The large gaunt building, which was dignified by the name of the
'People's Assembly Rooms,' stood in a dim unfashionable square of the
city which had once been entirely devoted to warehouses and storage
cellars. It had originally served a useful purpose in providing
temporary shelter for foreign-made furniture, which was badly
constructed and intrinsically worthless,--but which, being cheaply
imported and showy in appearance, was patronized by some of the upper
middle-classes in preference to goods of their own home workmanship.
Lately, however, the foreign import had fallen to almost less than
nothing; and whether or no this was due to the secret machinations of
Sergius Thord and his Revolutionary Committee, no one would have had
the hardihood to assert. Foreign tradesmen, however, and foreign workmen
generally had certainly experienced a check in their inroads upon
home manufactures, and some of the larger business firms had been so
successfully intimidated as to set up prominent announcements outside
their warehouses to the effect that "Only native workmen need apply."
Partly in consequence of the "slump" in foreign goods, the "Assembly
Rooms," as a mere building had for some time been shut up, and given
over to dust and decay, till the owners of the property decided to
let it out for popular concerts, meetings and dances, and so make some
little money out of its bare whitewashed walls and comfortless ugliness.
The plan had succeeded fairly well, and the place was beginning to be
known as a convenient centre where thousands were wont to congregate, to
enjoy cheap music and cheap entertainment generally. It was a favourite
vantage ground for the disaffected and radical classes of the metropolis
to hold forth on their wrongs, real or imaginary,--and the capacities of
the largest room or hall in the building were put to their utmost
extent to hold the enormous audiences that always assembled to hear the
picturesque, passionate and striking oratory of Sergius Thord.

But there were one or two rare occasions when even Sergius Thord's
attractions as a speaker were thrown into the background, by the
appearance of that mysterious personality known as Lotys,--concerning
whom a thousand extravagant stories were rife, none of which were true.
It was rumoured among other things as wild and strange, that she was
the illegitimate child of a certain great prince, whose amours were
legion--that she had been thrown out into the street to perish, deserted
as an infant, and that Sergius Thord had rescued her from that impending
fate of starvation and death,--and that it was by way of vengeance for
the treatment of her mother by the Exalted Personage involved, that
she had thrown in her lot with the Revolutionary party, to aid their
propaganda by her intellectual gifts, which were many. She was known to
be very poor,--she lived in cheap rooms in a low quarter of the city;
she was seldom or never seen in the public thoroughfares,--she appeared
to have no women friends, and she certainly mixed in no form of social
intercourse or entertainment. Yet her name was on the lips of the
million, and her influence was felt far beyond the city's radius.
Even among some of the highest and wealthiest classes of society this
peculiar appellation of "Lotys," carrying no surname with it, and
spoken at haphazard had the effect of causing a sudden silence, and
the interchange of questioning looks among those who heard it, and who,
without knowing who she was, or what her aims in life really were, voted
her "dangerous." Those among the superior classes who had by rare
chance seen her, were unanimous in their verdict that she was not
beautiful,--"but!"--and the "but" spoke volumes. She was known
to possess something much less common, and far more potent than
beauty,--and that was a fascinating, compelling spiritual force,
which magnetised into strange submission all who came within its
influence,--and many there were who admitted, though with bated breath
that 'An' if she chose' she could easily become a very great personage
indeed.

She herself was, or seemed to be, perfectly unconscious of the many
discussions concerning her and her origin. She had her own secret
sorrows,--her sad private history, which she shut close within her own
breast,--but out of many griefs and poverty-stricken days of struggle
and cruel environment, she had educated herself to a wonderful height of
moral self-control and almost stoical rectitude. Her nature was a broad
and grand one, absolutely devoid of pettiness, and full of a strong,
almost passionate sympathy with the wrongs of others,--and she had
formed herself on such firm, heroic lines of courage and truth and
self-respect, that the meaner vices of her sex were absolutely unknown
to her. Neither vanity, nor envy, nor malice, nor spleen disturbed the
calmly-flowing current of her blood,--her soul was absorbed in pity for
human kind, and contemplation of its many woes,--and so living alone,
and studiously apart from the more frivolous world, she had attained a
finely tempered and deeply thoughtful disposition which gave her equally
the courage of the hero and the resignation of the martyr. She had long
put away out of her life all possibility of happiness for herself. She
had, by her unwearying study of the masses of working, suffering men and
women, come to the sorrowful conclusion that real happiness could only
be enjoyed by the extremely young, and the extremely thoughtless,--and
that love was only another name for the selfish and often cruel and
destructive instincts of animal desire. She did not resent these ugly
facts, or passionately proclaim against the gloomy results of life such
as were daily displayed to her,--she was only filled with a profound and
ceaseless compassion for the evils which were impossible to cure.
Her tireless love for the sick, the feeble, the despairing, the
broken-hearted and the dying, had raised her to the height of an angel's
quality among the very desperately poor and criminal classes;--the
fiercest ruffians of the slums were docile in her presence and obedient
to her command;--and many a bold plan of robbery,--many a wicked
scheme of murder had been altogether foregone and abandoned through the
intervention of Lotys, whose intellectual acumen, swift to perceive the
savage instinct, or motive for crime, was equally swift to point out
its uselessness as a means of satisfying vengeance. No preacher could
persuade a thief of the practical ingloriousness of thieving, as Lotys
could,--and a prison chaplain, remonstrating with an assassin after his
crime, was not half as much use to the State as Lotys, who could induce
such an one to resign his murderous intent altogether, before he had so
much as possessed himself of the necessary weapon. Thousands of people
were absolutely under her moral dominion,--and the power she exercised
over them was so great, and yet so unobtrusive, that had she bidden the
whole city rise in revolt, she would most surely have been obeyed by the
larger and fiercer half of its population.

With the moneyed classes she had nothing in common, though she viewed
them with perhaps more pity than she did the very poor. An overplus of
cash in any one person's possession that had not been rightfully earned
by the work of brain or body, was to her an incongruity, and a defection
from the laws of the universe;--show and ostentation she despised,--and
though she loved beautiful things, she found them,--as she herself
said,--much more in the everyday provisions of nature, than in the
elaborate designs of art. When she passed the gay shops in the
principal thoroughfares she never paused to look in at the jewellers'
windows,--but she would linger for many minutes studying the beauty of
the sprays of orchids and other delicate blossoms, arranged in baskets
and vases by the leading florists; while,--best delight of all to her,
was a solitary walk inland among the woods, where she could gather
violets and narcissi, and, as she expressed it 'feel them growing
about her feet.' She would have been an extraordinary personality as a
man,--as a woman she was doubly remarkable, for to a woman's gentleness
she added a force of will and brain which are not often found even in
the stronger sex.

Mysterious as she was in her life and surroundings, enough was known of
her by the people at large, to bring a goodly concourse of them to the
Assembly Rooms on the night when she was announced to speak on a subject
of which the very title seemed questionable, namely, "On the Corruption
of the State." The police had been notified of the impending meeting,
and a few stalwart emissaries of the law in plain clothes mixed with the
in-pouring throng. The crowd, however, was very orderly;--there was
no pushing, no roughness, and no coarse language. All the members of
Sergius Thord's Revolutionary Committee were present, but they came as
stragglers, several and apart,--and among them Paul Zouche the poet,
was perhaps the most noticeable. He had affected the picturesque in his
appearance;--his hat was of the Rembrandt character, and he had donned
a very much worn, short velveteen jacket, whose dusty brown was relieved
by the vivid touch of a bright red tie. His hair was wild and bushy, and
his eyes sparkled with unwonted brilliancy, as he nodded to one or
two of his associates, and gave a careless wave of the hand to Sergius
Thord, who, entering slowly, and as if with reluctance, took a seat at
the very furthest end of the hall, where his massive figure showed least
conspicuous among the surging throng. Keeping his head down in a pensive
attitude of thought, his eyes were, nevertheless, sharp to see every
person entering who belonged to his own particular following,--and a
ray of satisfaction lighted up his face, as he perceived his latest new
associate, Pasquin Leroy, quietly edge his way through the crowd, and
secure a seat in one of the obscurest and darkest corners of the badly
lighted hall. He was followed by his comrades, Max Graub and Axel
Regor,--and Thord felt a warm glow of contentment in the consciousness
that these lately enrolled members of the Revolutionary Committee were
so far faithful to their bond. Signed and sealed in the blood of
Lotys, they had responded to the magnetism of her name with the prompt
obedience of waves rising to the influence of the moon,--and Sergius,
full of a thousand wild schemes for the regeneration of the People, was
more happy to know them as subjects to her power, than as adherents
to his own cause. He was calmly cognisant of the presence of General
Bernhoff, the well-known Chief of Police;--though he was rendered a
trifle uneasy by observing that personage had seated himself as closely
as possible to the bench occupied by Leroy and his companions. A faint
wonder crossed his mind as to whether the three, in their zeal for the
new Cause they had taken up, had by any means laid themselves open to
suspicion; but he was not a man given to fears; and he felt convinced in
his own mind, from the close personal observation he had taken of Leroy,
and from the boldness of his speech on his enrolment as a member of the
Revolutionary Committee, that, whatever else he might prove to be, he
was certainly no coward.

