authority over
them; hence their expressed views and opinions on any subject could only
be counted as _nil_, being written, not independently, but under the
absolute control of their employers. Thus meditating, the King summed up
the total of his own mental argument, and found that the vast sounding
‘power of the Press’ so far as his own dominion was concerned, resolved
itself into the mere trade monopoly of the aforesaid leading dozen
men. What he now proposed to himself to discover among other things,
was,--how far and how truly these dozen tradesmen voiced the mind of the
People over whom he was elected to reign? Here was a problem, and one
not easy to solve. But what was very plain and paramount to his mind
was this,--that he was thoroughly sick and tired of being no more than
a ‘social’ figure in the world’s affairs. It was an effeminate part to
play. It was time, he considered, that he should intelligently try his
own strength, and test the nation’s quality.

“If there is corruption in the state,” he said to himself, “I will
find its centre! If I am fooled by my advisers then I will be fooled no
longer. With whatsoever brain and heart and reason and understanding the
Fates have endowed me, I will study the ways, the movements, the desires
of my people, and prove myself their friend, as well as their king.
Suppose they misunderstand me?--What matter!--Let the nation rise
against me an’ it will, so that I may, before I die, prove myself worthy
of the mere gift of manhood! To-day”--and, rising from his chair, he
advanced a step or two and faced the sea and sky with an unconscious
gesture of invocation; “To-day shall be the first day of my real
monarchy! To-day I begin to reign! The past is past,--for eighteen long
years as prince and heir to the throne I trifled away my time among the
follies of the hour, and laughed at the easy purchase I could make of
the assumed ‘honour’ of men and women; and I enjoyed the liberty and
license of my position. Since then, for three years I have been the
prisoner of my Parliament,--but now--now, and for the rest of the time
granted to me on earth, I will live my life in the belief that its
riddle must surely meet with God’s own explanation. To me it has become
evident that the laws of Nature make for Truth and Justice; while the
laws of man are framed on deception and injustice. The two sets of laws
contend one against the other, and the finite, after foolish and vain
struggle, succumbs to the infinite,--better therefore, to begin with
the infinite Order than strive with the finite Chaos! I, a mere earthly
sovereign, rank myself on the side of the Infinite,--and will work for
Truth and Justice with the revolving of Its giant wheel! My people have
seen me crowned,--but my real Coronation is to-day--when I crown myself
with my own resolve!”

His eyes flashed in the sunshine;--a rose shook its pink petals on the
ground at his feet. In one of the many pleasure-boats skimming across
the sea, a man was singing; and the words he sang floated distinctly
along on the landward wind.

  “Let me be thine, O love,
  But for an hour! I yield my heart and soul
  Into thy power,--Let me be thine, O Love of mine,
  But for an hour!”

The King listened, and a faint shadow darkened the proud light on his
face.

“‘But for an hour!’” he said half aloud--“Yes,--it would be enough! No
woman’s love lasts longer!”




CHAPTER III

A NATION OR A CHURCH?


An approaching step echoing on the marble terrace warned him that he was
no longer alone. He reseated himself at his writing-table, and feigned
to be deeply engrossed in perusing various documents, but a ready smile
greeted the intruder as soon as he perceived who it was,--one Sir Roger
de Launay, his favourite equerry and intimate personal friend.

“Time’s up, is it, Roger?” he queried lightly,--then as the equerry
bowed in respectful silence--“And yet I have scarcely glanced at these
papers! All the same, I have not been idle--I have been thinking.”

Sir Roger de Launay, a tall handsome man, with an indefinable air
of mingled good-nature and lassitude about him which suggested the
possibility of his politely urging even Death itself not to be so
much of a bore about its business, smiled doubtfully. “Is it a wise
procedure, Sir?” he enquired--“Conducive to comfort I mean?”

The King laughed.

“No--I cannot say that it is! But thought is a tonic which sometimes
restores a man’s enfeebled self-respect. I was beginning to lose that
particular condition of health and sanity, Roger!--my self-respect
was becoming a flaccid muscle--a withering nerve;--but a little
thought-exercise has convinced me that my mental sinews are yet on the
whole strong!”

Sir Roger offered no reply. His eyes expressed a certain languid
wonderment; but duty being paramount with him, and his immediate errand
being to remind his sovereign of an appointment then about due, he began
to collect the writing materials scattered about on the table and put
them together for convenient removal. The smile on the King’s face
deepened as he watched him.

“You do not answer me, De Launay,”--he resumed, “You think perhaps that
I am talking in parables, and that my mind has been persuaded into a
metaphysical and rambling condition by an hour’s contemplation of the
sunlight on the sea! But come now!--have you not yourself felt a longing
to break loose from the trammels of conventional routine,--to be set
free from the slavery of answering another’s beck and call,--to be
something more than my attendant and friend----”

“Sir, more than your friend I have never desired to be!” said Sir Roger,
simply.

The King extended his hand with impulsive quickness, and Sir Roger as
he clasped it, bent low and touched it with his lips. There was no
parasitical homage in the act, for De Launay loved his sovereign with a
love little known at courts; loyally, faithfully, and without a particle
of self-seeking. He had long recognized the nobility, truth and courage
which graced and tempered the disposition of the master he served, and
knew him to be one, if not the only, monarch in the world likely to
confer some lasting benefit on his people by his reign.

“I tell you,” pursued the King, “that there is something in the mortal
composition of every man which is beyond mortality, something which
clamours to be heard, and seen, and proved. We may call it conscience,
intellect, spirit or soul, and attribute its existence, to God, as a
spark of the Divine Essence, but whatever it is, it is in every one
of us; and there comes a moment in life when it must flame out, or be
quenched forever. That moment has come to me, Roger,--that something in
me must have its way!”

“Your Majesty no doubt desires the impossible!”--said Sir Roger with a
smile, “All men do,--even kings!”

“‘Even kings!’” echoed the monarch--“You may well say ‘even’ kings! What
are kings? Simply the most wronged and miserable men on earth! I do not
myself put in a special claim for pity. My realm is small, and my people
are, for aught I can learn or am told of them, contented. But other
sovereigns who are my friends and neighbours, live, as it were, under
the dagger’s point,--with dynamite at their feet and pistols at their
heads,--all for no fault of their own, but for the faults of a system
which they did not formulate. Conspirators on the threshold--poison in
the air,--as in Russia, for example!--where is the joy or the pride of
being a King nowadays?”

“Talking of poison,” said Sir Roger blandly, as he placed the last
document of those he had collected, neatly in a leather case and
strapped it--“Your Majesty may perhaps feel inclined to defer giving the
promised audience to Monsignor Del Fords of the Society of Jesus?”

“By Heaven, I had forgotten him!” and the King rose. “This is what you
came to remind me of, Roger? He is here?”

De Launay bowed an assent.

“Well! We have kept a messenger of Mother Church waiting our
pleasure,--and not for the first time in the annals of history! But why
do you associate his name with poison?”

“Really, Sir, the connection is inexplicable,--unless it be the memory
of a religious lesson-book given to me in my childhood. It was an
illustrated treasure, and one picture showed me the Almighty in
the character of an old gentleman seated placidly on a cloud,
smiling;--while on the earth below, a priest, exactly resembling this
Del Fortis, poured a spoonful of something,--poison--or it might have
been boiling lead--down the throat of a heretic. I remember it impressed
me very much with the goodness of God.”

He maintained a whimsical gravity as he spoke, and the King laughed.

“De Launay, you are incorrigible! Come!--we will go within and see this
Del Fortis, and you shall remain present during the audience. That
will give you a chance to improve your present impression of him.
I understand he is a very brilliant and leading member of his
Order,--likely to be the next Vicar-General. I know his errand,--the
papers concerning his business are there--,” and he waved his hand
towards the leather case Sir Roger had just fastened--“Bring them with
you!”

Sir Roger obeyed, and the King, stepping forth from the pavilion, walked
slowly along the terrace, watching the sparkling sea, the flowering
orange-trees lifting their slender tufts of exquisitely scented bloom
against the clear blue of the sky, the birds skimming lightly from point
to point of foliage, and the white-sailed yachts dipping gracefully
as the ocean rose and fell with every wild sweet breath of the scented
wind. Pausing a moment, he presently took out a field-glass and looked
through it at one of the finest and fairest of these pleasure-vessels,
which, as he surveyed it, suddenly swung round, and began to scud away
westward.

“The Prince is on board?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir,” replied De Launay--“His Royal Highness intends sailing as
far as The Islands, and remaining there till sunset.”

“Alone, as usual?”

“As usual, Sir, alone, save for his captain and crew.”

The King walked on in silence for a minute. Then he paused abruptly.

“I do not like it, De Launay!”--he said decisively--“I do not like his
abnormal love of solitude. Books are all very well--poetry is in its way
excellent,--music, as we are told ‘hath charms’--but the boy broods too
much, and stays away too much from Court. What woman attracts him?”

Sir Roger’s eyes opened wide as the King turned suddenly round upon him
with this question.

“Woman, Sir? I know of none. The Prince is but twenty----”

“At twenty,” said the King,--“boys love--the wrong girl. At thirty they
marry--the wrong woman. At forty they meet the only true and fitting
soul’s companion,--and cry for the moon till the end! My son is in the
first stage, or I am much mistaken,--he loves--the wrong girl!”

He walked on,--and De Launay followed, with a vague sense of amusement
and disquietude in his mind. What had come to his Royal master, he
wondered? His ordinary manner had changed somewhat,--he spoke with less
than the customary formality, and there was an expression of freedom
and authority, combined with a touch of defiance in his face, that was
altogether new to the observation of the faithful equerry.

Arrived at the palace, and passing through one of the long and spacious
painted corridors, lit by richly coloured mullioned windows from end to
end, the King came face to face with a lady-in-waiting carrying a large
cluster of Madonna lilies. She drew aside, with a deep reverence,
to allow him to pass; but he stopped a moment, looking at the great
gorgeous white flowers faint with fragrance, and at the slight retiring
figure of the woman who held them.

“Are these for the chapel, Madame?” he asked.

“No, Sir! For the Queen.”

‘For the Queen!’ A quick sigh escaped him. He still stood, caught by
a sudden abstraction, looking at the dazzling whiteness of the snowy
blooms, and thinking how fittingly they would companion his beautiful,
cold, pure Queen Consort, who had never from her marriage day uttered
a word of love to him, or given him a glance of tenderness. Their
rich odours crept into his warm blood, and the bitter old sense of
unfulfilled longing, longing for affection, for comprehension, for all
that he had not possessed in his otherwise brilliant life, vexed and
sickened him. He turned away abruptly, and the lady-in-waiting, having
curtsied once more profoundly, passed on with her glistening sheaf of
bloom and disappeared vision-like in a gleam of azure light falling
through one of the further and higher casements. The King watched her
disappear, the meditative line of sadness still puckering his brow,
then, followed by his equerry, he entered a small private audience
chamber, where Sir Roger de Launay notified an attendant gentleman usher
that his Majesty was ready to receive Monsignor Del Fortis.

During the brief interval occupied in waiting for his visitor’s
approach, the King selected certain papers from those which Sir Roger
had brought from the garden pavilion and placed them in order on the
table.

“For the past six months,” he said “I have had this Jesuit’s name before
me, and have been in twenty minds a month about granting or refusing
what his Society demands. The matter has been discussed in the Press,
too, with the usual pros and cons of hesitation, but it is the People I
am thinking of, the People! and I am just now in the humour to satisfy a
Nation rather than a Church!”

De Launay said nothing. His opinion was not asked.

“It is a case in which the temporal overbalances the spiritual,”
 continued the King--“Which plainly proves that the spiritual must be
lacking in some essential point somewhere. For if the spiritual were
always truly of God, then would it always be the strongest. The question
which brings Monsignor Del Fortis here as special emissary of the
Vicar-General of the Society of Jesus, is simply this: Whether or no a
certain site in a particularly fertile tract of land belonging chiefly
to the Crown, shall be granted to the Jesuits for the purpose of
building thereon a church and monastery with schools attached. It seems
a reasonable request, set forth with an apparently religious intention.
Yet more than forty petitions have been sent in to me from the
inhabitants of the towns and villages adjacent to the lands, imploring
me to refuse the concession. By my faith, they plead as eloquently as
though asking deliverance from the plague! It is a curious dilemma. If I
grant the people’s request I anger the priests; if I satisfy the priests
I anger the people.”

“You mentioned a discussion in the Press, Sir--” hinted Sir Roger.

“Oh, the Press is like a weathercock--it turns whichever way the wind
of speculation blows. One day it is ‘for,’ another ‘against.’ In this
particular case it is diplomatically indifferent, except in one or two
cases where papal money has found its way into the newspaper offices.”

At that moment the door was flung open, and Monsignor Del Fortis was
ceremoniously ushered into the presence of his Majesty. At the
first glance it was evident that De Launay had reasonable cause for
associating the mediaeval priestly torturer pictured in his early
lesson-book with the unprepossessing personage now introduced. Del
Fortis was a dark, resentful-looking man of about sixty, tall and thin,
with a long cadaverous face, very strongly pronounced features and small
sinister eyes, over which the level brows almost met across the sharp
bridge of nose. His close black garb buttoned to the chin, outlined his
wiry angular limbs with an almost painful distinctness, and the lean
right hand which he placed across his breast as he bowed profoundly to
the King, looked more like the shrunken hand of a corpse than that of
a living man. The King observed him attentively, but not with favour;
while thoughts, strange, and for him as a constitutional monarch
audacious, began to move in the undercurrents of his mind, stirring him
to unusual speech and action. Sir Roger, retiring to the furthest end of
the room stood with his back against the door, a fine upright soldierly
figure, as motionless as though cast in bronze, though his eyes showed
keen and sparkling life as they rested on his Royal master, watching his
every gesture, as well as every slightest movement on the part of his
priestly visitor.

“You are welcome, Monsignor Del Fortis,”--said the King, at last
breaking silence.--“To save time and trouble, I may tell you that I need
no explanation of the nature of your business.”

The Jesuit bowed with an excessive humility.

“You wish me to grant to your Society,” continued the monarch--“that
portion of the Crown lands named in your petition, to be held in
your undisputed possession for a long term of years,--and in order to
facilitate my consent to this arrangement, your Vicar-General has sent
you here to furnish the full details of your building scheme. Am I so
far correct?”

The priest’s dark secretive eyes glittered craftily a moment as he
raised them to the open and tranquil countenance of the sovereign,--then
once again he bowed profoundly.

“Your Majesty has, with your customary care and patience, fully studied
the object of my errand”--he replied in a clear thin, somewhat rasping
voice, which he endeavoured to make smooth and conciliatory--“But it
is impossible that your Majesty, immersed every day in the affairs
of state, should have found time to personally go through the various
papers formally submitted to your consideration. Therefore, the
Vicar-General of our Order considered that if the present interview with
your Majesty could be obtained, I, as secretary and treasurer for the
proposed new monastery, might be able to explain the spiritual, as well
as the material advantages to be gained by the use of the lands for the
purpose mentioned.”

He spoke slowly, enunciating each word with careful distinctness.

“The spiritual part of the scheme is of course the most important to
you!”--said the King with a slight smile,--“But material advantages
are never entirely overlooked, even by holy men! Now I am merely a
‘temporal’ sovereign; and as such, I wish to know how your plan will
affect the people of the neighbouring town and district. What are your
intentions towards them? Their welfare is my chief concern; and what
I have to learn from you is,--How do you propose to benefit them by
maintaining a monastery, church and schools in their vicinity?”

Again Del Fortis gave a furtive glance upward. Seeing that the King’s
eyes were steadily fixed upon him, he quickly lowered his own, and gave
answer in an evidently prepared manner.