The hall filled quickly, till by and by it would have been impossible to
find standing room for a child. A student of human nature is never long
in finding out the dominant characteristic of an audience,--whether its
attitude be profane or reverent, rowdy or attentive, and the bearing of
the four or five thousand here assembled was remarkable chiefly for its
seriousness and evident intensity of purpose. The extreme orderliness of
the manner in which the people found and took their seats,--the entire
absence of all fussy movement, fidgeting, staring, querulous changing of
places, whispering or laughter, showed that the crowd were there for
a deeper purpose than mere curiosity. The bulk of the assemblage was
composed of men; very few women were present, and these few were all of
the poor and hard-working classes. No female of even the lower middle
ranks of life, with any faint pretence to 'fashion,' would have been
seen listening to "that dreadful woman,"--as Lotys was very often called
by her own sex,--simply because of the extraordinary fascination she
secretly exercised over men. Pasquin Leroy and his companions spoke now
and then, guardedly, and in low whispers, concerning the appearance
and demeanour of the crowd, Max Graub being particularly struck by the
general physiognomy and type of the people present.

"Plenty of good heads!" he said cautiously. "There are thinkers
here--and thinkers are a very dangerous class!"

"There are many people who 'think' all their lives and 'do' nothing!"
said Axel Regor languidly.

"True, my friend! But their thought may lead, while, they themselves
remain passive," joined in Pasquin Leroy sotto-voce;--"It is not at all
impossible that if Lotys bade these five thousand here assembled burn
down the citadel, it would be done before daybreak!"

"I have no doubt at all of that," said Graub. "One cannot forget that
the Bastille was taken while the poor King Louis XVI. was enjoying
a supper-party and 'a little orange-flower-water refreshment' at
Versailles!"

Leroy made an imperative sign of silence, for there was a faint stir
and subdued hum of expectation in the crowd. Another moment,--and Lotys
stepped quietly and alone on the bare platform. As she confronted her
audience, a low passionate sound, like the murmur of a rising storm,
greeted her,--a sound that was not anything like the customary applause
or encouragement offered to a public speaker, but that suggested
extraordinary satisfaction and expectancy, which almost bordered on
exultation. Pasquin Leroy, raising his eyes as she entered, was startled
by an altogether new impression of her to that which he had received on
the night he first saw her. Her personality was somehow different--her
appearance more striking, brilliant and commanding. Attired in the same
plain garment of dead white serge in which he had previously seen
her, with the same deep blood-red scarf crossing her left shoulder and
breast,--there was something to-night in this mere costume that seemed
emblematic of a far deeper power than he had been at first inclined to
give her. A curious sensation began to affect his nerves,--a sudden and
overwhelming attraction, as though his very soul were being drawn out
of him by the calm irresistible dominance of those slumbrous dark-blue
iris-coloured eyes, which had the merit of appearing neither brilliant
nor remarkable as eyes merely, but which held in their luminous depths
that intellectual command which represents the active and passionate
life of the brain, beside which all other life is poor and colourless.
These eyes appeared to rest upon him now from under their drooping
sleepy white eyelids with an inexpressible tenderness and fascination,
and he was suddenly reminded of Heinrich Heine's quaint love-fancy;
"Behind her dreaming eyelids the sun has gone to rest; when she opens
her eyes it will be day, and the birds will be heard singing!" He began
to realise depths in his own nature which he had till now been almost
unconscious of; he knew himself to a certain extent, but by no means
thoroughly; and awakening as he was to the fact that other lives around
him presented strange riddles for consideration, he wondered whether
after all, his own life might not perhaps prove one of the most complex
among human conundrums? He had often meditated on the inaccessibility of
ideal virtues, the uselessness of persuasion, the commonplace absurdity,
as he had thought, of trying to embody any lofty spiritual dream,--yet
he was himself a man in whom spiritual forces were so strong that he was
personally unaware of their overflow, because they were as much a part
of him as his breathing capacity. True, he had never consciously tested
them, but they were existent in him nevertheless.

He watched Lotys now, with an irritable, restless attention,--there
was a thrill of vague expectation in his soul as of new things to be
done,--changes to be made in the complex machinery of human nature,--and
a great wonder, as well as a great calm, fell upon him as the first
clear steady tones of her voice chimed through the deep hush which had
prepared the way for her first words. Her voice was a remarkable one,
vibrant, yet gentle,--ringing out forcefully, yet perfectly sweet. She
began very simply,--without any attempt at a majestic choice of words,
or an impressive flow of oratory. She faced her audience quietly,--one
bare rounded arm resting easily on a small uncovered deal table in front
of her;--she had no 'notes' but her words were plainly the result of
deliberate and careful thinking-out of certain problems needful to be
brought before the notice of the people. Her face was colourless,--the
dead gold hair rippling thickly away in loose clusters from the white
brows, fell into their accustomed serpentine twisted knot at the nape of
her neck; and the scarlet sash she wore, alone relieved the statuesque
white folds of her draperies; but as she spoke, something altogether
superphysical seemed to exhale from her as heat exhales from fire--a
strange essence of overpowering and compelling sweetness stole into
the heavy heated air, and gave to the commonplace surroundings and the
poorly clothed crowd of people an atmosphere of sacredness and beauty.
This influence deepened steadily under the rhythmic cadence of her
voice, till every agitated soul, every resentful and troubled heart in
the throng was conscious of a sudden ingathering of force and calm, of
self-respect and self-reliance. The gist of her intention was plainly to
set people thinking for themselves, and in this there could be no manner
of doubt but that she succeeded. Of the 'Corruption of the State' she
spoke as a thing thoroughly recognised by the masses.

"We know,--all of us,"--she said, in the concluding portion of her
address, "that we have Ministers who personally care nothing for the
prosperity or welfare of the country. We know--all of us,--that we
have a bribed Press; whose business it is to say nothing that shall
run counter to Ministerial views. We know,--all of us,--that it is this
bribed Ministerial press which leads the ignorant, (who are not behind
the scenes,) to wrong and false conclusions;--and that it is solely upon
these wrong and false conclusions of the wilfully misled million,
that the Ministry itself rests for support. On one side the Press
is manipulated by the Jews; on the other by the Jesuits. There is no
journal in this country that will, or dare, publish the true reflex of
popular opinion. Therefore the word 'free' cannot be applied to that
recording-force of nations which we call Journalism; inasmuch as it
is now a merely purchased Chattle. We should remember, when we read
'opinions of the Press,'--on any great movement or important change in
policy, that we are merely accepting the opinions of the bound and paid
Slave of Capitalists;--and we should take care to form our judgment for
ourselves, rather than from the Capitalist point of view. Were there a
strong man to lead,--the shiftiness, treachery, and deliberate neglect
practised on the million by those who are now in office, could
not possibly last;--but where there is no strength, there must be
weakness,--and where a long career of deceit has been followed, instead
of a course of plain dealing, failure in the end is inevitable.
With failure comes disaster; and often something which augments
disaster--Revolt. The people, weary of constant imposition,--of
incessant delays of the justice due to them,--as well as the
unscrupulous breaking of promises solemnly pledged,--will--in the
long run, take their own way, as they have done before in history, of
securing instant amelioration of those wrongs which their paid rulers
fail to redress. Who will dare to say that, under such circumstances,
it is ill for the people to act? Sometimes it is a greater Consciousness
than their own that moves them; and the wronged and half-forgotten Cause
of all worlds makes His command known through His creatures, who obey
His impulse,--even as the atoms gathering in space cluster at His will
into solar systems, and bring forth their burden of life!"

She paused, and leaning forward a little, her eyes poured out their
flashing searchlight as it seemed into the very souls of her hearers.