“Sir, the people of the district in question are untaught barbarians. It
is more for their sakes,--more for the love of gathering the lost sheep
into the fold, than for our own satisfaction, that we seek to pitch our
tents in the desert of their ignorance. They, and their children, are
the prey of heathenish modern doctrines, which alas!--are too prevalent
throughout the whole world at this particular time,--and, as they are
at present situated, no restraint is exercised upon them for the better
controlling of their natural and inherited vices. Unless the gentle hand
of Mother Church is allowed to rescue these, her hapless and neglected
ones; unless she has an opportunity afforded her of leading them out of
the darkness of error into the light of eternal day--”

He broke off, his eloquence being interrupted by a gesture from the
King.

“There is a Government school in the town,”--said the monarch, referring
to one or two documents on the table before him.--“There is also a Free
Public Library, and a Free School of Art. Thus it does not seem that
education is quite neglected.”

“Alas, Sir, such education is merely disastrous!” said Del Fortis, with
a deep sigh,--“Like the fruit on the tree of knowledge in the Garden of
Eden, it brings death to the soul!”

“You condemn the Government methods?” asked the King coldly.

The Jesuit moved uneasily, and a dull flush reddened his pale skin.

“Far be it from me, Sir, as a poor servant of the Church, to condemn
lawful authorities,--yet we should not forget that the Government is
temporal and changeable,--the Church is spiritual and changeless. We
cannot look for entire success in a scheme of popular education which is
not formulated under the guidance or the blessing of God!”

The King leaned forward a little in his chair, and surveyed him fixedly.

“How do you know that it is not formulated under the guidance and
blessing of God?” he asked suddenly--“Has the Almighty given you His
special opinion and confidence on the matter?”

Monsignor Del Fortis started indignantly.

“Sir! Your Majesty----”

De Launay made a step forward, but the King motioned him back.
Accordingly he resumed his former position, but his equable temperament
was for once seriously disturbed. He saw that his Royal master was
evidently bent on speaking his mind; and he knew well what a dangerous
indulgence that is for all men who desire peace and quietness in their
lives.

“I am aware of what you would say,” pursued the King--“You would say
that the Church--your Church--is the only establishment of the kind
which receives direct inspiration from the Creator of Universes. But
I do not feel justified in limiting the control of the Almighty to
one special orbit of Creed. You tell me that a government system of
education for the people is a purely temporal movement, and that, as
such, it is not blessed by the guidance of God. Yet the Pope seeks
‘temporal’ power! It is explained to us of course that he seeks it
in order that he may unite it to the spiritual in his own
person,--theoretically for the good of mankind, if practically for the
advancement of his own particular policy. But have you never thought,
Monsignor, that the marked severance of what you call ‘temporal’ power,
from what you equally call ‘spiritual’ power, is God’s work? Inasmuch
as nothing can be done without God’s will; for even if there is a devil
(which I am inclined to doubt) he owes his unhappy existence to God as
much as I do!”

He smiled; but Del Fortis stood rigidly silent, his head bent, and one
hand folded tight across his breast, an attitude Sir Roger de Launay
always viewed in every man with suspicion, as it suggested the
concealment of a weapon.

“You will admit” pursued the King, “that the action of human thought is
always progressive. Unfortunately your Creed lags behind human thought
in its onward march, thus causing the intelligent world to infer that
there must be something wrong with its teaching. For if the Church
had always been in all respects faithful to the teaching of her Divine
Master, she would be at this present time the supreme Conqueror of
Nations. Yet she is doing no more nowadays than she did in the middle
ages,--she threatens, she intimidates, she persecutes all who dare to
use for a reasonable purpose the brain God gave them,--but she does not
help on or sympathize with the growing fraternity and civilization of
the world. It is impossible not to recognize this. Yet I have a profound
respect for each and every minister of religion who honestly endeavours
to follow the counsels of Christ,”--here he paused,--then added with
slow and marked emphasis--“in whose Holy Name I devoutly believe for the
redemption of whatever there is in me worth redeeming;--nevertheless my
first duty, even in Christ, is plainly to the people of the country over
which I am elected to rule.”

The flickering shadow of a smile passed over the Jesuit’s dark features,
but he still kept silence.

“Therefore,” went on the King--“it is my unpleasant task to be compelled
to inform you, Monsignor, that the inhabitants of the district your
Order seeks to take under its influence, have the strongest objection
to your presence among them. So strong indeed is their aversion towards
your Society, that they have petitioned me in numerous ways, (and with
considerable eloquence, too, for ‘untaught barbarians’) to defend them
from your visitation. Now, to speak truly, I find they have all the
advantages which modern advancement and social improvement can give
them,--they attend their places of public worship in considerable
numbers, and are on the whole decent, God-fearing, order-loving subjects
to the Throne,--and more I do not desire for them or for myself.
Criminal cases are very rare in the district,--and the poor are
more inclined to help than to defraud each other. All this is so far
good,--and, I should imagine,--not displeasing to God. In any case, as
their merely temporal sovereign, I must decline to give your Order any
control over them.”

“You refuse the concession of land, Sir?” said Del Fortis, in a voice
that trembled with restrained passion.

“To satisfy those of my subjects who have appealed to me, I am compelled
to do so,” replied the King.

“I pray your Majesty’s pardon, but a portion of the land is held by
private persons who are prepared to sell to us----”

A quick anger flashed in the King’s eyes.

“They shall sell to me if they sell at all,”--he said,--“I repeat,
Monsignor, the fact that the law-abiding people of the place have
sought their King’s protection from priestly interference;--and,--by
Heaven!--they shall have it!”

There was a sudden silence. Sir Roger de Launay drew a sharp
breath,--his habitual languor of mind was completely dissipated, and he
studied the inscrutable face of Del Fortis with deepening suspicion and
disfavour. Not that there was the slightest sign of wrath or dismay on
the priest’s well-disciplined countenance;--on the contrary, a chill
smile illumined it as he spoke his next words with a serious, if
somewhat forced composure.

“Your Majesty is, without doubt, all powerful in your own particular
domain of society and politics,” he said--“But there is another
Majesty higher than yours,--that of the Church, before which dread and
infallible Tribunal even kings are brought to naught----”

“Monsignor Del Fortis,” interrupted the King, “We have not met this
morning, I presume, to indulge in a religious polemic! My power is,
as you very truly suggest, merely temporal--yours is spiritual. Yours
should be the strongest! Go your way now to your Vicar-General with the
straight answer I have given you,--but if by your ‘spiritual’ power
you can persuade the people who now hate your Society, to love it,--to
demand it,--to beg that you may be permitted to found a colony among
them,--why, in that case, come to me again, and I will grant you the
land. I am not prejudiced one way or the other, but I will not hand
over any of my subjects to the influence of priestcraft, so long as they
desire me to defend them from it.”

Del Fortis still smiled.

“Pardon me, Sir, but we of the Society of Jesus are your subjects also,
and we judge you to be a Christian and Catholic monarch----”

“As I am, most assuredly!” replied the King--“Christian and Catholic are
words which, if I understand their meaning, please me well! ‘Christian’
expresses a believer in and follower of Christ,--‘Catholic’ means
universal, by which, I take it, is intended wide, universal love and
tolerance without sect, party, or prejudice. In this sense the Church
is not Catholic--it is merely the Roman sect. Nor are you truly my
subjects, since you have only one ruler, the Supreme Pontiff,--with
whom I am somewhat at variance. But, as I have said, we are not here to
indulge in argument. You came to proffer a request; I have given you the
only answer I conceive fitting with my duty;--the matter is concluded.”

Del Fortis hesitated a moment,--then bowed low to the ground;--anon,
lifting himself, raised one hand with an invocative gesture of profound
solemnity.

“I commend your Majesty to the mercy of God, that He may in His wisdom,
guard your life and soften your heart towards the ministers of His Holy
Religion, and bring you into the ways of righteousness and peace! For
the rest, I will report your Majesty’s decision to the Vicar-General.”

“Do so!”--rejoined the King--“And assure him that the decision is
unalterable,--unless the inhabitants of the place concerned desire to
have it revoked.”

Again Del Fortis bowed.

“I humbly take my leave of your Majesty!”

The monarch looked at him steadfastly as he made another salutation, and
backed out of the presence-chamber. Sir Roger de Launay opened the door
for him with alacrity, handing him over into the charge of an usher with
the whispered caution to see him well off the Royal premises; and then
returning to his sovereign, stood “at attention.” The King noted his
somewhat troubled aspect, and laughed.

“What ails you, De Launay?” he asked--“You seem astonished that for once
I have spoken my mind?”

“Sir, to speak one’s mind is always dangerous!”

“Dangerous--danger!--What idle words to make cowards of men! Danger--of
what? There is only one danger--death; and that is sure to come to every
man, whether he be a hero or a poltroon.”

“True,--but----”

“But--what? De Launay, if you love me, do not look at me with so
expostulatory an air! It does not become your inches! Now listen!--when
the next press reporter comes nosing round for palace news, let him be
told that the King has refused permission to the Jesuits to build on any
portion of the Crown lands demanded for the purpose. Let this be made
known to Press and People--the sooner the better!”

“Sir,” murmured De Launay--“We live in strange times----”

“Why, there you speak most truly!” said the King, with emphasis--“We do
live in strange times--the very strangest perhaps, since Aeneas Sylvius
wrote concerning Christendom. Do you remember the words he set down so
long ago?--‘It is a body without a head,--a republic without laws or
magistrates. The pope or the emperor may shine as lofty titles, as
splendid images,--but they are unable to command, and no one is willing
to obey!’ History thus repeats itself, De Launay;--and yet with all its
past experience, the Roman Church does not seem to realize that it is
powerless against the attacks of intellectual common sense. Faith in
God,--a high, perfect, pure faith in God, and a simple following of
the Divine Teacher of God’s command, Christ;--these things are wise and
necessary for all nations; but, to allow human beings to be coerced by
superstition for political motives, under the disguise of religion, is
an un-Christian business, and I for one will have no part in it!”

“You will lay yourself open to much serious misconstruction, Sir,” said
De Launay.

“Let us hope so, Roger!” rejoined the King with a smile--“For if I am
never misunderstood, I shall know myself to be a fool! Come,--do not
look so glum!--I want you to help me.”

“To help you, Sir?” exclaimed De Launay eagerly,--“With my life, if you
demand it!”

The King rested one hand familiarly on his shoulder.

“I would rather take my own life than yours, De Launay!” he
said--“No,--whatever difficulties I get myself into, you shall not
suffer! But--as I told you a while ago,--there is something in me that
must have its way. I am sick to death of conventionalities,--you must
help me to break through them! You are right in saying that we live in
strange times;--they are strange times!--and they may perchance be all
the better for a strange King!”




CHAPTER IV

SEALED ORDERS


Some hours later on, Sir Roger de Launay, having left his Sovereign’s
presence, and being off duty for a time, betook himself to certain
apartments in the west wing of the palace, where the next most
trusted personage to himself in the confidence of the King, had his
domicile,--Professor von Glauben, resident physician to the Royal
Household. Heinrich von Glauben was a man of somewhat extraordinary
character and individuality. In his youth he had made a sudden meteoric
fame for his marvellous skill and success in surgery, as also for his
equally surprising quickness and correctness in diagnosing obscure
diseases and tracing them to their source. But, after creating a vast
amount of discussion and opposition among his confrères, and almost
reaching that brilliant point of triumph when his originality and
cleverness were proved great enough to win him a host of enemies, he
all at once threw up the game as it were, and, resigning the favourable
opportunities of increasing distinction offered him in his native
Germany, accepted the comparatively retired and private position he now
occupied. Some said it was a disappointment in love which had caused his
abrupt departure from the Fatherland,--others declared it was irritation
at the severe manner in which his surgical successes had been handled
by the medical critics,--but whatever the cause, it soon became evident
that he had turned his back on the country of his birth for ever, and
that he was apparently entirely satisfied with the lot he had chosen.
His post was certainly an easy and pleasant one,--the members of the
Royal family to which his services were attached were exceptionally
healthy, as Royal families go; and he was seldom in more than merely
formal attendance, so that he had ample time and opportunity to pursue
those deeper forms of physiological study which had excited the wrath
and ridicule of his contemporaries, as well as to continue the writing
of a book which he intended should make a stir in the world, and which
he had entitled “The Moral and Political History of Hunger.”

“For,” said he--“Hunger is the primal civilizer,--the very keystone and
foundation of all progress. From the plain, prosy, earthy fact that man
is a hungry animal, and must eat, has sprung all the civilization of
the world! I shall demonstrate this in my book, beginning with the
scriptural legend of Adam’s greed for an apple. Adam was evidently
hungry at the moment Eve tempted him. As soon as he had satisfied his
inner man, he thought of his outer,--and his next idea was, naturally,
tailoring. From this simple conjunction of suggestions, combined with
what ‘God’ would have to say to him concerning his food-experiment and
fig-leaf apron, man has drawn all his religions, manners, customs and
morals. The proposition is self-evident,--but I intend to point it out
with somewhat emphasised clearness for the benefit of those persons
who are inclined to arrogate to themselves the possession of superior
wisdom. Neither brain nor soul has placed man in a position of
Supremacy,--merely Hunger and Nakedness!”

The Professor was now about fifty-five, but his exceptionally powerful
build and robust constitution gave him the grace in appearance of many
years younger, though perhaps the extreme composure of his temperament,
and the philosophic manner in which he viewed all circumstances, whether
pleasing or disastrous, may have exercised the greatest influence in
keeping his eyes clear and clean, and his countenance free of unhandsome
wrinkles. He was more like a soldier than a doctor, and was proud of his
resemblance to the earlier portraits of Bismarck. To see him in his
own particular ‘sanctum’ surrounded by weird-looking diagrams of
sundry parts of the human frame, mysterious phials and stoppered flasks
containing various liquids and crystals, and all the modern appliances
for closely examining the fearful yet beautiful secrets of the living
organism, was as if one should look upon a rough and burly giant engaged
in some delicate manipulation of mosaics. Yet Von Glauben’s large hand
was gentler than a woman’s in its touch and gift of healing,--no surgeon
alive could probe a wound more tenderly, or with less pain to the
sufferer,--and the skill of that large hand was accompanied by the
penetrative quality of the large benevolent brain which guided it,--a
brain that could encompass the whole circle of the world in its
observant and affectionate compassion.

“Ach!--who is there that can be angry with anyone?--impatient with
anyone,--offended with anyone!” he was wont to say--“Everybody suffers
so much and so undeservedly, that as far as my short life goes I have
only time for pity--not condemnation!”

To this individual, as a kind of human calmative and tonic combined,
Sir Roger de Launay was in the habit of going whenever he felt his
own customary tranquillity at all disturbed. The two were great
friends;--friends in their mutual love and service of the King,--friends
in their equally mutual but discreetly silent worship of the Queen,--and
friends in their very differences of opinion on men and matters in
general. De Launay, being younger, was more hasty of judgment and quick
in action; but Von Glauben too had been known to draw his sword with
unexpected rapidity on occasion, to the discomfiture of those who
deemed him only at home with the scalpel. Just now, however, he was in a
particularly non-combative and philosophic mood; he was watching certain
animalculae wriggling in a glass tube, the while he sat in a large
easy-chair with slippered feet resting on another chair opposite,
puffing clouds of smoke from a big meerschaum,--and he did not stir from
his indolent attitude when De Launay entered, but merely looked up and
smiled placidly.