"Dear friends!--dear children!" she said, and in her tone there was the
tenderness of a great compassion, almost bordering on tears,--"What
is it, think you all, that makes the age in which we live so sad, so
colourless, so restless and devoid of hope and peace? It is not that we
are the inhabitants of a less wonderful or less beautiful world,--it is
not as if the sun had ceased to shine, or the birds had forgotten how
to sing! Triumphs of science,--triumphs of learning and discovery, these
are all on the increase for our help and furtherance. With so much
gain in evident advancement, what is it we have lost?--what is it
we miss?--whence come the dreariness and emptiness and satiety,--the
intolerable sense of the futility of life, even when life has most
to offer? Dear children, you are all so sad!--many of you so
broken-hearted!--why is it?--how is it? Poverty alone is not the
cause,--for it is quite possible to be poor, yet happy! True enough it
is that in these days you are ground down by the imposition of taxes,
which try all the strength of your earnings to pay; but even this is
an evil you could mitigate for yourselves, by strong and united public
protest. How is it that you do not realise your own strength? You are
not like the poor brutes of the field and forest, who lack the reason
which would show them how superior in physical force alone they are to
the insignificant biped who commands them. Could the ox understand his
own strength, he would never be led to the slaughter-house;--he and
his kind would become a terror instead of a provision. You are not
oxen,--yet often you are as patient, as dull, as blind and reasonless
as they! You form clubs, societies, and trades-unions;--but in how many
cases do you not enter upon small and querulous differences which so
weaken your unity that presently it falls to pieces and has no more
power in it? This is what your tyrants in trade rely on and hope for;
the constant recurrence of quarrels and dissensions among yourselves.
No Society lasts which tolerates conflicting argument or differing
sentiments in itself. Why is it that the Jesuits,--whom you are all
unanimous in hating,--are still the strongest political Brotherhood
on the face of the earth? Because they are bound to maintain in every
particular the tenets of their Order. No matter how vile, or how
reprehensibly false their theories, they are compelled to carry on the
work and propaganda of their Union, despite all loss and sacrifice to
themselves. This is the secret of their force. Expelled from one land,
they take root in another. Suppressed entirely by Pope Clement XIV., in
1773, they virtually ignored suppression, and took up their headquarters
in Russia. The influence they exerted there still lies on the serf
population, like one of the many chains fastened to a Siberian exile's
body. Yet they were driven from Russia in 1820,--from Holland in
1816,--from Switzerland in 1847, and from Germany in 1872. Latterly they
have been expelled from France. Nevertheless, in spite of these numerous
expulsions, and the universal odium in which they are held,--they still
flourish; still are they able to maintain their twenty-two generals and
their four Vicars;--and still all countries have, in their turn, to deal
with their impending or fulfilled invasion. Why is it that a Society
so criminal in historic annals, should yet remain as a force in our
advanced era of civilization? Simply, because it is of One Mind! Bent on
evil, or good,--self-renunciation or self-aggrandisement,--it is still
of One Mind! Friends,--were you like them, also of One Mind, your
injuries, your oppressions, your taxations would not last long! The
remedy for all is easy, and rests with yourselves,--only yourselves! But
some of you have lost heart--and other some have lost patience. You look
round upon the squalid corners of this great city--you shudder at the
cruelty of the daily life with which you have to contend,--you enter
poor rooms, which you are compelled to call 'home,' where the sick and
dying, the newly-born and the dead are huddled all together,--ten,
and sometimes fifteen in one small den of four whitewashed walls;--and
sickened and tired, you cry out 'Is life worth no more than this? Is
God's scheme for the human race no more than this? Then why were we born
at all? Or, being born, why may we not die at once, self-slain?' Ah,
yes, dear friends!--you often feel like this; we all of us often feel
like this! But--it is not God who has made life thus hard for you,--it
is yourselves! It is you who consent to be down-trodden,--it is you who
resign your freewill, your thought, your originality of character, into
the dominating power of others. True,--wealth controls affairs to a vast
extent nowadays,--but there is a stronger power than wealth, and that is
Soul! It is not the possession of gold that has given the greatest
men their position. This is a commercial age, we own,--and
certainly,--because of the base and degrading love of
accumulation,--Intellectuality is for the moment often set aside as
something valueless--but whenever Intellectuality truly asserts itself,
there is at once made visible an acting force of the Divine, which
is practically limitless and irresistible. Think for yourselves,
friends!--do not let a hired Press think for you! Think for
yourselves--judge for yourselves, and act for yourselves! By your
observation of a statesman's life, you shall know his capabilities. If
he has once been a turncoat, he will be a turncoat again. If he has been
known to speculate privately in a forthcoming political crisis, which he
alone knows of in advance----"

Here the speaker was interrupted by what sounded more like a snarl than
a shout. "Pérousse! Pérousse!"

The name was hissed out, and tossed from one rank to another of the
audience, and one or two of the police present glanced enquiringly
towards Bernhoff their chief,--but he sat with folded arms and
inscrutable demeanour, making no sign. Lotys raised her small,
beautifully-shaped white hand to enjoin silence. She was obeyed
instantly.

"I speak of no one man," she said with deliberate emphasis; "I accuse no
one man,--or any man! I say 'if' any man gambles with State policy, he
is a traitor to the country! But such gambling is not a novelty in the
history of nations. It has been practised over and over again. Only mark
you all this one God's truth!--that whenever it _has_ occurred--whenever
the rulers of a State _are_ corrupt,--whenever society sinks into such
moral defilement that it sees nothing better, nothing higher than the
love of money,--then comes the downfall!--then Ruin and Anarchy set up
their dominion,--and Heaven's rage rolls out upon the offenders, till
their offence be cleansed away in rivers of blood and tears!"

She waited a moment,--and changing her attitude, seemed as it were,
to project her thought into her audience, by the sudden passion of her
commanding gesture, and the flash of her deep luminous eyes.

"We have heard of the Great Renunciation!" she said; "How God Himself
took human form, and came to this low little earth to prove how nobly
we should live and die! But in our day,--we with our preachers and
teachers, our press and our parliamentary orators,--our atheistical
statesmen on all hands, have come upon the Great Obliteration!--the
Obliteration of God altogether in our ways of life! We push Him out, as
if He were not. He is not in our Churches--He is not in our Laws--He
is not in our Commerce. Only when we are brought low by pain and
sickness--when we are confronted by death itself--then we call out 'God!
God!' like cowards, praying for help from the Power we have negatived
all our lives! Here is the evil, O children all!--we have forgotten Our
Father! We arrange all our affairs in life without giving Him a thought!
Our pleasures, our gains, our advantages,--are calculated without
consulting His good pleasure. He is last, or not at all,--when He should
be first, and in everything! The end of this is misery;--it must be so;
it cannot by law be anything else. For what is God? Who is God? God is
a name merely,--but we give it to that Unseen, but ever working Force
which rules the Universe! The coldest atheist that ever breathed
must own that somehow,--by some means or other,--the Universe _is_
ruled,--for if it were not, we should know nothing of it. Therefore,
when we set aside, or leave out the consciousness and acknowledgment of
the Ruler, the ruling of our affairs must, of necessity, go wrong!

"I cannot preach to you--I cannot out of my own conscience recommend to
you one or the other form of faith as the way to peace and wisdom;--but
I can and do Beseech you to remember the Note Dominant of this great
Universe--the Note that sounds through high and low,--through small
and great alike!--and that must and will in due course absorb all our
discords into Everlasting Harmony! Try not to put this fact out of your
lives,--that Justice and Order are the rule of the spheres; and that
whenever we depart from these, even in the smallest contingency,
confusion reigns. How hard it is to believe in Justice and Order, you
will tell me,--when the poor are not treated with the same consideration
as the rich,--and when money will buy place and position! True! It is
hard to believe,--but it is believable nevertheless. As the lungs and
the heart are the life of the human body, so are Justice and Order the
life of the Universe,--and when these are pushed out of place, or become
diseased in the composition of a human state or community, then the
life of that state or community is threatened;--and unless remedies are
quickly to hand, it must end. You all know the position of things among
yourselves to-day;--you all know that there is no trust to be placed in
Churches, Kings or Parliaments;--that the world is in a state of ferment
and unrest,--moving towards Change;--change imminent--change, possibly,
disastrous! And if it is You who know, it is likewise You who must seize
the hour as it approaches!--seize it as you would seize a robber by the
throat, and demand its business;--search its heart;--deprive it of its
weapons;--and learn from it its message! A message it may be of wild
alarm--of tearing up old conventions;--of thrusting forth old abuses; a
message full of clamour and outcry--but whatever the uproar, doubt not
that we shall hear the voice of the Forgotten God thundering in our
ears at the close! We shall have found our way closer to Him--and with
penitence and prayer, we shall ask to be forgiven for having wandered
away from Him so long!