“Sit down, Roger!” he said,--then, as De Launay obeyed the invitation,
he pushed over a box of cigars, and added--“You look exceedingly tired,
my friend! Something has bored you more than usual? Take a lesson from
those interesting creatures!” and he pointed with the stem of his pipe
to the bottled animalculae--“They are never bored,--never weary of doing
mischief! They are just now living under the pleasing delusion that the
glass tube they are in is a man, and that they are eating him up alive.
Little devils! Nothing will exhaust their vitality till they have gorged
themselves to death! Just like a great many human beings!”

“I am not in the mood for studying animalculae,” said De Launay
irritably, as he lit a cigar.

“No? But why not? They are really quite as interesting as ourselves!”

“Look here, Von Glauben, I want you to be serious--”

“My friend, I am always serious,” declared the Professor--“Even when I
laugh, I laugh seriously. My laughter is as real as myself.”

“What would you think,”--pursued De Launay--“of a king who freely
expressed his own opinions?”

“I should say he was a brave man,” answered the Professor; “He would
certainly deserve my respect, and he should have it. Even if the laws
of etiquette were not existent, I should feel justified in taking off my
hat to him.”

“Never from henceforth wear a hat at all then,” said De Launay--“It will
save you the trouble of continually doffing it at every glimpse of his
Majesty!”

Von Glauben drew his pipe from his mouth and gazed blankly at the
ceiling for a few moments in silence. “His Majesty?” he presently
murmured--“Our Majesty?”

“Yes; our Majesty--our King”--replied De Launay--“For some inscrutable
reason or other he has suddenly adopted the dangerous policy of speaking
his mind. What now?”

“What now? Why nothing particular just now,--unless you have something
to tell me. Which, judging from your entangled expression of eye, I
presume you have.”

De Launay hesitated a moment. The Professor saw his hesitation.

“Do not speak, my friend, if you think you are committing a breach of
confidence,” he said composedly--“In the brief affairs of this life, it
is better to keep trouble on your own mind than impart it to others.”

“Oh, there is no breach of confidence;” said De Launay, “The thing is as
public as the day, or if it is not public already, it soon will be
made so. That is where the mischief comes in,--or so I think. Judge for
yourself!” And in a few words he gave the gist of the interview which
had taken place between the King and the emissary of the Jesuits that
morning.

“Nothing surprises me as a rule,”--said the Professor, when he had heard
all--“But if anything could prick the sense of astonishment anew in
me, it would be to think that anyone, king or commoner, should take
the trouble to speak truth to a Jesuit. Why, the very essence of their
carefully composed and diplomatic creed, is to so disguise truth that it
shall be no more recognisable. Myself, I believe the Jesuits to be the
lineal descendants of those priests who served Bel and the Dragon. The
art of conjuring and deception is in their very blood. It is for the
Jesuits that I have invented a beautiful new verb,--‘To hypocrise.’ It
sounds well. Here is the present tense,--‘I hypocrise, Thou hypocrisest,
He hypocrises:--We hypocrise, You hypocrise, They hypocrise.’ Now
hear the future. ‘I shall hypocrise, Thou shalt hypocrise, He shall
hypocrise; We shall hypocrise, You shall hypocrise, They shall
hypocrise.’ There is the whole art of Jesuitry for you, made
grammatically perfect!”

De Launay gave a gesture of impatience, and flung away the end of his
half-smoked cigar.

“Ach! That is a sign of temper, Roger!” said Von Glauben, shaking his
head--“To lift one’s shoulders to the lobes of one’s ears, and waste
nearly the half of an exceedingly expensive and choice Havana, shows
nervous irritation! You are angry, my friend--and with me!”

“No I am not,” replied De Launay, rising from his chair and beginning
to pace the room--“But I do not profess to have your phlegmatic
disposition. I feel what I thought you would feel also,--that the King
is exposing himself to unnecessary danger. And I know what you do not
yet know, but what this letter will no doubt inform you,”--and he drew
an envelope bearing the Royal seal from his pocket and handed it to the
Professor--“Namely,--that his Majesty is bent on rushing voluntarily
into various other perils, unless perhaps, your warning or advice may
hinder him. Mine has no effect,--moreover I am bound to serve him as he
bids.”

“Equally am I also bound to serve him;”--said Von Glauben, “And gladly
and faithfully do I intend to perform my service wherever it may lead
me!” Whereupon, shaking himself out of his recumbent position, like a
great lion rolling out of his lair, he stood upright, and breaking the
seal of the envelope he held, read its contents through in silence. Sir
Roger stood opposite to him, watching his face in vain for any sign of
astonishment, regret or dismay.

“We must do as he commands,”--he said simply as he finished reading the
letter and folded it up for safe keeping--“There is no other way; not
for me at least. I shall most assuredly be at the appointed place, at
the appointed hour, and in the appointed manner. It will be a change;
certainly lively, and possibly beneficial!”

“But the King’s life--”

“Is in God’s keeping!” said Von Glauben,--“Believe me, Roger, no harm
comes undeservedly to a brave man with a good conscience! It is a bad
conscience which invites mischief. I am a great believer in the law of
attraction. The good attracts the good,--the bad, the bad. That is why
truthful persons are generally lonely--because nearly all the world’s
inhabitants are liars!”

“But the King--” again began Sir Roger.

“The King is a man!” said Von Glauben, with a flash of pride in his
eyes--“Which is more than I will say for most kings! Who shall blame
him for asserting his manhood? Not I! Not you! Who shall blame him for
seeking to know the real position of things in the country he governs?
Not I! Not you! Our business is to guard and defend him--with our own
lives, if necessary,--we shall do that with a will, Roger, shall we
not?” And with an impulsive quickness of action, he took a sword from
a stand of weapons near him, drew it from its scabbard and kissing the
hilt, held it out to De Launay who did the same--“That is understood!
And for the rest, Roger my friend, take it all lightly and easily--as a
farce!--as a bit of human comedy, with a great actor cast for the chief
role. We are only supers, you and I, but we shall do well to stand near
the wings in case of fire!”

He drew himself up to his great height and squared his shoulders,--then
smiled benevolently.

“I believe it will be all very amusing, Roger; and that your fears for
the safety of his Majesty will be proved groundless. Remember, Court
life is excessively dull,--truly the dullest form of existence on
earth,--it is quite natural that he who is the most bored by it should
desire some break in the terrible monotony!”

“The monotony will certainly be broken with a vengeance, if the King
continues in his present humour!”--said De Launay grimly.

“Possibly! And let us hope the comfortable self-assurance and
complacency of a certain successful Minister may be somewhat seriously
disturbed!” rejoined Von Glauben,--“For myself, I assure you I see
sport!”

“And I scent danger,”--said De Launay--“For if any mischance happen to
the King, the Prince is not ripe enough to rule.”

A slight shadow darkened the Professor’s open countenance. He looked
fixedly at Sir Roger, who met his gaze with equal fixity.

“The Prince,”--he said slowly--“is young--”

“And rash--” interposed De Launay.

“No. Pardon me, my friend! Not rash. Merely honest. That is all! He is
a very honest young man indeed. It is unfortunate that he is so; a
ploughman may be honest if he likes, but a prince--never!”

De Launay was silent.

“I will now destroy a world”--continued Von Glauben, “Kings,
emperors, popes, councillors and common folk, can all perish
incontinently,--as--being myself for the present the free agent of the
Deity concerned in the matter,--I have something else to do than to look
after them,”--and he took up the glass vessel containing the animalculae
he had been watching, and cast it with its contents into a small stove
burning dimly at one end of the apartment,--“Gone are their ambitions
and confabulations for ever! How easy for the Creator to do the same
thing with us, Roger! Let us not talk of any special danger for the
King or for any man, seeing that we are all on the edge of an eternal
volcano!”

De Launay stood absorbed for a moment, as if in deep thought. Then
rousing himself abruptly he said:--

“You will not see the King, and speak with him before to-morrow night?”

“Why should I?” queried the Professor. “His wish is a command which I
must obey. Besides, my good Roger, all the arguments in the world will
not turn a man from having his own way if he has once made up his own
mind. Advice from me on the present matter would be merely taken as an
impertinence. Moreover I have no advice to give,--I rather approve of
the plan!”

Sir Roger looked at him; and noting the humorous twinkle in his eyes
smiled, though somewhat gravely.

“I hope, with you, that the experiment may only prove an amusing one,”
 he said--“But life is not always a farce!”

“Not always, but often! When it is not a farce it is a tragedy. And such
a tragedy! My God! Horrible--monstrous--cruel beyond conception, and
enough to make one believe in Hell and doubt Heaven!”

He spoke passionately, in a voice vibrating with strong emotion. De
Launay glanced at him wonderingly, but did not speak.

“When you see tender young children tortured by disease,” he
went on,--“Fair and gentle women made the victims of outrage and
brutality--strong men killed in their thousands to gain a little
additional gold, an extra slice of empire,--then you see the tragic,
the inexplicable, the crazy cruelty of putting into us this little pulse
called Life. But I try not to think of this--it is no use thinking!”

He paused,--then in his usual quiet tone said:

“To-morrow night, then, my friend?”

“To-morrow night,” rejoined De Launay,--“Unless you receive further
instructions from the King.”

At that moment the clear call of a trumpet echoing across the
battlements of the palace denoted the hour for changing the sentry.
“Sunset already!” said Von Glauben, walking to the window and throwing
back the heavy curtain which partially shaded it, “And yonder is Prince
Humphry’s yacht on its homeward way.”

De Launay came and stood beside him, looking out. Before them the sea
glistened with a thousand tints of lustrous opal in the light of the
sinking sun, which, surrounded by mountainous heights of orange and
purple cloud, began to touch the water-line with a thousand arrowy darts
of flame. The white-sailed vessel on which their eyes were fixed, came
curtseying over the waves through a perfect arch of splendid colour,
like a fairy or phantom ship evoked from a poet’s dream.

“Absent all day, as he has been,” said De Launay, “his Royal Highness is
punctual to the promised hour of his return.”

“He is, as I told you, honest;” said Von Glauben, “and it is possible
his honesty will be his misfortune.”

De Launay muttered something inaudible in answer, and turned to leave
the apartment.

Von Glauben looked at him with an affectionate solicitude.

“What a lucky thing it is you never married, Roger! Otherwise you would
now be going to tell your wife all about the King’s plans! Then she,
sweet creature, would go to confession,--and her confessor would tell a
bishop,--and a bishop would tell a cardinal,--and a cardinal would tell
a confidential monsignor,--and the confidential monsignor would tell the
Supreme Pontiff,--and so all the world would be ringing with the news
started by one little pretty wagging tongue of a woman!”

A faint flush coloured De Launay’s bronzed cheek, but he laughed.

“True! I am glad I have never married. I am still more glad--of
circumstances”--he paused,--then went on, “which have so chanced to me
that I shall never marry.” He paused again--then added--“I must be gone,
Von Glauben! I have to meet Prince Humphry at the quay with a message
from his Majesty.”

“Surely,” said the Professor, opening his eyes very wide, “The Prince is
not to be included in our adventure?”

“By no means!” replied De Launay,--“But the King is not pleased with his
son’s frequent absences from Court, and desires to speak with him on the
matter.”

Von Glauben looked grave.

“There will be some little trouble there,” he said, with a half
sigh--“Ach! Who knows! Perhaps some great trouble!”

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Sir Roger,--“We live in times of peace. We
want no dissension with either the King or the people. Till to-morrow
night then?”

“Till to-morrow night!” responded Von Glauben, whereupon Sir Roger with
a brief word of farewell, strode away.

Left to himself, the Professor still stood at his window watching the
approach of the Prince’s yacht, which came towards the shore with such
swift and stately motion through the portals of the sunset, over the
sparkling water.

“Unfortunate Humphry!” he muttered,--“What a secret he has entrusted me
with! And yet why do I call him unfortunate? There should be nothing to
regret--and yet--! Well! The mischief was done before poor Heinrich
von Glauben was consulted; and if poor Heinrich were God and the Devil
rolled into one strange Eternal Monster, he could not have prevented it!
What is done, can never be undone!”




CHAPTER V

“IF I LOVED YOU!”


A singular pomp is sometimes associated with the announcement that my
Lord Pedigree, or Mister Nobody has ‘had the honour of dining’ with
their Majesties the King and Queen. Outsiders read the thrilling line
with awe and envy,--and many of them are foolish enough to wish that
they also were Lords Pedigree or Misters Nobody. As a matter of sad and
sober fact, however, a dinner with royal personages is an extremely
dull affair. ‘Do not speak unless you are spoken to,’ is a rule which,
however excellent and necessary in Court etiquette, is apt to utterly
quench conversation, and render the brightest spirits dull and inert.
The silent and solemn movements of the Court flunkeys,--the painful
attitudes of those who are _not_ ‘spoken to’; the eager yet laboured
smiles of those who _are_ ‘spoken to ‘;--the melancholy efforts at
gaiety--the dread of trespassing on tabooed subjects--these things tend
to make all but the most independent and unfettered minds shrink from
such an ordeal as the ‘honour’ of dining with kings. It must, however,
be conceded that the kings themselves are fully aware of the tediousness
of their dinner parties, and would lighten the boredom if they could;
but etiquette forbids. The particular monarch whose humours are the
subject of this ‘plain unvarnished’ history would have liked nothing
better than to be allowed to dine in simplicity and peace without his
conversation being noted, and without having a flunkey at hand to watch
every morsel of food go into his mouth. He would have liked to eat
freely, talk freely, and conduct himself generally with the ease of a
private gentleman.

All this being denied to him, he hated the dinner-hour as ardently as
he hated receiving illuminated addresses, and the freedom of cities. Yet
all things costly and beautiful were combined to make his royal table a
picture which would have pleased the eyes and taste of a Marguerite de
Valois. On the evening of the day on which he had determined, as he
had said to himself, to ‘begin to reign,’ it looked more than usually
attractive. Some trifling chance had made the floral decorations more
tasteful--some amiable humour of the providence which rules daily
events, had ordained that two or three of the prettiest Court ladies
should be present;--Prince Humphry and his two brothers, Rupert and
Cyprian, were at table,--and though conversation was slow and scant, the
picturesqueness of the scene was not destroyed by silence. The apartment
which was used as a private dining-room when their Majesties had no
guests save the members of their own household, was in itself a gem of
art and architecture,--it had been designed and painted from floor to
ceiling by one of the most famous of the dead and gone masters, and its
broad windows opened out on a white marble loggia fronting the ocean,
where festoons of flowers clambered and hung, in natural tufts and
trails of foliage and blossom, mingling their sweet odours with the
fresh scent of the sea. Amid all the glow and delicacy of colour, the
crowning perfection of the perfect environment was the Queen-Consort,
lovelier in her middle-age than most women in their teens. An exquisite
figure of stateliness and dignity, robed in such hues and adorned with
such jewels as best suited her statuesque beauty, and attended by ladies
of whose more youthful charms she was never envious, having indeed no
cause for envy, she was a living defiance to the ravages of time, and
graced her royal husband’s dinner-table with the same indifferent
ease as she graced his throne, unchanging in the dazzling light of her
physical faultlessness. He, looking at her with mingled impatience
and sadness, almost wished she would grow older in appearance with her
years, and lose that perfect skin, white as alabaster,--that
glittering but cold luminance of eye. For experience had taught him the
worthlessness of beauty unaccompanied by tenderness, and fair faces had
no longer the first attraction for him. His eldest son, Prince Humphry,
bore a strong resemblance to himself,--he was tall and slim, with a fine
face, and a well-built muscular figure; the other two younger princes,
Rupert and Cyprian, aged respectively eighteen and sixteen, were like
their mother,--beautiful in form and feature, but as indifferent to all
tenderness of thought and sentiment as they were full of splendid health
and vigour. And, despite the fact that the composition and surroundings
of his household were, to all outward appearances, as satisfactory as a
man in his position could expect them to be, the King was intellectually
and spiritually aware of the emptiness of the shell he called ‘home.’

Love was lacking; his beautiful wife was the ice-wall against which all
waves of feeling froze as they fell into the stillness of death. His
sons had been born as the foals of a racing stud might be born,--merely
to continue the line of blood and succession. They were not the dear
offspring of passion or of tenderness. The coldness of their mother’s
nature was strongly engendered in them, and so far they had never shown
any particular affection for their parents. The princes Rupert and
Cyprian thought of nothing all day but sports and games of skill; they
studied serious tasks unwillingly, and found their position as sons of
the reigning monarch, irksome, and even ridiculous. They had caught the
infection of that diseased idea which in various exaggerated forms is
tending to become more or less universal, and to work great mischief to
nations,--namely, that ‘sport’ is more important than policy, and that
all matters relating to ‘sport,’ are more worth attention than wisdom in
government. Of patriotism, or love of country they had none; and laughed
to scorn the grand old traditions and sentiments of national glory and
honour, which had formerly inspired the poets of their land to many
a wild and beautiful chant of battle or of victory. How to pass the
day--how best to amuse themselves--this was their first thought on
waking every morning,--football, cricket, tennis and wrestling formed
their chief subjects of conversation; and though they had professors
and tutors of the most qualified and certificated ability, they made
no secret of their utter contempt for all learning and literature. They
were fine young animals; but did less with the brains bestowed upon them
than the working bee who makes provision of honey for the winter, or the
swallow that builds its nest under warmly sheltered eaves.

Prince Humphry, however, was of a different nature. From a shy, somewhat
unmanageable boy, he had developed into a quiet, dreamy youth, fond of
books, music, and romantic surroundings. He avoided the company of his
brothers whenever it was possible; their loud voices, boisterous spirits
and perpetual chatter concerning the champions of this or that race
or match, bored him infinitely, and he was at no pains to disguise his
boredom. During the last year he seemed to have grown up suddenly into
full manhood,--he had begun to assert his privileges as Heir-Apparent,
and to enjoy the freedom his position allowed him. Yet the manner of
his enjoyment was somewhat singular for a young man who formed a central
figure in the circle of the land’s Royalty,--he cared nothing at all
for the amusements and dissipations of the time; he merely showed an
abnormal love of solitude, which was highly unflattering to fashionable
society. It was on this subject that the King had decided to speak
with him,--and he watched him with closer attention than usual on this
particular evening when his habit of absenting himself all day in his
yacht had again excited comment. It was easy to see that the Prince had
been annoyed by the message Sir Roger de Launay had conveyed to him on
his arrival home,--a message to the effect that, as soon as dinner was
concluded, he was required to attend his Majesty in private; and all
through the stately and formal repast, his evident irritation and
impatience cast a shadow of vague embarrassment over the royal
party,--with the exception of the princes Rupert and Cyprian, who were
never embarrassed by anything, and who were more apt to be amused than
disquieted by the vexation of others. Welcome relief was at last given
by the serving of coffee,--and the Queen and all her ladies adjourned to
their own apartments. With their departure the rest of the circle soon
dispersed, there being no special guests present; and at a sign from
De Launay, Prince Humphry reluctantly followed his father into a small
private smoking-room adjacent to the open loggia, where the equerry,
bowing low, left the two together.

For a moment the King kept silence, while he chose a cigar from
the silver box on the table. Then, lighting it, he handed the box
courteously to his son.

“Will you smoke, Humphry?”

“Thanks, Sir,--no.”

The King seated himself; Prince Humphry remained standing.

“You had a favourable wind for your expedition today;” said the monarch
at last, beginning to smoke placidly--“I observe that The Islands appear
to have won special notice from you. What is the attraction? The climate
or the scenery?”

The Prince was silent.

“I like fine scenery myself,--” continued the King--“I also like a
change of air. But variation in both is always desirable,--and for this,
it is unwise to go to the same place every day!”

Still the Prince said nothing. His father looked up and studied his face
attentively, but could guess nothing from its enigmatical expression.

“You seem tongue-tied, Humphry!” he said--“Come, sit down! Let us talk
this out. Can you not trust me, your father, as a friend?”

“I wish I could!” answered the young man, half inaudibly.

“And can you not?”

“No. You have never loved me!”

The King drew his cigar from his mouth, and flicking off a morsel of
ash, looked at its end meditatively.

“Well--no!--I cannot say honestly that I have. Love,--it is a ridiculous
word, Humphry, but it has a meaning on certain occasions!--love for the
children of your mother is an impossibility!”

“Sir, I am not to blame for my mother’s disposition.”

“True--very true. You are not to blame. But you exist. And that you do
exist is a fact of national importance. Will you not sit down?”

“At your command, Sir!” and the Prince seated himself opposite his
father, who having studied his cigar sufficiently, replaced it between
his lips and went on smoking for a few minutes before he spoke again.
Then he resumed:--

“Your existence, I repeat, Humphry, is a fact of national importance.
To you falls the Throne when I have done with it, and life has done
with me. Therefore, your conduct,--your mode of life--your example in
manners--concern, not me, so much as the nation. You say that you cannot
trust me as a friend, because I have never loved you. Is not this a
somewhat childish remark on your part? We live in a very practical
age--love is not a necessary tie between human beings as things go
nowadays;--the closest bond of friendship rests on the basis of cash
accounts.”

“I am perfectly aware of that!” said the Prince, fixing his fine dark
eyes full on his father’s face--“And yet, after all, love is such a
vital necessity, that I have only to look at you, in order to realize
the failure and mistake of trying to do without it!”

The King gave him a glance of whimsical surprise.

“So!--you have begun to notice what I have known for years!” he said
lightly--“Clever young man! What fine fairy finger is pointing out to
you my deficiencies, while supplying your own? Do you learn to estimate
the priceless value of love while contemplating the romantic groves and
woodlands of The Islands? Do you read poetry there?--or write it? Or
talk it?”

Prince Humphry coloured,--then grew very pale.

“When I misuse my time, Sir,” he said--“Surely it will then be needful
to catechise me on the manner in which I spend it,--but not till then!”

“Fairly put!” answered the King--“But I have an idea--it may be a
mistaken idea,--still I have it--that you _are_ misusing your time,
Humphry! And this is the cause of our present little discussion. If I
knew that you occupied yourself with the pleasures befitting your age
and rank, I should be more at ease.”

“What do you consider to be the pleasures befitting my age and rank?”
 asked the Prince with a touch of satire; “Making a fool of myself
generally?”

The King smiled.

“Well!--it would be better to make a fool of yourself generally than
particularly! Folly is not so harmful when spread like jam over a whole
slice of bread,--but it may cause a life-long sickness, if swallowed in
one secret gulp of sweetness!”

The Prince moved uneasily.

“You think I am catechising you,--and you resent it--but, my dear boy,
let me again remind you that you are in a manner answerable to the
nation for your actions; and especially to that particular section of
the nation called Society. Society is the least and worst part of the
whole community--but it has to be considered by such servants of the
public as ourselves. You know what James the First of England wrote
concerning the ‘domestic regulations’ on the conduct of a prince and
future king? ‘A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest, actions
and gestures all the people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in
the discharge of his office, yet if his behaviour be light or dissolute,
in indifferent actions, the people, who see but the outward part,
conceive preoccupied conceits of the king’s inward intention, which
although with time, the trier of all truth, will evanish by the evidence
of the contrarie effect, yet, _interim patitur justus_, and prejudged
conceits will, in the meantime, breed contempt, the mother of rebellion
and disorder.’ Poor James of the ‘goggle eyes and large hysterical
heart’ as Carlyle describes him! Do you not agree with his estimate of a
royal position?”

“I am not aware, Sir, that my behaviour can as yet be called light or
dissolute;” replied the Prince coldly, with a touch of hauteur.

“I do not call it so, Humphry”--said the King--“To the best of my
knowledge, your conduct has always been most exemplary. But with all
your excessive decorum, you are mysterious. That is bad! Society will
not endure being kept in the dark, or outside the door of things, like
a bad child! It wants to be in the room, and know everything and
everybody. And this reminds me of another point on which the good
English James offers sound advice. ‘Remember to be plaine and sensible
in your language; for besides, it is the tongue’s office to be the
messenger of the mind, it may be thought a point of imbecilitie of
spirit, in a king to speak obscurely, much more untrewly, as if he stood
in awe of any in uttering his thoughts.’ That is precisely your mood at
the present moment, Humphry,--you stand ‘in awe’--of me or of someone
else,--in ‘uttering your thoughts.’”

“Pardon me, Sir,--I do not stand in awe of you or of anyone;” said the
Prince composedly--“I simply do not choose to ‘utter my thoughts’ just
now.”

The King looked at him in surprise, and with a touch of admiration. The
defiant air he had unconsciously assumed became him,--his handsome
face was pale, and his dark eyes coldly brilliant, like those of his
beautiful mother, with the steel light of an inflexible resolve.

“You do not choose?” said the King, after a pause--“You decline to give
any explanation of your long hours of absence?--your constant visits to
The Islands, and your neglect of those social duties which should keep
you at Court?”

“I decline to do so for the present,” replied the young man decisively;
“I can see no harm in my preference for quietness rather than
noise,--for scenes of nature rather than those of artificial folly. The
Islands are but two hours sail from this port,--little tufts of land set
in the sea, where the coral-fishers dwell. They are beautiful in
their natural adornment of foliage and flower;--I go there to read--to
dream--to think of life as a better, purer thing than what you call
‘society’ would make it for me; you cannot blame me for this?”

The King was silent.

“If it is your wish,”--went on the Prince--“that I should stay in the
palace more, I will obey you. If you desire me to be seen oftener in
the capital, I will endeavour to fulfil your command, though the streets
stifle me. But, for God’s sake, do not make me a puppet on show before
my time,--or marry me to a woman I hate, merely for the sake of heirs to
a wretched Throne!”

The King rose from his chair, and, walking towards the garden, threw the
rest of his cigar out among the foliage, where the burning morsel shone
like a stray glowworm in the green. Then he turned towards his son;--his
face was grave, almost stern.

“You can go, Humphry!” he said;--“I have no more to say to you at
present. You talk wildly and at random, as if you were, by some means or
other, voluntarily bent upon unfitting yourself for the position you
are destined to occupy. You will do well, I think, to remain more in
evidence at Court. You will also do well to be seen at some of the
different great social functions of the day. But I shall not coerce you.
Only--consider well what I have said!--and if you have a secret”--he
paused, and then repeated with emphasis--“I say, if you have a secret of
any kind, be advised, and confide in me before it is too late! Otherwise
you may find yourself betrayed unawares! Good-night!”

He walked away without throwing so much as a backward glance at the
Prince, who stood amazed at the suddenness and decision with which he
had brought the conversation to a close; and it was not till his tall
figure had disappeared that the young man began to realize the doubtful
awkwardness of the attitude he had assumed towards one who, both as
parent and king, had the most urgent claim in the world upon his respect
and obedience. Impatient and angry with himself, he crossed the loggia
and went out into the garden beyond. A young moon, slender as a bent
willow wand, gleamed in the clear heavens among hosts of stars more
brilliantly visible than itself, and the soft air, laden with the
perfume of thousands of flowers, cooled his brain and calmed his nerves.
The musical low murmur of the sea, lapping against the shore below the
palace walls, suggested a whole train of pleasing and poetical fancies,
and he strolled along the dewy grass paths, under tangles of scented
shrubs and arching boughs of pine, giving himself up to such idyllic
dreams of life and life’s fairest possibilities, as only youthful and
imaginative souls can indulge in. He was troubled and vexed by his
father’s warning, but not sufficiently to pay serious heed to it. His
‘secret’ was safe so far;--and all he had to do, so he considered, was
to exercise a little extra precaution.

“There is only Von Glauben,”--he thought, “and he would never betray me.
Besides it is a mere question of another year--and then I can make all
the truth known.”

The lovely long-drawn warble of a nightingale broke the stillness
around him with a divine persistence of passion. He listened, standing
motionless, his eyes lifted towards the dark boughs above him, from
whence the golden notes dropped liquidly; and his heart beat quickly as
he thought of a voice sweeter than that of any heavenly-gifted bird, a
face fairer than that of the fabled goddess who on such a night as this
descended from her silver moon-car to enchant Endymion;--and he murmured
half aloud--

“Who would not risk a kingdom--ay! a thousand kingdoms!--for such
happiness as I possess! It is a foolish, blind world nowadays, that
forgets the glory of its youth,--the glow, the breath, the tenderness of
love!--all for amassing gold and power! I will not be of such a world,
nor with it;--I will not be like my father, the slave of pomp and
circumstance;--I will live an unfettered life--yes!--even if I have to
resign the throne for the sake of freedom, still I will be free!”

He strolled on, absorbed in romantic reverie, and the nightingale’s
song followed him through the winding woods down to the shore, where the
waves made other music of their own, which harmonised with the dreamy
fancies of his mind.

Meanwhile, the King had sought his consort in her own apartments.
Walking down the great corridor which led to these, the most beautiful
rooms in the palace, he became aware of the silvery sound of stringed
instruments mingling with harmonious voices,--though he scarcely heeded
the soft rush of melody which came thus wafted to his ears. He was full
of thoughts and schemes,--his son’s refusal to confide in him had not
seriously troubled him, because he knew he should, with patience, find
out in good time all that the young Prince had declined to explain,--and
his immediate interest was centred in his own immediate plans.

On reaching the ante-room leading to the Queen’s presence-chamber, he
was informed that her Majesty was listening to a concert in the rosery.
Thither he went unattended,--and passing through a long suite of
splendid rooms, each one more sumptuously adorned than the last, he
presently stepped out on the velvet greensward of one of the most
perfect rose gardens in the world--a garden walled entirely round with
tall hedges of the clambering flowers which gave it its name, and which
were trailed up on all sides, so as to form a ceiling or hanging
canopy above. In the centre of this floral hall, now in full blossom,
a fountain tossed up one tall column of silver spray; and at its upper
end, against a background of the dainty white roses called “Felicité
perpétuelle” sat the Queen, in a high chair of carved ivory, surrounded
by her ladies. Delicious music, performed by players and singers who
were hidden behind the trees, floated in voluptuous strains upon the
air, and the King, looking at the exquisite grouping of fair women and
flowers, lit by the coloured lamps which gleamed here and there among
the thick foliage, wondered to himself how it chanced, that amid
surroundings which were calculated to move the senses to the most
refined and delicate rapture, he himself could feel no quickening pulse,
no touch of admiration. These open-air renderings of music and song were
the Queen’s favourite form of recreation;--at such times alone would her
proud face soften and her eyes grow languid with an unrevealed weight of
dreams. But should her husband, or any one of his sex break in upon the
charmed circle, her pleasure was at once clouded,--and the cold hauteur
of her beautiful features became again inflexibly frozen. Such was the
case now, when perceiving the King, she waved her hand as a sign for the
music to cease; and with a glance of something like wonderment at his
intrusion, saluted him profoundly as he entered the precincts of her
garden Court. But for once he did not pause as usual, on his way to
where she sat,--but lightly acknowledging the deep curtseys of the
ladies in attendance, he advanced towards her and raising her hand in
courtly homage to his lips, seated himself carelessly in a low chair at
her feet.

“Let the music go on!” he said; “I am here to listen.”

The Queen looked at him,--he met her eyes with an expression that she
had never seen on his face before.

“Suffer me to have my way!” he said to her in a low tone--“Let your
singers finish their programme; afterwards do me the favour to dismiss
your women, for I must speak with you alone.”