"And will He not pardon? Yes,--He will, because He must! To Him we owe
our existence;--He alone is responsible for our life, our probation, our
progress, our striving through many errors towards Perfection! He,
who sees all, must needs have pity for His creature Man! Out of the
evolutions of a blind Time, He has made the poor weak human being, who
in the first days of his sojourn on earth had neither covering nor home.
Less protected than the beasts of the forest, he found himself compelled
to Think!--to think out his own means of shelter,--to contrive his own
weapons of defence. Slowly, and by painful degrees, from Savagery he has
emerged to Civilization;--wherefore it is evident that his Maker meant
Thought to be his first principle, and Action his second. He who does
not work, shall not eat;--he who does not use all his faculties for
improvement, shall by and by have none to use. Injustice and corruption
are amongst us, merely because we ourselves have failed to resist their
first inroads. Who is it that complains of wrong? Let him hasten to
his own amending,--and he will find a thousand hands, a thousand hearts
ready to work with him! All Nature is on the side of health in the body,
as of health in the State. All Nature fights against disease,--physical
and moral. Therefore do not,--dear friends and children!--sit idle and
passive, submitting yourselves to be deceived, as if you had no force
to withstand deception! Show that you hate lies, and will have none of
them,--show that you will not be imposed upon--and decline to be led
or governed by party agents, who persuade you to your own and your
country's destruction! The voice of the People can no longer be heard
in a purchased Press;--let it echo forth then, in stronger form
than ephemeral print, which to-day is glanced at, and to-morrow is
forgotten;--wherever and whenever you are given the chance to meet,
and to speak, let your authority as the workers, the ratepayers, and
supporters of the State be heard; and do not You, without whom even the
King could not keep his throne, consent to be set aside as the Unvalued
Majority! Prove, by your own firm attitude that without You, nothing
can be done! It is time, oh people of my heart!--it is time you spoke
clearly! God is moving His thought through your souls--God stirs in you
the fear, the discontent, the suspicion that all is not well with your
country;--and it is the Spirit of God which breathes in the warning note
of the time--

  "'Hark to the voice of the time!
    The multitude think forthemselves,
    And weigh their condition each one;
    The drudge has a spirit sublime,
    And whether he hammers or delves,
    He reads when his labour is done;
    And learns, though he groan under poverty's ban,
    That freedom to Think, is the birthright of man!'

"Learn," she continued,--as a low deep murmur of agreement ran through
the room; "Learn to what strange uses God puts even such men of this
world, whose sole existence has been for the cause of amassing
money! They have acted as the merest machines, gathering in the
millions;--gathering, gathering them in! For what purpose? Lo, they are
smitten down in the prime of their lives, and the gold they have
piled up is at once scattered! Much of it becomes used for educational
purposes;--and some of these dead millionaires have, as it were thrown
Education at the heads of the people, and almost pauperised it. Far
away in Great Britain, a millionaire has recently made the Scottish
University education 'free' to all students,--instead of, as it used to
be, hard to get, and well worth working to win. Now,--through the wealth
of one man, it is turned into a pauper's allowance;--like offering the
smallest silver coin to a reduced gentleman. The pride,--the skill,--the
self-renunciation,--the strong determination to succeed, which form
fine character, and which taught the struggling student to win his
own University education, are all wiped out;--there is no longer any
necessity for the practice of these manly and self-sustaining virtues.
The harm that will be done is probably not yet perceivable; but it will
be incalculable. Education, turned into a kind of pauper's monopoly,
will have widely different results to those just now imagined! But
with all the contemptuous throwing out of the unneeded kitchen-waste of
millionaires,--still Education is the thing to take at any price, and
under any circumstances;--because it alone is capable of giving power!
It alone will 'put down the mighty from their seats, and exalt the
humble and the meek.' It alone will give us the force to fight our
taskmasters with their own weapons, and to place them where they should
be, coequal with us, but not superior,--considerate of us, but not
commanding us,--and above all things, bound to make their records of
such work as they do for the State--clean!"

A hurricane of applause interrupted her,--she waited till it subsided,
then went on quietly.

"There should be no scheming in the dark; no secret contracts for which
we have to pay blindly;--no refusal to explain the way in which the
people's hard-earned money is spent; and before foreign urbanities and
diplomacies and concessions are allowed to take up time in the Senate,
it is necessary that the frightful and abounding evils of our own
land,--our own homes,--be considered. For this we purpose to demand
redress,--and not only to demand it, but to obtain it! Ministers
may refuse to hear us; but the Country's claims are greater than any
Ministry! A King's displeasure may cause court-parasites to tremble--but
a People's Honour is more to be guarded than a thousand thrones!"

As she concluded with these words, she seemed to grow taller, nobler,
more inspired and commanding,--and while the applause was yet shaking
the rafters of the hall, she left the platform. Shouts of "Lotys!
Lotys!" rang out again and again with passionate bursts of
cheering,--and in response to it she came back, and by a slight gesture
commanded silence.

"Dear friends, I thank you all for listening to me!" she said simply,
her rich voice trembling a little; "I speak only with a woman's impulse
and unwisdom--just as I think and feel--and always out of my great
love for you! As you all know, I have no interests to serve;--I am only
Lotys, your own poor friend,--one who works with you, and dwells among
you, seeing and sharing your hard lives, and wishing with all my heart
that I could help you to be happier and freer! My life is at
your service,--my love for you is all too great for any words to
express,--and my gratitude for your faith and trust in me forms my daily
thanksgiving! Now, dear children all,--for you are truly as children in
your patience, submission and obedience to bitter destiny!--I will ask
you to disperse quietly without noise or confusion, or any trouble that
may give to the paid men of law ungrateful work to do;--and in your
homes, think of me!--remember my words!--and while you maintain order by
the steadiness and reasonableness of your difficult lives, still avoid
and resent that slavish obedience to the yoke fastened upon you by
capitalists,--who have no other comfort to offer you in poverty than the
workhouse; and no other remedy for the sins into which you are thrust
by their neglect, than the prison! Take, and keep the rights of your
humanity!--the right to think,--the right to speak,--the right to know
what is being done with the money you patiently earn for others;--and
work, all together in unity. Put aside all petty differences,--all small
rancours and jealousies; and even as a Ministry may unite to defraud
and deceive you, so do you, the People, unite to expose the fraud, and
reject the deception! There is no voice so resonant and convincing as
the voice of the public; there is no power on earth more strong or more
irresistible than the power of the People!"

She stood for one moment more,--silent; her eyes brilliant, her face
beautiful with inspired thought,--then with a quiet, half-deprecatory
gesture, in response to the fresh outbreak of passionate cheering, she
retired from the platform. Pasquin Leroy, whose eyes had been riveted on
her from the first to the last word of her oration, now started as from
a dream, and rose up half-unconsciously, passing his hand across his
brow, as though to exorcise some magnetic spell that had crept over
his brain. His face was flushed, his pulses were throbbing quickly. His
companions, Max Graub and Axel Regor, looked at him inquisitively. The
audience was beginning to file out of the hall in orderly groups.

"What next?" said Graub; "Shall ye go?"

"I suppose so," said Leroy, with a quick sigh, and forcing a smile;
"But--I should have liked to speak with her----"

At that moment his shoulder was touched by a man he recognised as Johan
Zegota. He gave the sign of the Revolutionary Committee bond, to which
Leroy and his comrades responded.

"Will you all three come over the way?" whispered Zegota cautiously; "We
are entertaining Lotys to supper at the inn opposite,--the landlord is
one of us. Thord saw you sitting here, and sent me to ask you to join
us."

"With pleasure," assented Leroy; "We will come at once!"

Zegota nodded and disappeared.

"So you will see the end of this escapade!" said Max Graub, a trifle
crossly. "It would have been much better to go home!"

"You have enjoyed escapades in your time, have you not, my friend? Some
even quite recently?" returned Leroy gaily. "One or two more will not
hurt you!"