She bent her head in acquiescence; and re-seated herself on her ivory
throne. The sign was given for the continuance of the music, and the
King, leaning back in his chair, half closed his eyes as he listened
dreamily to the harmonious throbbing of harps and violins around him,
in the stillness of the languid southern night. His hand almost brushed
against his wife’s jewelled robes--the scent of the great lilies on her
breast was wafted to him with every breath of air, and he thought--“All
this would be Paradise,--with any other woman!” And while he so thought,
the clear tenor voice of one of the unseen singers rang out in half gay,
half tender tones:


  If I loved you, and you loved me,
  How happy this little world would be--
  The light of the day, the dancing hours,
  The skies, the trees, the birds and flowers,
  Would all be part of our perfect gladness;--
  And never a note of pain or sadness
  Would jar life’s beautiful melody
  If I loved you, and you loved me!

  ‘If I loved you!’ Why, I scarcely know
  How if I did, the time would go!--
  I should forget my dreary cares,
  My sordid toil, my long despairs,
  I should watch your smile, and kneel at your feet,
  And live my life in the love of you, Sweet!--
  So mad, so glad, so proud I should be,
  If I loved you, and you loved me!

  ‘If you loved me!’ Ah, nothing so strange
  As that could chance in this world of change!--
  As well expect a planet to fall,
  Or a Queen to dwell in a beggar’s hall--
  But if you did,--romance and glory
  Might spring from our lives’ united story,
  And angels might be less happy than we--
  If I loved you and you loved me!

  ‘If I loved you and you loved me!’
  Alas, ‘t is a joy we shall never see!
  You are too fair--I am too cold;--
  We shall drift along till we both grow old,
  Till we reach the grave, and gasping, die,
  Looking back on the days that have passed us by,
  When ‘what might have been,’ can no longer be,--
  When I lost you, and you lost me!


The song concluded abruptly, and with passion;--and the King, turning on
his elbow, glanced with a touch of curiosity at the face of his Queen.
There was not a flicker of emotion on its fair cold calmness,--not a
quiver on the beautiful lips, or a sigh to stir the quiet breast on
which the lilies rested, white and waxen, and heavily odorous. He
withdrew his gaze with a half smile at his own folly for imagining that
she could be moved by a mere song to any expression of feeling,--even
for a moment,--and allowed his glance to wander unreservedly over the
forms and features of the other ladies in attendance who, conscious of
his regard, dropped their eyelids and blushed softly, after the fashion
approved by the heroines of the melodramatic stage. Whereat he began to
think of the tiresome sameness of women generally; and their irritating
habit of living always at two extremes,--either all ardour, or all
coldness.

“Both are equally fatiguing to a man’s mind,” he thought
impatiently--“The only woman that is truly fascinating is the one who
is never in the same mind two days together. Fair on Monday, plain on
Tuesday, sweet on Wednesday, sour on Thursday, tender on Friday, cold on
Saturday, and in all moods at once on Sunday,--that being a day of rest!
I should adore such a woman as that if I ever met her, because I should
never know her mind towards me!”

A soft serenade rendered by violins, with a harp accompaniment, was
followed by a gay mazurka, played by all the instruments together,--and
this finished the musical programme.

The Queen rose, accepting the hand which the King extended to her,
and moved with him slowly across the rose-garden, her long snowy train
glistering with jewels, and held up from the greensward by a pretty
page, who, in his picturesque costume of rose and gold, demurely
followed his Royal lady’s footsteps,--and so amid the curtseying
ladies-in-waiting and other attendants, they passed together into a
private boudoir, at the threshold of which the Queen’s train-bearer
dropped his rich burden of perfumed velvet and gems, and bowing low,
left their Majesties together.

Shutting the door upon him with his own hand, the King drew a heavy
portière across it,--and then walking round the room saw that every
window was closed,--every nook secure. The Queen’s boudoir was one of
the most sacred corners in the whole palace,--no one, not even the most
intimate lady of the Court in personal attendance on her Majesty, dared
enter it without special permission; and this being the case, the
Queen herself was faintly moved to surprise at the extra precaution
her husband appeared to be taking to ensure privacy. She stood silently
watching his movements till he came up to her, and bowing courteously,
said:--

“I pray you, be seated, Madam! I will not detain you long.”

She obeyed his gesture, and sank down in a chair with that inimitable
noiseless grace which made every attitude of hers a study for an artist,
and waited for his next words; while he, standing opposite to her, bent
his eyes upon her face with a certain wistfulness and appeal.

“I have never asked you a favour,” he began--“and--since the day we
married,--I have never sought your sympathy. The years have come and
gone, leaving no visible trace on either you or me, so far as outward
looks go,--and if they have scarred and wrinkled us inwardly, only God
can see those scars! But as time moves on with a man,--I know not how it
is with a woman,--if he be not altogether a fool, he begins to consider
the way in which he has spent, or is spending his life,--whether he has
been, or is yet likely to be of any use to the world he lives in,--or
if he is of less account than the blown froth of the sea, or the sand
on the shore. Myriads and myriads of men and women are no more than
this--no more than midges or ants or worms;--but every now and then in
the course of centuries, one man does stand forth from the million,--one
heart does beat courageously enough to send the firm echo of its
pulsations through a long vista of time,--one soul does so exalt and
inspire the rest of the world by its great example that we are, through
its force reminded of something divine,--something high and true in a
low wilderness of shams!”

He paused; the Queen raised her beautiful eyes, and smiled strangely.

“Have you only just now thought of this?” she said.

He flushed, and bit his lip.

“To be perfectly honest with you, Madam, I have thought of nothing worth
thinking about for many years! Most men in my position would probably
make the same confession. Perhaps had you given me any great work to do
for your sake I should have done it! Had _you_ inspired me to achieve
some great conquest, either for myself or others, I should no doubt
have conquered! But I have lived for twenty-one years in your admirable
company without being commanded by you to do anything worthy of a
king;--I am now about to command Myself!--in order to leave some notable
trace of my name in history.”

While he thus spoke, a faint flush coloured the Queen’s cheeks, but it
quickly died away, leaving her very pale. Her fingers strayed among the
great jewels she wore, and toyed unconsciously with a ruby talisman cut
in the shape of a heart, and encircled with diamonds. The King noted the
flash of the gems against the whiteness of her hand, and said:

“Your heart, Madam, is like the jewel you hold!--clear crimson, and full
of fire,--but it is not the fire of Heaven, though you may perchance
judge it to be so. Rather is it of hell!--(I pray you to pardon me for
the roughness of this suggestion!)--for one of the chief crimes of
the devil is unconquerable hatred of the human race. You share
Satan’s aversion to man!--and strange indeed it is that even the most
sympathetic companionship with your own sex cannot soften that aversion!
However, we will not go into this;--the years have proved you true to
your own temperament, and there is nothing to be said on the matter,
either of blame or of praise. As I said, I have never asked a favour of
you, nor have I sought the sympathy which it is not in your nature
to give. I have not even claimed your obedience in any particular
strictness of form; but that is my errand to you to-night,--indeed it is
the sole object of this private interview,--to claim your entire, your
unfaltering, your implicit obedience!”

She raised her head haughtily.

“To what commands, Sir?” she asked.

“To those I have here written,--” and he handed her a paper folded
in two, which she took wonderingly, as he extended it. “Read this
carefully!--and if you have any objections to urge, I am willing to
listen to you with patience, though scarcely to alter the conditions
laid down.”

He turned away, and walked slowly through the room, pausing a moment
to whistle to a tiny bird swinging in a gilded cage, that perked up its
pretty head at his call and twittered with pleasure.

“So you respond to kindness, little one!” he said softly,--“You are more
Christ-like in that one grace than many a Christian!”

He started, as a light touch fell on his shoulder, and he saw the Queen
standing beside him. She held the paper he had given her in one hand,
and as he looked at her enquiringly she touched it with her lips, and
placed it in her bosom.

“I swear my obedience to your instructions, Sir!” she said,--“Do not
fear to trust me!”

Gently he took her hands and kissed them.

“I thank you!” he said simply.

For a moment they confronted each other. The beautiful cold woman’s eyes
drooped under the somewhat sad and searching gaze of the man.

“But--your life!--” she murmured.

“My life!” He laughed and dropped her hands. “Would you care, Madam, if
I were dead? Would you shed any tears? Not you! Why should you? At this
late hour of time, when after twenty-one years passed in each other’s
close company we are no nearer to each other in heart and soul than if
the sea murmuring yonder at the foot of these walls were stretching
its whole width between us! Besides--we are both past our youth! And,
according to certain highly instructed scientists and philosophers, the
senses and affections grow numb with age. I do not believe this theory
myself--for the jejune love of youth is as a taper’s flame to the great
and passionate tenderness of maturity, when the soul, and not the body,
claims its due; when love is not dragged down to the vulgar level of
mere cohabitation, after the fashion of the animals in a farmyard,
but rises to the best height of human sympathy and intelligent
comprehension. Who knows!--I may experience such a love as that
yet,--and so may you!”

She was silent.

“Talking of love,”--he went on--“May I ask whether our son,--or rather
the nation’s son, Humphry,--ever makes you his confidante?”

“Never!” she replied.

“I thought not! We do not seem to be the kind of parents admired
in moral story-books, Madam! We are not the revered darlings of our
children. In fact, our children have the happy disposition of animal
cubs,--once out of the nursing stage, they forget they ever had parents.
It is quite the natural and proper thing, born as they were born,--it
would never do for them to have any over-filial regard for us. Imagine
Humphry weeping for my death, or yours! What a grotesque idea! And as
for Rupert and Cyprian,--it is devoutly to be hoped that when we die,
our funerals may be well over before the great cricket matches of the
year come on, as otherwise they will curse us for having left the world
at an inconvenient season!” He laughed. “How sentiment has gone out
nowadays, or how it seems to have gone out! Yet it slumbers in the
heart of the nation,--and if it should ever awaken,--well!--it will be
dangerous! I asked you about Humphry, because I imagine he is entangled
in some love-affair. If it should be agreeable to your humour to go with
me across to The Islands one day this week, we may perhaps by chance
discover the reason of his passion for that particular kind of scenery!”

The Queen’s eyes opened wonderingly.

“The Islands!” she repeated,--“The Islands? Why, only the coral-fishers
live there,--they have a community of their own, and are jealous of all
strangers. What should Humphry do there?”

“That is more than I can tell you,” answered the King,--“And it is more
than he will himself explain. Nevertheless, he is there nearly every
day,--some attraction draws him, but what, I cannot discover. If Humphry
were of the soul of me, as he is of the body of me, I should not even
try to fathom his secret,--but he is the nation’s child--heir to its
throne--and as such, it is necessary that we, for the nation’s sake,
should guard him in the nation’s interests. If you chance to learn
anything of the object of his constant sea-wanderings, I trust you will
find it coincident with your pleasure to inform me?”

“I shall most certainly obey you in this, Sir, as in all other things!”
 she replied.

He moved a step or two towards her.

“Good-night!” he said very gently, and detaching one of the lilies from
her corsage, took it in his own hand. “Good-night! This flower will
remind me of you;--white and beautiful, with all the central gold deep
hidden!”

He looked at her intently, with a lingering look, half of tenderness,
half of regret, and bowing in the courtliest fashion of homage, left her
presence.

She remained alone, the velvet folds of her train flowing about her
feet, and the jewels on her breast flashing like faint sparks of flame
in the subdued glow of the shaded lamplight. She was touched for the
first time in her life by the consciousness of something infinitely
noble, and altogether above her in her husband’s nature. Slowly she
drew out the paper he had given her from her bosom and read it through
again--and yet once again. Almost unconsciously to herself a mist
gathered in her eyes and softened into two bright tears, which dropped
down her fair cheeks, and lost themselves among her diamonds.

“He is brave!” she murmured--“Braver than I thought he could ever be--”

She roused herself sharply from her abstraction. Emotions which were
beyond her own control had strangely affected her, and the humiliating
idea that her moods had for a moment escaped beyond her guidance made
her angry with herself for what she considered mere weakness. And
passing quickly out of the boudoir, in the vague fear that solitude
might deepen the sense of impotence and failure which insinuated itself
slowly upon her, like a dull blight creeping through her heart and soul,
she rejoined her ladies, the same great Queen as ever, with the same
look of indifference on her face, the same chill smile, the same
perfection of loveliness, unwithered by any visible trace of sorrow or
of passion.




CHAPTER VI

SERGIUS THORD


The next day the heavens were clouded; and occasional volleys of heavy
thunder were mingled with the gusts of wind and rain which swept over
the city, and which lashed the fair southern sea into a dark semblance
of such angry waves as wear away northern coasts into bleak and rocky
barrenness. It was disappointing weather to multitudes, for it was the
feast-day of one of the numerous saints whose names fill the calendar of
the Roman Church,--and a great religious procession had been organized
to march from the market-place to the Cathedral, in which two or three
hundred children and girls had been chosen to take part. The fickle
bursts of sunshine which every now and again broke through the lowering
sky, decided the priests to carry out their programme in spite of the
threatening storm, in the hope that it would clear off completely with
the afternoon. Accordingly, groups of little maidens, in white robes and
veils, began to assemble with their flags and banners at the appointed
hour round the old market cross, which,--grey and crumbling at the
summit,--bent over the streets like a withered finger, crook’d as it
were, in feeble remonstrance at the passing of time,--while glimpses of
young faces beneath the snowy veils, and chatter of young voices, made
brightness and music around its frowning and iron-bound base. Shortly
before three o’clock the Cathedral bells began to chime, and crowds
of people made their way towards the sacred edifice in the laughing,
pushing, gesticulating fashion of southerners, to whom a special service
at the Church is like a new comedy at the theatre,--women with coloured
kerchiefs knotted over their hair or across their bosoms--men, more or
less roughly clad, yet all paying compliment to the Saint’s feast-day
by some extra smart touch in their attire, if it were only a pomegranate
flower or orange-blossom stuck in their hats, or behind their ears.
It was a mixed crowd, all of the working classes, who are proverbially
called ‘the common,’ as if those who work, are not a hundred times
more noble than those who do nothing! A few carriages, containing some
wealthy ladies of the nobility, who, to atone for their social sins,
were in the habit of contributing largely to the Church, passed every
now and again through the crowd, but taken as a spectacle it was simply
a ‘popular’ show, in which the children of the people took part, and
where the people themselves were evidently more amused than edified.

While the bells were ringing the procession gradually formed;--a
dozen or more priests leading,--incense-bearers and acolytes walking
next,--and then the long train of little children and girls carrying
their symbolic banners, following after. The way they had to walk was a
steep, winding ascent, through tortuous streets, to the Cathedral, which
stood in the centre of a great square on an eminence which overlooked
the whole city, and as soon as they started they began to sing,--softly
at first, then more clearly and sweetly, till gradually the air grew
full of melody, rising and falling on the capricious gusts of wind which
tore at the gilded and emblazoned banners, and tossed the white veils of
the maidens about like wreaths of drifting snow. Two men standing on the
Cathedral hill, watched the procession gradually ascending--one tall and
heavily-built, with a dark leonine head made more massive-looking by
its profusion of thick and unmanageable hair--the other lean and
narrow-shouldered, with a peaked reddish-auburn beard, which he
continually pulled and twitched at nervously as though its growth on his
chin was more a matter of vexation than convenience. He was apparently
not so much interested in the Church festival as he was in his
companion’s face, for he was perpetually glancing up at that brooding
countenance, which, half hidden as it was in wild hair and further
concealed by thick moustache and beard, showed no expression at all,
unless an occasional glimpse of full flashing eyes under the bushy
brows, gave a sudden magnetic hint of something dangerous and not to be
trifled with.