They edged their way out among the quietly moving crowd, and
happening to push past General Bernhoff, that personage gave an almost
imperceptible salute, which Leroy as imperceptibly returned. It was
clear that the Chief of Police was acquainted with Pasquin Leroy, the
'spy' on whose track he had been sent by Carl Pérousse, and moreover,
that he was evidently in no hurry to arrest him. At any rate he allowed
him to pass with his friends unmolested, out of the People's Assembly
Rooms, and though he followed him across the road, 'shadowing him,'
as it were, into a large tavern, whose lighted windows betokened
some entertainment within, he did not enter the hostelry himself, but
contented his immediate humour by walking past it to a considerable
distance off, and then slowly back again. By and by Max Graub came out
and beckoned to him, and after a little earnest conversation Bernhoff
walked off altogether, the ring of his martial heels echoing for some
time along the pavement, even after he had disappeared. And from within
the lighted tavern came the sound of a deep, harmonious, swinging
chorus--

  "Way, make way!--for our banner is unfurled,
      Let each man
stand by his neighbour!   The thunder of our footsteps shall roll
through the world,      In the March of the Men of Labour!"

"Yes!" said Max Graub, pausing to listen ere re-entering the
tavern--"If--and it is a great 'if'--if every man will stand by his
neighbour, the thunder will be very loud,--and by all the deities that
ever lived in the Heaven blue, it is a thunder that is likely to last
some time! The possibility of standing by one's neighbour is the only
doubtful point!"

CHAPTER XX

THE SCORN OF KINGS

Inside the tavern, from whence the singing proceeded, there was a
strange scene,--somewhat disorderly yet picturesque. Lotys, seated at
the head of a long supper-table, had been crowned by her admirers with
a wreath of laurels,--and as she sat more or less silent, with a rather
weary expression on her face, she looked like the impersonation of
a Daphne, exhausted by the speed of her flight from pursuing Apollo.
Beside her, nestling close against her caressingly, was a little
girl with great black Spanish eyes,--eyes full of an appealing,
half-frightened wistfulness, like those of a hunted animal. Lotys kept
one arm round the child, and every now and again spoke to her some
little caressing word. All the rest of the guests at the supper-board
were men,--and all of them members of the Revolutionary Committee. When
Pasquin Leroy and his friends entered, there was a general clapping of
hands, and the pale countenance of Lotys flushed a delicate rose-red, as
she extended her hand to each.

"You begin your career with us very well!" she said gently, her eyes
resting musingly on Leroy; "I had not expected to see you to-night!"

"Madame, I had never heard you speak," he answered; and as he addressed
her, he pressed her hand with unconscious fervour, while his eloquent
eyes dilated and darkened, as, moved by some complex emotion, she
quickly withdrew her slender fingers from his clasp. "And I felt I
should never know you truly as you are, till I saw you face the people.
Now----"

He paused. She looked at him wonderingly, and her heart began to beat
with a strange quick thrill. It is not always easy to see the outlines
of a soul's development, or the inchoate formation of a great love,--and
though everything in a certain sense moved her and appealed to her that
was outside herself, it was difficult to her to believe or to admit that
she, in her own person, might be the cause of an entirely new set of
thoughts and emotions in the mind of one man. Seeing he was silent, she
repeated softly and with a half smile.

"'Now'?"

"Now," continued Leroy quickly, and in a half-whisper; "I do know you
partly,--but I must know you more! You will give me the chance to do
that?"

His look said more than his words, and her face grew paler than before.
She turned from him to the child at her side--

"Pequita, are you very tired?"

"No!" was the reply, given brightly, and with an upward glance of the
dark eyes.

"That is right! Pasquin Leroy my friend! this is Pequita,--the child we
told you of the other night, the only daughter of Sholto. She will dance
for us presently, will you not, my little one?"

"Yes, indeed!" and the young face lighted up swiftly at the suggestion;
while Leroy, taking the seat indicated to him at the supper-table,
experienced a tumult of extraordinary sensations,--the chief one of
which was, that he felt himself to have been 'snubbed,' very quietly but
effectually, by a woman who had succeeded, though he knew not how, in
suddenly awakening in him a violent fever of excitement, to which he was
at present unable to give a name. Rallying himself, however, he glanced
up and down the board smilingly, lifting his glass to salute Sergius
Thord, who responded from his place at the bottom of the table,--and
very soon he regained his usual placidity, for he had enormous strength
of will, and kept an almost despotic tyranny over his feelings. His
companions, Max Graub and Axel Regor, were separated from him, and from
each other, at different sides of the table, and Paul Zouche the poet,
was almost immediately opposite to him. He was glad to see that he was
next but one to Lotys--the man between them being a desperado-looking
fellow with a fierce moustache, and exceedingly gentle eyes,--who, as
he afterwards discovered, was one of the greatest violinists in the
world,--the favourite of kings and Courts,--and yet for all that, a
prominent member of the Revolutionary Committee. The supper, which was
of a simple, almost frugal character, was soon served, and the landlord,
in setting the first plate before Lotys, laid beside it a knot of deep
crimson roses, as an offering of homage and obedience from himself. She
thanked him with a smile and glance, and taking up the flowers, fastened
them at her breast. Conversation now became animated and general; and
one of the men present, a delicate-looking young fellow, with a head
resembling somewhat that of Keats, started a discussion by saying
suddenly--

"Jost has sold out all his shares in that new mine that was started
the other day. It looks as if he did not think, after all his newspaper
puffs, that the thing was going to work."

"If Jost has sold, Pérousse will," said his neighbour; "The two are
concerned together in the floating of the whole business."

"And yet another piece of news!" put in Paul Zouche suddenly; "For if we
talk of stocks and shares, we talk of money! What think you, my friends!
I, Paul Zouche, have been offered payment for my poems! This very
afternoon! Imagine! Will not the spheres fall? A poet to be paid for
his poems is as though one should offer the Creator a pecuniary
consideration for creating the flowers!"

His face was flushed, and his eyes deliriously bright.

"Listen, my Sergius!" he said; "Wonders never cease in this world; but
this is the most wonderful of all wonders! Out of the merest mischief
and monkeyish malice, the other day I sent my latest book of poems to
the King--"

"Shame! shame!" interrupted a dozen voices. "Against the rules, Paul!
You have broken the bond!"

Paul Zouche laughed loudly.

"How you yell, my baboons!" he cried; "How you screech about the rules
of your lair! Wait till you hear! You surely do not suppose I sent the
book out of any humility or loyalty, or desire for notice, do you? I
sent it out of pure hate and scorn, to show him as a fool-Majesty, that
there was something he could not do--something that should last when
_he_ was forgotten!--a few burning lines that should, like vitriol,
eat into his Throne and outlast it! I sent it some days ago, and got an
acknowledgment from the flunkey who writes Majesty's letters. But this
afternoon I received a much more important document,--a letter from
Eugène Silvano, secretary to our very honourable and trustworthy
Premier! He informs me in set terms, that his Majesty the King has been
pleased to appreciate my work as a poet, to the extent of offering me a
hundred golden pieces a year for the term of my natural life! Ha-ha! A
hundred golden pieces a year! And thus they would fasten this wild bird
of Revolutionary song to a Royal cage, for a bit of sugar! A hundred
golden pieces a year! It means food and lodging--warm blankets to sleep
in--but it means something else,--loss of independence!"

"Then you will not accept it?" said Pasquin Leroy, looking at him with
interest over the rim of the glass from which he was just sipping his
wine.

"Accept it! I have already refused it! By swift return of post!"

Shouts of "Bravo! bravo!" echoed around him on all sides; men sprang up
and shook hands with him and patted him on the back, and even over the
dark face of Sergius Thord there passed a bright illumining smile.

"Zouche, with all thy faults, thou art a brave man!" said the young man
with the Keats-like head, who was in reality confidential clerk to one
of the largest stockbrokers in the metropolis; "A thousand times better
to starve, than to accept Royal alms!"

"To your health, Zouche!" said Lotys, leaning forward, glass in hand.
"Your refusal of the King's offered bounty is a greater tragedy than any
you have ever tried to write!"

"Hear her!" cried Zouche, exultant; "She knows exactly how to put it!
For look you, there are the true elements of tragedy in a worn coat
and scant food, while the thoughts that help nations to live or die are
burning in one's brain! Then comes a King with a handful of gold--and
gold would be useful--it always is! But--by Heaven! to pay a poet for
his poems is, as I said before, as if one were to meet the Deity on His
way through space, scattering planets and solar systems at a touch, and
then to say--'Well done, God! We shall remunerate You for your creative
power as long as You shall last--so much per aeon!'"

Leroy laughed.

"You wild soul!" he said; "Would you starve then, rather than accept a
king's bounty?"

"I would!" answered Paul. "Look you, my brave Pasquin! Read back over
all the centuries, and see the way in which these puppets we call kings
have rewarded the greatest thinkers of their times! Is it anywhere
recorded that the antique virgin, Elizabeth of England, ever did
anything for Shakespeare? True--he might have been 'graciously
permitted' to act one of his sublime tragedies before her--by
Heaven!--she was only fit to be his scrubbing woman, by intellectual
comparison! Kings and Queens have always trembled in their shoes, and on
their thrones, before the might of the pen!--and it is natural therefore
that they should ignore it as much as conveniently possible. A general,
whose military tactics succeed in killing a hundred thousand innocent
men receives a peerage and a hundred thousand a year,--a speculator who
snatches territory and turns it into stock-jobbing material, is called
an 'Empire Builder'; but the man whose Thought destroys or moulds a new
World, and raises up a new Civilization, is considered beneath a crowned
Majesty's consideration! 'Beneath,' by Heaven!--I, Paul Zouche, may yet
mount behind Majesty's chair, and with a single rhyme send his crown
spinning into space! Meanwhile, I have flung back his hundred golden
pieces, with as much force in the edge of my pen as there would be in
my hand if _you_ were his Majesty sitting there, and I flung them across
the table now!"

Again Leroy laughed. His eyes flashed, but there was a certain regret
and wistfulness in them.

"You approve, of course?" he said, turning to Sergius Thord.

Sergius looked for a moment at Zouche with an infinitely grave and
kindly compassion.

"I think Paul has acted bravely;" he then said slowly; "He has been true
to the principles of our Order. And under the circumstances, it must
have been difficult for him to refuse what would have been a certain
competence,--"

"Not difficult, Sergius!" exclaimed Zouche, "But purely triumphant!"

Thord smiled,--then went on--"You see, my friend," and he addressed
himself now to Leroy; "Kings have scorned the power of the pen too
long! Those who possess that power are now taking vengeance for neglect.
Thousands of pens all over the world to-day are digging the grave of
Royalty, and building up the throne of Democracy. Who is to blame?
Royalty itself is to blame, for deliberately passing over the claims
of art and intellect, and giving preference to the claims of money. The
moneyed man is ever the friend of Majesty,--but the brilliant man
of letters is left out in the cold. Yet it is the man of letters who
chronicles the age, and who will do so, we may be sure, according to his
own experience. As the King treats the essayist, the romancist or the
historian, so will these recording scribes treat the King!"

"It is possible, though," suggested Leroy, "that the King meant well in
his offer to our friend Zouche?"

"Quite possible!" agreed Thord; "Only his offer of one hundred gold
pieces a year to a man of intellect, is out of all proportion to the
salary he pays his cook!"

A slight flush reddened Leroy's bronzed cheek. Thord observed him
attentively, and saw that his soul was absorbed by some deep-seated
intellectual irritation. He began to feel strangely drawn towards him;
his eyes questioned the secret which he appeared to hold in his mind,
but the quiet composure of the man's handsome face baffled enquiry.
Meanwhile around the table the conversation grew louder and less
restrained. The young stockbroker's clerk was holding forth eloquently
concerning the many occasions on which he had seen Carl Pérousse at
his employer's office, carefully going into the closest questions
of financial losses or gains likely to result from certain political
moves,--and he remembered one day in particular, when, after purchasing
a hundred thousand shares in a certain company, Pérousse had turned
suddenly round on his broker with the cool remark--"If ever you breathe
a whisper about this transaction, I will shoot you dead!"

Whereat the broker had replied that it was not his custom to give away
his clients' business, and that threats were unworthy of a statesman.
Then Pérousse had become as friendly as he had been before menacing;
and the two had gone out of the office and lunched together. And the
confidential clerk thus chattering his news, declared that his employer
was now evidently uneasy; and that from that uneasiness he augured a
sudden fluctuation or fall in what had lately seemed the most valuable
stock in the market.

"And you? Your news, Valdor," cried one or two eager voices, while
several heads leaned forward in the direction of the fiercely-moustached
man who sat next to Lotys. "Where have you been with your fiddle? Do you
arrive among us to-night infected by the pay, or the purple of Royalty?"

Louis Valdor, by birth a Norseman, and by sympathies a cosmopolitan,
looked up with a satiric smile in his dark eyes.

"There is no purple left to infect a man with, in the modern slum of
Royalty!" he said; "Tobacco-smoke, not incense, perfumes the palaces of
the great nowadays--and card-playing is more appreciated than music! Yet
I and my fiddle have made many long journeys lately,--and we have sent
our messages of Heaven thrilling through the callous horrors of Hell!
A few nights since, I played at the Russian Court--before the beautiful
Empress--cold as a stone--with her great diamonds flashing on her
unhappy breast,--before the Emperor, whose furtive eyes gazed unseeingly
before him, as though black Fate hovered in the air--before women, whose
lives are steeped in the lowest intrigue--before men, whose faces are
as bearded masks, covering the wolf's snarl,--yes!--I played before
these,--played with all the chords of my heart vibrating to the violin,
till at last a human sigh quivered from the lips of the statuesque
Empress,--till a frown crossed the brooding brow of her spouse--till the
intriguing women shook off the spell with a laugh, and the men did the
same with an oath--and I was satisfied! I received neither 'pay,' nor
jewel of recognition,--I had played 'for the honour' of appearing before
their Majesties!--but my bow was a wand to wake the little poisoned asp
of despair that stings its way into the heart under every Royal mantle
of ermine, and that sufficed me!"

"Sometimes," said Leroy, turning towards him; "I pity kings!"

"I' faith, so do I!" returned Valdor. "But only sometimes! And if you
had seen as much of them as I have, the 'sometimes' would be rare!"

"Yet you play before them?" put in Max Graub.

"Because I must do so to satisfy the impresarios who advertise me to the
public," said Valdor. "Alas!--why will the public be so foolish as to
wish their favourite artist to play before kings and queens? Seldom,
if ever, do these Royal people understand music,--still less do they
understand the musician! Believe me, I have been treated as the veriest
scullion by these jacks-in-office; and that I still permit myself
to play before them is a duty I owe to this Brotherhood,--because it
deepens and sustains my bond with you all. There is no king on the
face of the earth who has dignity and nobleness of character enough to
command my respect,--much less my reverence! I take nothing from kings,
remember!--they dare not offer me money--they dare not insult me with
a jewelled pin, such as they would give to a station-master who sees a
Royal train off. Only the other day, when I was summoned to play before
a certain Majesty, a lord-in-waiting addressed me when I arrived with
the insolent words--'You are late, Monsieur Valdor!--You have kept the
King waiting!' I replied--'Is that so? I regret it! But having kept his
Majesty waiting, I will no longer detain him; au revoir!' And I returned
straightway to the carriage in which I had come. Majesty did without his
music that evening, owing to the insolence of his flunkey-man! Whether I
ever play before him again or not, is absolutely immaterial to me!"

"Tell me," said Pasquin Leroy, pushing the flask of wine over to him
as he spoke; "What is it that makes kings so unloved? I hate them
myself!--but let us analyse the reasons why."

"Discuss--discuss!" cried Paul Zouche; "Why are kings hated? Let Thord
answer first!"

"Yes--yes! Let Thord answer first!" was echoed a dozen times.

Thord, thus appealed to, looked up. His melancholy deep eyes were
sombre, yet full of fire,--lonely eyes they were, yearning for love.

"Why are kings hated?" he repeated; "Because today they are the effete
representatives of an effete system. I can quite imagine that if, as in
olden times, kings had maintained a position of personal bravery, and
personal influence on their subjects, they would have been as much
beloved as they are now despised. But what we have to see and to
recognise is this: in one land we hear of a sovereign who speculates
hand-and-glove with low-born Jew contractors and tradesmen,--another
monarch makes no secret of his desire to profit financially out of a
gambling hell started in his dominions,--another makes his domestic
affairs the subject of newspaper comment,--another is always
apostrophising the Almighty in public;--another is insane or
stupid,--and so on through the whole gamut. Is it not natural that an
intelligent People should resent the fact that their visibly governing
head is a gambler, or a voluptuary? Myself, I think the growing
unpopularity of kings is the result of their incapability for kingship."