“You do not believe anything you hear or read, Sergius Thord!” he
said--“Will you twist your whole life into a crooked attitude of
suspicion against all mankind?” He who was named Sergius Thord, lifted
himself slowly from the shoulders upwards, the action making his great
height and broad chest even more apparent than before. A gleam of white
teeth shone under his black moustache.

“I do not twist my life into a crooked attitude, Johan Zegota,” he
replied. “If it is crooked, others have twisted it for me! Why should I
believe what I hear, since it is the fashion to lie? Why should I
accept what I read, since it is the business of the press to deceive the
public? And why do you ask me foolish questions? You should be better
instructed, seeing that your creed is the same as mine!”

“Have I ever denied it?” exclaimed Zegota warmly--“But I have said, and
I say again that I believe the news is true,--and that these howling
hypocrites,--” this with an angry gesture of his hand towards the open
square where the chanting priests who headed the procession were coming
into view--“have truly received an unlooked-for check from the King!”

Sergius Thord laid one hand heavily on his shoulder.

“When the King--when any king--does anything useful in the world, then
you may hang me with your own hands, Zegota! When did you ever hear,
except in myths of the past, of a monarch who cared for his people more
than his crown? Tell me that! Tell me of any king who so truly loved the
people he was called upon to govern, that he sacrificed his own money,
as well as his own time, to remedy their wrongs?--to save them from
unjust government, to defend them from cruel taxation?--to see that
their bread was not taken from their mouths by foreign competition?--and
to make it possible for them to live in the country of their birth in
peace and prosperity? Bah! There never was such a king! And that this
man,--who has for three years left us to the mercy of the most accursed
cheat and scoundrel minister that ever was in power,--has now declared
his opposition to the Jesuits’, is more than I will or can believe.”

“If it were true?”--suggested Zegota, with a more than usually vicious
tug at his beard.

“If it were true, it would not alter my opinion, or set aside my
intention,” replied Thord,--“I would admit that the King had done one
good deed before going to hell! Look! Here come the future traitresses
of men--girls trained by priests to deceive their nearest and dearest!
Poor children! They know nothing as yet of the uses to which their lives
are destined! If they could but die now, in their innocent faith and
stupidity, how much better for all the world!”

As he spoke, the wind, swooping into the square, and accompanied by
a pattering gust of rain, fell like a fury upon the leaders of the
religious procession and tore one of the great banners out of the hands
of the priest who held it, beating it against his head and face with so
much force that he fell backward to the ground under its weight, while
from a black cloud above, a flash of lightning gleamed, followed almost
instantaneously by a loud clap of thunder, which shook the square with
a mighty reverberation like that of a bursting bomb. The children
screamed,--and ran towards the Cathedral pellmell; and for a few moments
there ensued indescribable confusion, the priests, the people, and the
white-veiled girls getting mixed together in a wild hurly-burly. Sergius
Thord suddenly left his companion’s side, and springing on a small
handcart that stood empty near the centre of the square, his tall
figure rose up all at once like a dark apparition above the heads of
the assembled crowd, and his voice, strong, clear, and vibrating with
passion, rang out like a deep alarm bell, through all the noise of the
storm.

“Whither are you going, O foolish people? To pray to God? Pray to
Him here, then, under the flash of His lightning!--in the roll of His
thunder!--beneath His cathedral-canopy of clouds! Pray to Him with all
your hearts, your brains, your reason, your intelligence, and leave mere
lip-service and mockery to priests; and to these poor children, who, as
yet, know no better than to obey tyrants! Would you find out God? He
is here--with me,--with you!--in the earth, in the sky, in the sun and
storm! Whenever Truth declares a living fact, God speaks,--whenever we
respond to that Truth, God hears! No church, no cathedral contains His
presence more than we shall find it here--with us--where we stand!”

The people heard, and a great silence fell upon them. All faces were
turned toward the speaker, and none appeared to heed the great drops
of fast-falling rain. One of the priests who was trying to marshal the
scattered children into their former order, so that they might enter the
Cathedral in the manner arranged for the religious service, looked up
to see the cause of the sudden stillness, and muttered a curse under his
breath. But even while the oath escaped his lips, he gave the signal for
the sacred chanting to be resumed, and in another moment the ‘Litany
of the Virgin’ was started in stentorian tones by the leaders of the
procession. Intimidated by the looks, as well as by the commands of the
priests, the girls and children joined in the chanting with tremulous
voices, as they began to file through the Cathedral doors and enter the
great nave. But a magnetic spell, stronger than any invocation of the
Church, had fallen upon the crowd, and they all stood as though caught
in the invisible web of some enchanter, their faces turned upwards to
where Thord’s tall figure towered above them. His eyes glittered as
he noted the sudden hush of attention which prevailed, and lifting
his rough cap from his head, he waved it towards the open door of the
Cathedral, through which the grand strains of the organ rolling out from
within gave forth solemn invitation:--

“Sancta Dei Genitrix, Ora pro nobis!”

sang the children, as they passed in line under the ancient porch,
carved with the figures of forgotten saints and bishops, whose stone
countenances had stared at similar scenes through the course of long
centuries.

“Sancta Dei Genitrix, ora pro nobis!” echoed Sergius Thord--“Do you hear
it, O men? Do you hear it, O women? What does it teach you? ‘Holy Mother
of God!’ Who was she? Was she not merely a woman to whom God descended?
And what is the lesson she gives you? Plainly this--that men should be
as gods, and women as the mothers of gods! For every true and brave man
born into the world has God within him,--is made of God, and must return
to God! And every woman who gives birth to one such, true, brave man,
has given a God-incarnated being to the world! ‘Sancta Dei Genitrix!’
Be all as mothers of gods, O women! Be as gods, O men! Be as gods in
courage, in truth, in wisdom, in freedom! Suffer not devils to have
command of you! For devils there are, as there are gods;--evil there
is, as there is good. Fiends are born of women as gods are--and yet evil
itself is of God, inasmuch as without God there can be neither evil nor
good. Let us help God, we His children, to conquer evil by conquering
it in ourselves--and by refusing to give it power over us! So shall
God show us all goodness,--all pity! So shall He cease to afflict His
children; so will He cease to torture us with undeserved sorrows and
devilish agonies, for which we are not to blame!”

He paused. The singing had ceased; the children’s procession had entered
the Cathedral, and the doors still stood wide open. But the people
remained outside, crowded in the square, and gathering momentarily in
greater numbers.

“Look you!” cried Sergius Thord--“The building which is called the
Sanctuary of God, stands open--why do you not all enter there? Within
are precious marbles, priceless pictures, jewels and relics--and a great
altar raised up by the gifts of wicked dead kings, who by money sought
to atone for their sins to the people. There are priests who fast and
pray in public, and gratify all the lusts of appetite in private. There
are poor and ignorant women who believe whatsoever these priests tell
them--all this you can see if you go inside yonder. Why do you not go?
Why do you remain with me?”

A faint murmur, like the rising ripple of an angry sea, rose from the
crowd, but quickly died away again into silence.

“Shall I tell you why you stay?” went on Thord,--“Because you know I
am your friend--and because you also know that the priests are your
enemies! Because you know that I tell you the truth, and that the
priests tell you lies! Because you feel that all the promises made to
you of happiness in Heaven cannot explain away to your satisfaction the
causes of your bitter suffering and poverty on earth! Because you are
gradually learning that the chief business of priestcraft is to deceive
the people and keep them down,--down, always down in a state of wretched
ignorance. Learn, learn all you can, my brothers--take the only good
thing modern government gives you--Education! Education is thrown at
us like a bone thrown to a dog, half picked by others and barely
nourishing--but take it, take it, friends, for in it you shall find the
marrow of vengeance on your tyrants and oppressors! The education of
the masses means the downfall of false creeds,--the ruin of all
false priests! For it is only through the ignorance of the many
that tyrannical dominion is given into the hands of the few! Slavish
submission to a corrupt government would be impossible if we all refused
to be slaves. O friends, O brothers, throw off your chains! Break down
your prison doors! Some good you have done already--be brave and strong
to do more! Press forward fearlessly and strive for liberty and justice!
To-day we are told that the King has refused crown-lands to the Jesuits.
Shall we be told to-morrow that the King has dismissed Carl Pérousse
from office?”

A long wild shout told how this suggestion had gone straight home to the
throng.

“Shall we be told this, I ask? No! Ten thousand times no! The refusal
of the King to grant the priests any wider dominion over us is merely
an act of policy inspired by terror. The King is afraid! He fears the
people will revolt against the Church, and so takes part with them lest
there should be trouble in the land, but he never seems to think there
may be another kind of revolt against himself! His refusal to concede
more place for the accursed practice of Jesuitry is so far good; but his
dismissal of Pérousse would be still better!”

A perfect hurricane of applause from the people gave emphatic testimony
to the truth of these words.

“What is this man, Carl Pérousse?” he went on--“A man of the
people--whose oaths were sworn to the people,--whom the people
themselves brought into power because he promised to remain faithful to
them! He is false,--a traitor and political coward! A mere manufacturer
of kitchen goods, who through our folly was returned to this country’s
senate;--and through our still further credulity is now set in almost
complete dominion over us. Well! We have suffered and are suffering
for our misplaced belief in him;--the question is, how long shall we
continue to suffer? How long are we to be governed by the schemes of
Carl Pérousse, the country’s turncoat,--the trafficker in secret with
Jew speculators? It is for you to decide! It is for you to work out your
own salvation! It is for you to throw off tyranny, and show yourselves
free men of reason and capacity! Just as the priests chant long prayers
to cover their own iniquity, so do the men of government make long
speeches to disguise their own corruption. You know you cannot believe
their promises. Neither can you believe the press, for if this is not
actually bought by Pérousse, it is bribed. And you cannot trust the
King; for he is as a house divided against itself which must fall! Slave
of his own passions, and duped by women, what is he but a burden to the
State? Justice and power should be on the side of kings,--but the days
are come when self-interest and money can even buy a throne! O men, O
women, rouse up your hearts and minds to work for yourselves, to redress
wrongs,--to save your country! Rouse up in your thousands, and with
your toil-worn hands pull down the pillars of iniquity and vice that
overshadow and darken the land! Fight against the insolent pride of
wealth which strives to crush the poor; rouse, rouse your hearts!--open
your eyes and see the evils which are gathering thick upon us!--and
like the lightnings pent up in yonder clouds, leap forth in flame and
thunder, and clear the air!”

A burst of frantic acclamation from the crowd followed this wild
harangue, and while the loud roar of voices yet echoed aloft, a band of
armed police came into view, marching steadily up from the lower streets
of the city. Sergius Thord smiled as he saw them approach.

“Yonder comes the Law!” he said--“A few poor constables, badly paid, who
if they could find anything better to do than to interfere with their
fellow-men would be glad of other occupation! Before they come any
nearer, disperse yourselves, my friends, and so save them trouble! Go
all to your homes and think on my words;--or enter the Cathedral and
pray, those who will--but let this place be as empty of you in five
minutes as though you never had been here! Disperse,--and farewell! We
shall meet again!”

He leaped down from his position and disappeared, and in obedience to
his command the crowd began to melt away with almost miraculous speed.
Before the police could reach the centre of the square, there were only
some thirty or forty people left, and these were quietly entering the
Cathedral where the service for the saint whose feast day was being
celebrated was now in full and solemn progress.

For one instant, on the first step of the great porch, Sergius Thord and
his companion, Johan Zegota, met,--but making a rapid sign to each other
with the left hand, they as quickly separated,--Zegota to enter the
Cathedral, Thord to walk rapidly down one of the narrowest and most
unfrequented streets to the lower precincts of the city.

The afternoon grew darker, and the weather more depressing, and by the
time evening closed in, the rain was pouring persistently. The wind had
ceased, and the thunder had long since died away, its force drenched out
by the weight of water in the clouds. The saint’s day had ended badly
for all concerned;--many of the children who had taken part in the
procession had been carried home by their parents wet through, all the
pretty white frocks and veils of the little girls having been completely
soaked and spoilt by the unkind elements. A drearier night had seldom
gloomed over this fair city of the southern sea, and down in the
quarters of the poor, where men and women dwelt all huddled miserably
in overcrowded tenements, and sin and starvation kept hideous company
together, the streets presented as dark and forbidding an aspect as the
heavy skies blackly brooding above. Here and there a gas-lamp flared
its light upon the drawn little face of some child crouching asleep in a
doorway, or on the pinched and painted features of some wretched outcast
wending her way to the den she called ‘home.’ The loud brutal laughter
of drunken men was mingled with the wailing of half-starved and fretful
infants, and the mean, squalid houses swarmed with the living spawn of
every vice and lust in the calendar of crime. Deep in the heart of the
so-called civilized, beautiful and luxurious city, this ‘quarter of the
poor,’ the cancer of the social body, throbbed and ate its destructive
way slowly but surely on, and Sergius Thord, who longed to lay a sharp
knife against it and cut it out, for the health of the whole community,
was as powerless as Dante in hell to cure the evils he witnessed. Yet
it was not too much to say that he would have given his life to ease
another’s pain,--as swiftly and as readily as he would have taken
life without mercy, in the pursuit of what he imagined to be a just
vengeance.

“How vain, after all, is my labour!” he thought--“How helpless I am to
move the self-centred powers of the Government and the Throne! Even were
all these wretched multitudes to rise with me, and make havoc of the
whole city, should we move so much as one step higher out of the Gehenna
of poverty and crime? Almost I doubt it!”

He walked on past dark open doorways, where some of the miserable
inhabitants of the dens within, stood to inhale the fresh wet air of the
rainy night. His tall form was familiar to most of them,--if they were
considered as wolves of humanity in the sight of the law, they were
all faithful dogs to him; doing as he bade, running where he commanded,
ready at any moment to assemble at any given point and burn and pillage,
or rob and slay. There were no leaders in the political government,--but
this one leader of the massed poor could, had he chosen, have burned
down the city. But he did not choose. He had a far-sighted, clear
brain,--and though he had sworn to destroy abuses wherever he could find
them, he moved always with caution; and his plans were guided, not
by impulse alone, but by earnest consideration for the future. He was
marked out by the police as a dangerous Socialist; and his movements
were constantly tracked and dodged, but so far, he had done nothing
which could empower his arrest. He was a free subject in a free country;
and provided he created no open disturbance he had as much liberty as
a mission preacher to speak in the streets to those who would stop to
listen. He paused now in his walk at the door of one house more than
commonly dingy and tumble-down in appearance, where a man lounged
outside in his shirt-sleeves, smoking.

“Is all well with you, Matsin?” he asked gently.

“All is well!” answered the man called Matsin,--“better than last night.
The child is dead.”

“Dead!” echoed Thord,--“And the mother----”

“Asleep!” answered Matsin. “I gave her opium to save her from madness.
She was hungry, too--the opium fed her and made her forget!”

Thord pushed him gently aside, and went into the house. There on the
floor lay the naked body of a dead child, so emaciated as to be almost a
skeleton; and across it, holding it close with one arm, was stretched a
woman, half clothed, her face hidden in her unbound dark hair, breathing
heavily in a drugged sleep. Great tears filled Thord’s eyes.

“God exists!” he said,--“And He can bear to look upon a sight like this!
If I were God, I should hate myself for letting such things be!”

“Perhaps He does hate Himself!” said the man Matsin, who had also come
in, and now looked at the scene with sullen apathy--“That may be the
cause of all our troubles! I don’t understand the ways of God; or the
ways of man either. I have done no harm. I married the woman--and we had
that one child. I worked hard for both. I could not get sufficient money
to keep us going; I did metal work--very well, so I was told. But they
make it all abroad now by machinery--I cannot compete. They don’t want
new designs they say--the old will serve. I do anything now that I
can--but it is difficult. You, too,--you starve with us!”

“I am poor, if that is what you mean,” said Thord,--“but take all I have
to-night, Matsin--” and he emptied a small purse of silver coins into
the man’s hand. “Bury the poor little innocent one;--and comfort the
mother when she wakes. Comfort her!--love her!--she needs love! I will
be back again to-morrow.”

He strode away quickly, and Matsin remained at his door turning over the
money in his hand.

“He will sacrifice something he needs himself, for this,” he muttered.
“Yet that is the man they say the King would hang if ever he got hold of
him! By Heaven!--the King himself should hang first!”

Meanwhile Sergius Thord went on, slackening his pace a little as he
came near his own destination, a tall and narrow house at the end of the
street, with a single light shining in one of the upper windows. There
was a gas-lamp some few paces off, and under this stood a man reading,
or trying to read, a newspaper by its flickering glare. Thord glanced at
him with some suspicion--the stranger was too near his own lodging for
his pleasure, for he was always on his guard against spies. Approaching
more closely, he saw that though the man was shabbily attired in a rough
pilot suit, much the worse for wear, he nevertheless had the indefinable
look and bearing of a gentleman. Acting on impulse, as he often did,
Thord spoke to him.

“A rough night for reading by lamplight, my friend!” he said.

The man looked up, and smiled.

“Yes, it is, rather! But I have only just got the evening paper.”

“Any special news?”

“No--only this--” and he pointed to a bold headline--“The King _versus_
The Jesuits.”

“Ah!” said Thord, and he studied the looks and bearing of the stranger
with increasing curiosity. “What do you think of it?”

“What do I think? May I ask, without offence, what _you_ think?”

“I think,” said Thord slowly, “that the King has for once in his life
done a wise thing.”

“‘For once in his life!’” repeated the stranger dubiously--“Then I
presume your King is, generally speaking, a fool?”

“If you are a subject of his--” began Thord slowly----

“Thank Heaven, I am not! I am a mere wanderer--a literary loafer--a
student of men and manners. I read books, and I write them too,--this
will perhaps explain the eccentricity of my behaviour in trying to read
under the lamplight in the rain!”

He smiled again, and the smile was irresistibly pleasant. Something
about him attracted Thord, and after a pause he asked:

“If you are, as you say, a wanderer and a stranger in this town, can I
be of service to you?”

“You are very kind!” said the other, turning a pair of deep, dark, grey
meditative eyes upon him,--“And I am infinitely obliged to you for the
suggestion. But I really want nothing. As a matter of fact, I am waiting
for two friends of mine who have just gone into one of the foul and
filthy habitations here, to see what they can do for a suddenly bereaved
family. The husband and father fell dead in the street before our
eyes,--and those who picked him up said he was drunk, but it turned out
that he was merely starved,--_merely_!--you understand? Merely starved!
We found his home,--and the poor widow is wailing and weeping, and the
children are crying for food. I confess myself quite unable to bear the
sight, and so I have sent all the money I had about me to help them
for to-night at least. By my faith, they are most hopelessly, incurably
miserable!”

“Their lot is exceedingly common in these quarters,” said Thord,
sorrowfully. “Day after day, night after night, men, women and children
toil, suffer and die here without ever knowing what it is to have one
hour of free fresh air, one day of rest and joy! Yet this is a great
city,--and we live in a civilized country!” He smiled bitterly, then
added--“You have done a good action; and you need no thanks, or I would
thank you; for my life’s work lies among these wretched poor, and I am
familiar with their tragic histories. Good-night!”

“Pray do not go!” said the stranger suddenly--“I should like to talk to
you a little longer, if you have no objection. Is there not some
place near, where we can go out of this rain and have a glass of wine
together?”

Sergius Thord stood irresolute,--gazing at him, half in liking, half in
distrust.

“Sir,” he said at last, “I do not know you--and you do not know me. If I
told you my name, you would probably not seek my company!”

“Will you tell it?” suggested the stranger cheerfully--“Mine is at your
service--Pasquin Leroy. I fear my fame as an author has not reached your
ears!”

Thord shook his head.

“No. I have never heard of you. And probably you have never heard of me.
My name is Sergius Thord.”

“Sergius Thord!” echoed the stranger; “Now that is truly remarkable!
It is a happy coincidence that we should have met to-night. I have just
seen your name in this very paper which you caught me reading--see!--the
next heading under that concerning the King and the Jesuits--‘Thord’s
Rabble.’ Are not you that same Thord?”

“I am!” said Thord proudly, his eyes shining as he took the paper and
perused quickly the few flashy lines which described the crowd outside
the Cathedral that afternoon, and set him down as a crazy Socialist, and
disturber of the peace, “And the ‘rabble’ as this scribbling fool
calls it, is the greater part of this city’s population. The King
may intimidate his Court; but I, Sergius Thord, with my ‘rabble’ can
intimidate both Court and King!”

He drew himself up to his full majestic height--a noble figure of a man
with his fine heroic head and eagle-like glance of eye,--and he who had
called himself Pasquin Leroy, suddenly held out his hand.

“Let me see more of you, Sergius Thord!” he said,--“You are the very
man for me! They say in this paper that you spoke to a great multitude
outside the Cathedral this afternoon, and interfered with the religious
procession; they also say you are the head of a Society called the
Revolutionary Committee;--now let me work for you in some department of
_that_ business!”

“Let you work for me?” echoed Thord astonished--“But how?”

“In this way--” replied the other--“I write Socialistic works,--and for
this cause have been expelled from my native home and surroundings. I
have a little money--and some influence,--and I will devote both to your
Cause. Will you take me, and trust me?”

Thord caught his extended hand, and looked at him with a kind of fierce
intentness.

“You mean it?” he said in thrilling tones--“You mean it positively and
truly?”

“Positively and truly!” said Leroy--“If you are working to remedy the
frightful evils abounding in this wretched quarter of the poor, I will
help you! If you are striving to destroy rank abuses, I ask nothing
better than to employ my pen in your service. I will get work on the
press here--I will do all I can to aid your purposes and carry out your
intentions. I have no master, so am free to do as I like; and I will
devote myself to your service so long as you think I can be of any use
to you.”

“Wait!” said Thord--“You must not be carried away by a sudden generous
impulse, simply because you have witnessed one scene of the continual
misery that is going on here daily. To belong to our Committee means
much more than you at present realize, and involves an oath which you
may not be willing to take! And what of the friends you spoke of?”

“They will do what I do,” replied Leroy--“They share my
fortunes--likewise my opinions;--and here they come,--so they can speak
for themselves,” this, as two men emerged from a dark street on the
left, and came full into the lamplight’s flare--“Axel Regor, Max
Graub--come hither! Fortune has singularly favoured us to-night! Let me
present to you my friend--” and he emphasized the word, “Sergius Thord!”

Both men started ever so slightly as the introduction was performed,
and Thord looked at them with fresh touches of suspicion here and there
lurking in his mind. But he was brave; and having once proceeded in
a given direction was not in the habit of turning back. He therefore
saluted both the new-comers with grave courtesy.

“I trust you!” he then said curtly to Leroy, “and I think you will not
betray my trust. If you do, it will be the worse for you!”

His lips parted in a slight sinister smile, and the two who were
respectively called Axel Regor and Max Graub, exchanged anxious glances.
But Leroy showed no sign of hesitation or alarm.

“Your warning is quite unnecessary, Sergius Thord,” he said,--“I pledge
you my word with my friendship--and my word is my bond! I will also hold
myself responsible for my companions.”

Thord bent his head in silent recognition of this assurance.

“Then follow me, if such is your desire,” he said--“Remember, there is
yet time to go in another direction, and to see me no more; but if you
once do cast in your lot with mine the tie between us is indissoluble!”

He paused, as though expecting some recoil or hesitation on the part of
those to whom he made this statement, but none came. He therefore strode
on, and they followed, till arriving at the door of the tall, narrow
house, where the light in the highest window gleamed like a signal, he
opened it with a small key and entered, holding it back courteously for
his three new companions to enter with him. They did so, and he closed
the door. At the same moment the light was extinguished in the upper
window, and the outside of the house became a mere wall of dense
blackness in the driving rain.




CHAPTER VII

THE IDEALISTS


Up a long uncarpeted flight of stairs, and into a large lofty room on
the second storey, Thord led the way for his newly-found disciples to
follow. It was very dark, and they had to feel the steps as they went,
their guide offering neither explanation nor apology for the Cimmerian
shades of gloom. Stumbling on hands and knees they spoke not a word;
though once Max Graub uttered something like an oath in rough German;
but a whisper from Leroy rebuked and silenced him, and they pursued
their difficult ascent until, arriving at the room mentioned, they found
themselves in the company of about fifteen to twenty men, all sitting
round a table under two flaring billiard lamps, suspended crookedly
from the ceiling. As Thord entered, these men all rose, and gave him an
expressive sign of greeting with the left hand, the same kind of gesture
which had passed between him and Zegota on the Cathedral steps in the
morning. Zegota himself was one of their number. There was also another
personage in the room who did not rise, and who gave no sign whatever.
This was a woman, who sat in the embrasure of a closed and shuttered
window with her back to the whole company. It was impossible to say
whether she was young or old, plain or handsome, for she was enveloped
in a long black cloak which draped her from shoulder to heel. All that
could be distinguished of her was the white nape of her neck, and a
great twist of dead gold hair. Her presence awakened the liveliest
interest in Pasquin Leroy, who found it impossible to avoid nudging his
companions, and whispering--

“A woman! By Heaven, this drama becomes interesting!”

But Axel Regor and Max Graub were seemingly not disposed to levity, and
they offered no response to their lighter minded comrade beyond vague
hasty side-looks of alarm, which appeared to amuse him to an extent that
threatened to go beyond the limits of caution. Sergius Thord, however,
saw nothing of their interchange of glances for the moment,--he
had other business to settle. Addressing himself at once to the men
assembled, he said.--

“Friends and brothers! I bring you three new associates! I have not
sought them; they have sought me. On their own heads be their destinies!
They offer their names to the Revolutionary Committee, and their
services to our Cause!”

A low murmur of approbation from the company greeted this announcement.
Johan Zegota advanced a little in front of all the rest.

“Every man is welcome to serve us who will serve us faithfully,” he
said. “But who are these new comrades, Sergius Thord? What are they?”

“That they must declare for themselves,” said Thord, taking a chair at
the head of the table which was evidently his accustomed place--“Put
them through their examination!”

He seated himself with the air of a king, his whole aspect betokening an
authority that would not be trifled with or gainsaid.

“Gott in Himmel!”

This exclamation burst suddenly from the lips of the man called Max
Graub.

“What ails you?” said Thord, turning full upon him his glittering eyes
that flashed ferocity from under their shaggy brows--“Are you afraid?”

“Afraid? Not I!” protested Graub--“But, gentlemen, think a moment! You
speak of putting us--myself and my friends--through an examination! Why
should you examine us? We are three poor adventurers--what can we have
to tell?”

“Much, I should imagine!” retorted Zegota--“Adventurers are not such
without adventures! Your white hairs testify to some experience of
life.”

“My white hairs--_my_ white hairs!” exclaimed Graub, when a touch from
Axel Regor apparently recalled something to his mind for he began to
laugh--“True, gentlemen! Very true! I had forgotten! I have had some
adventures and some experiences! My good friend there, Pasquin Leroy,
has also had adventures and experiences,--so have we all! Myself, I am a
poor German, grown old in the service of a bad king! I have been kicked
out of that service--Ach!--just for telling the truth; which is very
much the end of all truth telling, is it not? Tell lies,--and kings will
reward you and make you rich and great!--but tell truth, and see what
the kings will give you for it! Kicks, and no halfpence! Pardon! I
interrupt this so pleasant meeting!”

All the men present looked at him curiously, but said nothing in
response to his outburst. Johan Zegota, seating himself next to Sergius
Thord, opened a large parchment volume that lay on the table, and taking
up a pen addressed himself to Thord, saying--

“Will you ask the questions, or shall I?”

“You, by all means! Proceed in the usual manner.”

Whereupon Zegota began.--

“Stand forth, comrades!”

The three strangers advanced.

“Your names? Each one answer separately, please!”

“Pasquin Leroy!”

“Axel Regor!”

“Max Graub!”

“Of what nationality, Pasquin Leroy?”

Leroy smiled. “Truly I claim none!” he said; “I was born a slave.”

“A slave!”

The words were repeated in tones of astonishment round the room.

“Why, yes, a slave!” repeated Leroy quietly. “You have heard of black
slaves,--have you not heard of white ones too? There are countries
still, where men purchase other men of their own blood and
colour;--tyrannous governments, which force such men to work for
them, chained to one particular place till they die. I am one of
those,--though escaped for the present. You can ask me more of my
country if you will; but a slave has no country save that of his
master. If you care at all for my services, you will spare me further
examination on this subject!”

Zegota looked enquiringly at Thord.

“We will pass that question,” said the latter, in a low tone.

Zegota resumed--

“You, Axel Regor--are you a slave too?”

Axel Regor smiled languidly.

“No! I am what is called a free-born subject of the realm. I do what I
like, though not always how I like, or when I like!”

“And you, Max Graub?”

“German!” said that individual firmly; “German to the
backbone--Socialist to the soul!--and an enemy of all ruling
sovereigns,--particularly the one that rules _me_!”

Thord smiled darkly.

“If you feel inclined to jest, Max Graub, I must warn you that jesting
is not suited to the immediate moment.”

“Jesting! I never was more in earnest in my life!” declared Graub,--“Why
have I left my native country? Merely because it is governed by Kaiser
Wilhelm!”

Thord smiled again.

“The subject of nationality seems to excite all three of you,” he said,
“and though we ask you the question _pro forma_, it is not absolutely
necessary that we should know from whence you come. We require your
names, and your oath of fealty; but before binding yourselves, I will
read you our laws, and the rules of membership for this society; rules
to which, if you join us, you are expected to conform.”

“Suppose, for the sake of argument,” said Pasquin Leroy,--“that
after hearing the rules we found it wisest to draw back? Suppose my
friends,--if not myself,--were disinclined to join your Society;--what
would happen?”

As he asked the question a curious silence fell upon the company, and
all eyes were turned upon the speaker. There was a dead pause for a
moment, and then Thord replied slowly and with emphasis:--

“Nothing would happen save this,--that you would be bound by a solemn
oath never to reveal what you had heard or seen here to-night, and that
you would from henceforth be tracked every day and hour of your life by
those who would take care that you kept your oath!”

“You see!” exclaimed Axel Regor excitedly, “There is danger----”

“Danger? Of what?” asked Pasquin Leroy coldly;--“Of death? Each one
of us, and all three of us would fully merit it, if we broke our word!
Gentlemen both!”--and he addressed his two companions, “If you fear any
harm may come to yourselves through joining this society, pray withdraw
while there is yet time! My own mind is made up; I intend to become
familiar with the work of the Revolutionary Committee, and to aid its
cause by my personal service!”

A loud murmur of applause came from the company. Axel Regor and Max
Graub glanced at Leroy, and saw in his face that his decision was
unalterable.

“Then we will work for the Cause, also,” said Max Graub resignedly.
“What you determine upon, we shall do, shall we not, Axel?”

Axel Regor gave a brief assent.

Sergius Thord looked at them all straightly and keenly.

“You have finally decided?”

“We have!” replied Leroy. “We will enrol ourselves as your associates at
once.”