"Now let me speak!" cried Paul Zouche excitedly; "There is another root
to the matter,--a root like that of a certain tropical orchid, which
according to superstition, is shaped like a man, and utters a
shriek when it is pulled out of the earth! Pull out this screaming
mystery,--hatred of kings! In the first place it is because they are
hateful in themselves,--because they have been brought up and educated
to take an immeasurable and all-absorbing interest in their own
identity, rather than in the lives, hopes and aims of their subjects. In
the second--as soon as they occupy thrones, they become overbearing
to their best friends. It is a well-known fact that the more loyal and
faithful you are to a king, the more completely is he neglectful of
you! 'Put not your trust in princes,' sang old David. He knew how
untrustworthy they were, being a king himself, and a pious one to boot!
Thirdly and lastly,--they only give their own personal attention to
their concubines, and leave all their honest and respectable subjects to
be dealt with by servants and secretaries. Our King, for example, never
smiles so graciously as on Madame Vantine, the wife of Vantine the
wine-grower;--and he buys Vantine's wines as well as his wife, which
brings in a double profit to the firm!"

Leroy looked up.

"Are you sure of that?"

Zouche met his eyes with a stare and a laugh.

"Sure? Of course I am sure! By my faith, your resemblance to his
Majesty is somewhat striking to-night, my bold Leroy! The same straight
brows--the same inscrutable, woman-conquering smile! I studied his
portrait after the offer of the hundred golden pieces--and I swear you
might be his twin brother!"

"I told you so!" replied Leroy imperturbably;--"It is a hateful
resemblance! I wish I could rid myself of it. Still after all, there
is something unique in being countenanced like a King, and minded as a
Socialist!"

"True!" put in Thord gently;--"I am satisfied, Pasquin Leroy, that you
are an honest comrade!"

Leroy met his eyes with a grave smile, and touched his glass by way of
acknowledgement.

"You do not ask me," he said then, "whether I have been able to serve
your Cause in any way since last we met?"

"This is not our regular meeting," said Johan Zegota; "We ask no
questions till the general monthly assembly."

"I see!" And Leroy looked whimsically meditative--"Still, as we are all
friends and brothers here, there is no harm in conveying to you the fact
that I have so far moved, in the appointed way, that Carl Pérousse has
ordered the discovery and arrest of one Pasquin Leroy, supposed to be a
spy on the military defences of the city!"

Lotys gave a little cry.

"Not possible! So soon!"

"Quite possible, Madame," said Leroy inclining his head towards her
deferentially. "I have lost no time in doing my duty!" And his eyes
flashed upon her with a passionate, half-eager questioning. "I must
carry out my Chief's commands!"

"But you are in danger, then?" said Sergius Thord, bending an anxious
look of enquiry upon him.

"Not more so than you, or any of my comrades are," replied Leroy; "I
have commenced my campaign--and I have no doubt you will hear some
results of it ere long!"

He spoke so quietly and firmly, yet with such an air of assurance and
authority, that something of an electric thrill passed through the
entire company, and all eyes were fixed on him in mingled admiration and
wonderment.

"Of the 'Corruption of the State,' concerning which our fair teacher
has spoken to-night," he continued, with another quick glance at
Lotys--"there can be no manner of doubt. But we should, I think, say the
'Corruption of the Ministry' rather than of the State. It is not because
a few stock-jobbers rule the Press and the Cabinet, that the State is
necessarily corrupt. Remove the corruptors,--sweep the dirt from the
house--and the State will be clean."

"It will require a very long broom!" said Paul Zouche. "Take David Jost,
for example,--he is the fat Jew-spider of several newspaper webs,--and
to sweep him out is not so easy. His printed sheets are read by the
million; and the million are deluded into believing him a reliable
authority!"

"Nothing so easy as to prove him unreliable," said Leroy composedly;
"And then----"

"Then the million will continue to read his journals out of
sheer curiosity, to see how long a liar can go on lying!" said
Zouche;--"Besides a Jew can turn his coat a dozen times a day; he has
inherited Joseph's 'coat of many colours' to suit many opinions. At
present Jost supports Pérousse, and calls him the greatest statesman
living; but if Pérousse were once proved a fraud, Jost would pen a
sublimely-conscientious leading article, beginning in this strain;--'
We are now at liberty to confess that we always had our doubts of M.
Pérousse!'"

A murmur of angry laughter went round the board.

"There was an article this evening in one of Jost's off-shoot journals,"
went on Zouche, "which must have been paid for at a considerable cost.
It chanted the praises of one Monsignor Del Fortis,--who, it appears,
preached a sermon on 'National Education' the other day, and told all
the sleepy, yawning people how necessary it was to have Roman Catholic
schools in every town and village, in order that souls might be saved.
The article ended by saying--'We hear on good authority that his Majesty
the King has been pleased to grant a considerable portion of certain
Crown lands to the Jesuit Order, for the necessary building of a
monastery and schools'----"

"That is a lie!" broke in Pasquin Leroy, with sudden vehemence. "The
King is in many respects a scoundrel, but he does not go back on his
word!"

Axel Regor looked fixedly across at him, with a warning flash in the
light of his cold languid eyes.

"But how do you know that the King has given his word?"

"It was in the paper," said Leroy, more guardedly; "I was reading about
it, as you know, on the very night I encountered Thord."

"Ah! But you must recollect, my friend, that a statement in the papers
is never true nowadays!" said Max Graub, with a laugh; "Whenever I read
anything in the newspaper, unless it is an official telegram, I know it
is a lie; and even official telegrams have been known to emanate from
unofficial sources!"

By this time supper was nearly over, and the landlord, clearing the
remains of the heavier fare, set fruit and wine on the board. Sergius
Thord filled his glass, and made a sign to his companions to do the
same. Then he stood up.

"To Lotys!" he said, his fine eyes darkening with the passion of his
thought. "To Lotys, who inspires our best work, and helps us to retain
our noblest ideals!"

All present sprang to their feet.

"To Lotys!"

Pasquin Leroy fixed a straight glance on the subject of the toast,
sitting quietly at the head of the table.

"To Lotys!" he repeated; "And may she always be as merciful as she is
strong!"

She lifted her dark-blue slumbrous eyes, and met his keen scrutinizing
look. A very slight tremulous smile flickered across her lips. She
inclined her head gently, and in the same mute fashion thanked them all.

"Play to us, Valdor!" she then said; "And so make answer for me to our
friends' good wishes!"

Valdor dived under the table, and brought up his violin case, which he
unlocked with jealous tenderness, lifting his instrument as carefully as
though it were a sleeping child whom he feared to wake. Drawing the bow
across the strings, he invoked a sweet plaintive sound, like the first
sigh of the wind among the trees; then, without further preliminary
wandered off into a strange labyrinth of melody, wherein it seemed that
the voices of women and angels clamoured one against the other,--the
appeals of earth with the refusals of Heaven,--the loneliness of life
with the fulness of immortality,--so, rising, falling, sobbing, praying,
alternately, the music expostulated with humanity in its throbbing
chords, till it seemed as if some Divine interposition could alone
end the heart-searching argument. Every man sat motionless and mute,
listening; Paul Zouche, with his head thrown back and eyes closed as in
a dream,--Johan Zegota's hard, plain and careworn face growing softer
and quieter in its expression,--while Sergius Thord, leaning on one
elbow, covered his brow with one hand to shade the lines of sorrow
there.

When Valdor ceased playing, there was a burst of applause.

"You play before kings,--kings should be proud to hear you!" said Leroy.

"Ah! So they should," responded Valdor promptly; "Only it happens that
they are not! They treat me merely as a _laquais de place_,--just as
they would treat Zouche, had he accepted his Sovereign's offer. But
this I will admit,--that mediocre musicians always get on very well with
Royal persons! I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a
common little American woman's abominable singing, as though she were
a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur
pianist, whose fingers rattled on the keyboard like bones on a tom-tom.
But then the common little American woman invited his Majesty's 'chères
amies' to her house; and the amateur pianist was content to lose money
to him at cards! Wheels within wheels, my friend! In a lesser degree
the stock-jobber who sets a little extra cash rolling on the Exchange is
called an 'Empire Builder.' It is a curious world! But kings were
never known to be 'proud' of any really 'great' men in either art or
literature; on the contrary, they were always afraid of them, and always
will be! Among musicians, the only one who ever got decently honoured
by a monarch was Richard Wagner,--and the world swears that _his_ Royal
patron was mad!"