Whereupon Johan Zegota rose from his place, and unlocking an iron safe
which stood in one corner of the room, took out a roll of parchment and
handed it to Thord, who, unfolding it, read in a clear though low voice
the following:--

“We, the Revolutionary Committee, are organized as a Brotherhood, bound
by all the ties of life, death, and our common humanity, to destroy
the abuses, and redress the evils, which self-seeking and tyrannous
Governments impose upon the suffering poor.

“_Firstly:_ We bind ourselves to resist all such laws as may in any
degree interfere with the reasonable, intellectual, and spiritual
freedom of man or woman.

“_Secondly:_ We swear to agitate against all forms of undue and
excessive taxation, which, while scarcely affecting the rich, make life
more difficult and unendurable to the poor.

“_Thirdly:_ We protest against the domination of priestcraft, and
the secret methods which are employed by the Church to obtain undue
influence in Governmental matters.

“_Fourthly:_ We are determined to stand firmly against the entrance of
foreign competitors in the country’s trade and business. All heads
and ruling companies of firms employing foreigners instead of native
workmen, are marked out by us as traitors, and are reserved for
traitors’ punishment.

“_Fifthly:_ We are sworn to exterminate the existing worthless
Government, and to replace it by a working body of capable and
intelligent men, elected by the universal vote of the entire country.
Such elections must take place freely and openly, and no secret
influence shall be used to return any one person or party to power.
Those attempting to sway opinion by bribery and corruption, will be
named to the public, and exposed to disgrace and possible death.

“_Sixthly:_ We are resolved to unmask to the public the duplicity,
treachery, and self-interested motives of the Secretary of State, Carl
Pérousse.

“_Seventhly:_ We are sworn to bring about such changes as shall elevate
a Republic to supreme power, and for this purpose are solemnly pledged
to destroy the present Monarchy.”

“These,” said Sergius Thord, “are the principal objects of our Society’s
work. There are other points to be considered, but these are sufficient
for the present. I will now read the rules, which each member of our
Brotherhood must follow if he would serve us faithfully.”

He turned over another leaf of the parchment scroll he held, and
continued, reading very slowly and distinctly:

“_Rule 1_.--Each member of the Revolutionary Committee shall swear
fidelity to the Cause, and pledge himself to maintain inviolable secrecy
on all matters connected with his membership and his work for the
Society.

“_Rule 2_.--No member shall track, follow, or enquire into the movements
of any other member.

“_Rule 3_.--Once in every month all members are expected to meet
together at a given place, decided upon by the Chief of the Committee at
the previous meeting, when business will be discussed, and lots drawn,
to determine the choice of such members as may be fitted to perform such
business.

“_Rule_ 4.--No member shall be bound to give his address, or to state
where he travels, or when or how he goes, as in all respects save that
of his membership he is a free man.

“_Rule_ 5.--In this same respect of his membership, he is bound to
appear, or to otherwise report himself once a month at the meeting of
the Committee. Should he fail to do so either by person, or by letter
satisfactorily explaining his absence, he will be judged as a traitor,
and dealt with accordingly.

“_Rule_6.--In the event of any member being selected to perform any deed
involving personal danger or loss to himself, the rest of the members
are pledged to shelter him from the consequences of his act, and to
provide him with all the necessaries of life, till his escape from harm
is ensured and his safety guaranteed.”

“You have heard all now,” said Thord, as he laid aside the parchment
scroll; “Are you still willing to take the oath?”

“Entirely so!” rejoined Pasquin Leroy cheerfully; “You have but to
administer it.”

Here a man, who had been sitting in a dark corner apart from the table,
with his head buried in his hands, suddenly looked up, showing a thin,
fine, eager face, a pair of wild eyes, and a tumbled mass of dark curly
hair, plentifully sprinkled with grey.

“Ah!” he cried,--“Now comes the tragic moment, when the spectators hold
their breath, and the blue flame is turned on, and the man manages the
lime-light so that its radiance shall fall on the face of the chief
actor--or Actress! And the bassoons and ‘cellos grumble inaudible
nothings to the big drum! Administer the oath, Sergius Thord!”

A smile went the round of the company.

“Have you only just wakened up from sleep, Paul Zouche?” asked Zegota.

“I never sleep,” answered Zouche, pushing his hair back from his
forehead;--“Unless sleep compels me, by force, to yield to its coarse
and commonplace persuasion. To lie down in a shirt and snore the
hours away! Faugh! Can anything be more gross or vulgar! Time flies so
quickly, and life is so short, that I cannot afford to waste any moment
in such stupid unconsciousness. I can drink wine, make love, and kill
rascals--all these occupations are much more interesting than sleeping.
Come, Sergius! Play the great trick of the evening! Administer the
oath!”

A frowning line puckered Thord’s brows, but the expression of vexation
was but momentary. Turning to Leroy again he said:

“You are quite ready?”

“Quite,” replied Leroy.

“And your friends----?”

Leroy smiled. “They are ready also!”

There followed a pause. Then Thord called in a clear low tone--

“Lotys!”

The woman sitting in the embrasure of the window rose, and turning round
fully confronted all the men. Her black cloak falling back on either
side, disclosed her figure robed in dead white, with a scarlet sash
binding her waist. Her face, pale and serene, was not beautiful; yet
beauty was suggested in every feature. Her eyes seemed to be half closed
in a drooping indifference under the white lids, which were fringed
heavily with dark gold lashes. A sculptor might have said, that whatever
claim to beauty she had was contained in the proud poise of her throat,
and the bounteous curve of her bosom, but though in a manner startled
by her appearance, the three men who had chanced upon this night’s
adventure were singularly disappointed in it. They had somehow expected
that when that mysterious cloaked feminine figure turned round, a vision
of dazzling beauty would be disclosed; and at the first glance there
was nothing whatever about this woman that seemed particularly worthy of
note. She was not young or old--possibly between twenty-eight or
thirty. She was not tall or short; she was merely of the usual medium
height,--so that altogether she was one of those provoking individuals,
who not seldom deceive the eye at first sight by those ordinary looks
which veil an extraordinary personality.

She stood like an automatic figure, rigid and silent,--till Sergius
Thord signed to his three new associates to advance. Then with a
movement, rapid as a flash of lightning, she suddenly drew a dagger from
her scarlet girdle, and held it out to them. Nerved as he was to meet
danger, Pasquin Leroy recoiled slightly, while his two companions
started as if to defend him. As she saw this, the woman raised her
drooping eyelids, and a pair of wonderful eyes shone forth, dark blue
as iris-flowers, while a faint scornful smile lifted the corners of her
mouth. But she said nothing.

“There is no cause to fear!” said Sergius Thord, glancing with a touch
of derision in his looks from one to the other, “Lotys is the witness
of all our vows! Swear now after me upon this drawn dagger which she
holds,--lay your right hands here upon the blade!”

Thus adjured, Pasquin Leroy approached, and placed his right hand upon
the shining steel.

“I swear in the name of God, and in the presence of Lotys, that I will
faithfully work for the Cause of the Revolutionary Committee,--and that
I will adhere to its rules and obey its commands, till all shall be done
that is destined to be done! And may the death I deserve come suddenly
upon me if ever I break my vow!”

Slowly and emphatically Pasquin Leroy repeated this formula after
Sergius Thord, and his two companions did the same, though perhaps less
audibly. This ceremony performed, the woman called Lotys looked at them
steadfastly, and the smile that played on her lips changed from scorn
to sweetness. The dark blue iris-coloured eyes deepened in lustre, and
flashed brilliantly from under their drowsy lids,--a rosy flush tinted
the clear paleness of her skin, and like a statue warming to life she
became suddenly beautiful.

“You have sworn bravely!” she said, in a low thrilling voice. “Now sign
and seal!”

As she spoke she lifted her bare left arm, and pricked it with the point
of the dagger. A round, full drop of blood like a great ruby welled up
on the white skin. All the men had risen from their places, and were
gathered about her;--this ‘taking of the oath’ was evidently the
dramatic event of their existence as a community.

“The pen, Sergius!” she said.

Thord approached with a white unused quill, and a vellum scroll on which
the names of all the members of the Society were written in ominous red.
He handed these writing implements to Leroy.

“Dip your pen here,” said Lotys, pointing to the crimson drop on her
arm, and eyeing him still with the same half-sweet, half-doubting
smile--“But when the quill is full, beware that you write no treachery!”

For one second Leroy appeared to hesitate. He was singularly unnerved by
the glances of those dark blue eyes, which like searchlights seemed to
penetrate into every nook and cranny of his soul. But his recklessness
and love of adventure having led him so far, it was now too late to
retract or to reconsider the risks he might possibly be running. He
therefore took the quill and dipped it into the crimson drop that welled
from that soft white flesh.

“This is the strangest ink I have ever used!” he said lightly,--“but--at
your command, Madame----!”

“At my command,” rejoined Lotys, “your use of it shall make your oath
indelible!”

He smiled, and wrote his name boldly ‘Pasquin Leroy’ and held out the
pen for his companions to follow his example.

“Ach Gott!” exclaimed Max Graub, as he dipped the pen anew into the
vital fluid from a woman’s veins--“I write my name, Madame, in words of
life, thanks to your condescension!”

“True!” she answered,--“And only by your own falsehood can you change
them into words of death!”

Signing his name ‘Max Graub,’ he looked up and met her searching gaze.
Something there was in the magnetic depth of her eyes that strangely
embarrassed him, for he stepped back hastily as though intimidated. Axel
Regor took the pen from his hand, and wrote his name, or rather scrawled
it carelessly, almost impatiently,--showing neither hesitation nor
repugnance to this unusual method of subscribing a document.

“You are acting on compulsion!” said Lotys, addressing him in a low
tone; “Your compliance is in obedience to some other command than ours!
And--you will do well to remain obedient!”

Axel Regor gave her an amazed glance,--but she paid no heed to it, and
binding her arm with her kerchief, let her long white sleeve fall over
it.

“So, you are enrolled among the sons of my blood!” she said, “So are
you bound to me and mine!” She moved to the further end of the table
and stood there looking round upon them all. Again the slow, sweet,
half-disdainful smile irradiated her features. “Well, children!--what
else remains to do? What next? What next can there be but
drink--smoke--talk! Man’s three most cherished amusements!”

She sat down, throwing back her heavy cloak on either side of her. Her
hair had come partly unbound, and noticing a tress of it falling on her
shoulder, she drew out the comb and let it fall altogether in a mass of
gold-brown, like the tint of a dull autumn leaf, flecked here and there
with amber. Catching it dexterously in one hand, she twisted it up again
in a loose knot, thrusting the comb carelessly through.

“Drink--smoke--talk, Sergius!” she repeated, still smiling; “Shall I
ring?”

Sergius Thord stood looking at her irresolutely, with the half-angry,
half-pleading expression of a chidden child.

“As you please, Lotys!” he answered. Whereupon she pressed an invisible
spring under the table, which set a bell ringing in some lower quarter
of the house.

“Pasquin Leroy, Axel Regor, Max Graub!” she said--“Take your places for
to-night beside me--newcomers are always thus distinguished! And all of
you sit down! You are grouped at present like hungry wolves waiting to
spring. But you are not really hungry, except for something which is
not food! And you are not waiting for anything except for permission to
talk! I give it to you--talk, children! Talk yourselves hoarse! It will
do you good! And I will personate supreme wisdom by listening to you in
silence!”

A kind of shamed laugh went round the company,--then followed the
scuffling of feet, and grating of chairs against the floor, and
presently the table was completely surrounded, the men sitting close up
together, and Sergius Thord occupying his place at their head.

When they were all seated, they formed a striking assembly of distinctly
marked personalities. There were very few mean types among them, and the
stupid, half-vague and languid expression of the modern loafer or ‘do
nothing’ creature, who just for lack of useful work plots mischief, was
not to be seen on any of their countenances. A certain moroseness and
melancholy seemed to brood like a delayed storm among them, and to cloud
the very atmosphere they breathed, but apart from this, intellectuality
was the dominant spirit suggested by their outward looks and bearing.
Plebeian faces and vulgar manners are, unfortunately, not rare in
representative gatherings of men whose opinions are allowed to sway the
destinies of nations, and it was strange to see a group of individuals
who were sworn to upset existing law and government so distinguished
by refined and even noble appearance. Their clothes were shabby,--their
aspect certainly betokened long suffering and contention with want and
poverty, but they were, taken all together, a set of men who, if they
had been members of a recognized parliament or senate, would have
presented a fine collection of capable heads to an observant painter.
As soon as they were gathered round the table under the presidency of
Sergius Thord at one end, and the tranquil tolerance of the mysterious
Lotys at the other, they broke through the silence and reserve which
they had carefully maintained till their three new comrades had been
irrecoverably enrolled among them, and conversation went on briskly.
The topic of ‘The King _versus_ the Jesuits’ was one of the first
they touched upon, Sergius Thord relating for the benefit of all his
associates, how he had found Pasquin Leroy reading by lamplight the
newspaper which reported his Majesty’s refusal to grant any portion of
Crown lands to the priests, and which also spoke of ‘Thord’s Rabble.’

“Here is the paper!” said Leroy, as he heard the narration; “Whoever
likes to keep it can do so, as a memento of my introduction to this
Society!”

And he tossed it lightly on the table.

“Good!” exclaimed Paul Zouche; “Give it to me, and I will cherish it as
a kind of birthday card! What a rag it is! ‘Thord’s Rabble’ eh! Sergius,
what have you been doing that this little flea of an editor should jump
out of his ink-pot and bite you? Does he hurt much?”

“Hurt!” Thord laughed aloud. “If I had money enough to pay the man ten
golden coins a week where his present employer gives him five, he would
dance to any tune I whistled!”

“Is that so?” asked Leroy, with interest.

“Do you not know that it is so?” rejoined Thord. “You tell me you write
Socialistic works--you should know something concerning the press.”

“Ah!” said Max Graub, nodding his head sagely, “He does know much, but
not all! It would need more penetration than even _he_ possesses, to
know all! Alas!--my friend was never a popular writer!”

“Like myself!” exclaimed Zouche, “I am not popular, and I never shall
be. But I know how to make myself reputed as a great genius, and all the
very respectable literary men are beginning to recognize me as such. Do
you know why?”

“Because you drink more than is good for you, my poor Zouche!” said
Lotys tranquilly; “That is one reason!”

“Hear her!” cried Zouche,--“Does she not always, like the Sphinx,
propound enigmas! Lotys,--little, domineering Lotys, why in the name of
Heaven should I secure recognition as a poet, through drunkenness?”

“Because your vice kills your genius,” said Lotys; “Therefore you
are quite safe! If you were less of a scamp you would be a great
man,--perhaps the greatest in the country! That would never do! Your
rivals would never forgive you! But you are a hopeless rascal, incapable
of winning much honour; and so you are compassionately recognized
as somebody who might do something if he only would--that is all, my
Zouche! You are an excellent after-dinner topic with those who are more
successful than yourself; and that is the only fame you will ever win,
believe me!”

“Now by all the gods and goddesses!” cried Paul--“I do protest----”

“After supper, Zouche!” interrupted Lotys, as the door of the room
opened, and a man entered, bearing a tray loaded with various eatables,
jugs of beer, and bottles of spirituous liquors,--“Protest as much as
you like then,--but not just now!”

And with quick, deft hands she helped to set the board. None of the men
offered to assist her, and Leroy watching her, felt a sudden sense of
annoyance that this woman should seem, even for a moment, to be in the
position of a servant to them all.

“Can I do nothing for you?” he said, in a low tone--“Why should you wait
upon us?”

“Why indeed!” she answered--“Except that you are all by nature awkward,
and do not know how to wait properly upon yourselves!”

Her eyes had 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/6921