Paul Zouche opened his eyes, filled his glass afresh, and tossed down
the liquor it contained at a gulp.

"Before we have any more music," he said, "and before the little Pequita
gives us the dance which she has promised,--not to us, but to Lotys--we
ought to have prayers!"

A loud laugh answered this strange proposition.

"I say we ought to have prayers!" repeated Zouche with semi-solemn
earnestness,--"You talk of news,--news in telegram,--news in
brief,--official scratchings for the day and hour,--and do you take no
thought for the fact that his Holiness the Pope is ill--perhaps dying?"

He stared wildly round upon them all; and a tolerant smile passed over
the face of the company.

"Well, if that be so, Paul," said a man next to him, "it is not to be
wondered at. The Pope has arrived at a great age!"

"No age at all!--no age at all!" declared Zouche. "A saint of God
should live longer than a pauper! What of the good old lady admitted to
hospital the other day whose birth certificate proved her beyond doubt
to be one hundred and twenty-one years old? The dear creature had not
married;--nor has his Holiness the Pope,--the real cause of death is
in neither of them! Why should he not live as long as his aged sister,
possessing, as he does the keys of Heaven? He need not unlock the little
golden door, even for himself, unless he likes. That is true orthodoxy!
Pasquin Leroy, you bold imitation of a king, more wine!"

Leroy filled the glass he held out to him. The glances of the company
told him Zouche was 'on,' and that it was no good trying to stem the
flow of his ideas, or check the inconsequential nature of his speech.
Lotys had moved her chair a little back from the table, and with both
arms encircling the child, Pequita, was talking to her in low and tender
tones.

"Brethren, let us pray!" cried Zouche; "For all we know, while we sit
here carousing and drinking to the health of our incomparable Lotys, the
soul of St. Peter's successor may be careering through Sphere-Forests,
and over Planet-Oceans, up to its own specially built and particularly
furnished Heaven! There is only one Heaven, as we all know,--and the
space is limited, as it only holds the followers of St. Peter, the good
disciple who denied Christ!"

"That is an exploded creed, Zouche," said Thord quietly; "No man of
any sense or reason believes such childish nonsense nowadays! The most
casual student of astronomy knows better."

"Astronomy! Fie, for shame!" And Zouche gave a mock-solemn shake of the
head; "A wicked science! A great heresy! What are God's Facts to the
Church Fallacies? Science proves that there are millions and millions
of solar systems,--millions and millions of worlds, no doubt
inhabited;--yet the Church teaches that there is only one Heaven,
specially reserved for good Roman Catholics; and that St. Peter and
his successors keep the keys of it. God,--the Deity--the Creator,--the
Supreme Being, has evidently nothing at all to do with it. In fact,
He is probably outside it! And of a surety Christ, with His ideas of
honesty and equality, could never possibly get into it!"

"There you are right!" said Valdor; "Your words remind me of a
conversation I overheard once between a great writer of books and a
certain Prince of the blood Royal. 'Life is a difficult problem!' said
the Prince, smoking a fat cigar. 'To the student, it is, Sir,' replied
the author; 'But to the sensualist, it is no more than the mud-stye
of the swine,--he noses the refuse and is happy! He has no need of the
Higher life, and plainly the Higher life has no need of him. Of course,'
he added with covert satire, 'your Highness believes in a Higher life?'
'Of course, of course!' responded the Royal creature, unconscious of any
veiled sarcasm; 'We must be Christians before anything!' And that same
evening this hypocritical Highness 'rooked' a foolish young fellow of
over one thousand English pounds!"

"Perfectly natural!" said Zouche. "The fashionable estimate of
Christianity is to go to church o' Sundays, and say 'I believe in God,'
and to cheat at cards on all the other days of the week, as active
testimony to a stronger faith in the devil!"

"And with it all, Zouche," said Lotys suddenly; "There is more good in
humanity than is apparent."

"And more bad, beloved Lotys," returned Paul. "Tout le deux se disent!
But let us think of the Holy Father!--he who, after long years of
patient and sublime credulity, is now, for all we know, bracing himself
to take the inevitable plunge into the dark waters of Eternity! Poor
frail old man! Who would not pity him! His earthly home has been so
small and cosy and restricted,--he has been taken such tender care
of--the faithful have fallen at his feet in such adoring thousands,--and
now--away from all this warmth and light and incense, and colour of
pictures and stained-glass windows, and white statuary and purple
velvets, and golden-fringed palanquins,--now--out into the cold he
must go!--out into the darkness and mystery and silence!--where all the
former generations of the world, immense and endless, and all the old
religions, are huddled away in the mist of the mouldered past!--out into
the thick blackness, where maybe the fiery heads of Bel and the
Dragon may lift themselves upward and leer at him!--or he may meet the
frightful menace of some monstrous Mexican deity, once worshipped with
the rites of blood!--out--out into the unknown, unimaginable Amazement
must the poor naked Soul go shuddering on the blast of death, to face he
truly knows not what!--but possibly he has such a pitiful blind trust
in good, that he may be re-transformed into some pleasant living
consciousness that shall be more agreeable even than that of Pope of
Rome! 'Mourir c'est rien,--mais souffrir!' That is the hard part of it!
Let us all pray for the Pope, my friends!--he is an old man!"

"When you are silent, Zouche," said Thord with a half smile; "We may
perhaps meditate upon him in our thoughts,--but not while you talk thus
volubly! You take up time--and Pequita is getting tired."

"Yes," said Lotys; "Pequita and I will go home, and there will be no
dancing to-night."

"No, Lotys! You will not be so cruel!" said Zouche, pushing his grey
hair back from his brows, while his wild eyes glittered under the
tangle, like the eyes of a beast in its lair; "Think for a moment! I do
not come here and bore you with my poems, though I might very well do
so! Some of them are worth hearing, I assure you;--even the King--curse
him!--has condescended to think so, or else why should he offer me pay
for them? Kings are not so ready to part with money, even when it is
Government money! In England once a Premier named Gladstone, gave two
hundred and fifty pounds a year pension to the French Prince, Lucien
Buonaparte, 'for his researches into Celtic literature'! Bah! There were
many worthier native-born men who had worked harder on the same subject,
to choose from,--without giving good English money to a Frenchman! There
is a case of your Order and Justice, Lotys! You spoke to-night of these
two impossible things. Why will you touch on such subjects? You know
there is no Order and no Justice anywhere! The Universe is a chance
whirl of gas and atoms; though where the two mischiefs come from nobody
knows! And why the devil we should be made the prey of gas and atoms is
a mystery which no Church can solve!"

As he said this, there was a slight movement of every head towards
Lotys, and enquiring eyes looked suggestively at her. She saw the look,
and responded to it.

"You are wrong, Zouche!--I have always told you you are wrong," she said
emphatically, "It is in your own disordered thoughts that you see no
justice and no order,--but Order there is, and Justice there is,--and
Compensation for all that seems to go wrong. There is an Intelligence at
the core of Creation! It is not for us to measure that Intelligence,
or to set any limits to it. Our duty is to recognize it, and to set
ourselves as much as possible in harmony with it. Do you never, in sane
moments, study the progress of humanity? Do you not see that while the
brute creation remains stationary, (some specimens of it even becoming
extinct), man goes step by step to higher results? This is, or should
be, sufficient proof that death is not the end for us. This world is
only one link in our chain of intended experience. I think it depends on
ourselves as to what we make of it. Thought is a great power by which we
mould ourselves and others; and we have no right to subvert that power
to base uses, or to poison it by distrust of good, or disbelief in the
Supreme Guidance. You would be a thousand times better as a man, Zouche,
and far greater as a poet, if you could believe in God!"

She spoke with eloquence and affectionate earnestness, and among all the
men there was a moment's silence.

"Well, _you_ believe in Him;" said Zouche at last, "and I will catch
hold of your angel's robe as you pass into His Presence and say to
Him;--' Here comes poor Zouche, who wrote of beautiful things among ugly
surroundings, and who, in order to be true to his friends, chose poverty
rather than the gold of a king!'"

Lotys smiled, very sweetly and indulgently.

"Such a plea would stand you in good stead, Zouche! To be always true
to one's friends, and to persistently believe in beauty, is a very long
step towards Heaven!"

"I did not say I _believed_ in beauty," said Zouche suddenly and
obstinately;--"I dream it--I think it--but I do not see it! To me the
world is one Horror--nothing but a Grave into which we all must fall!
The fairest face has a hideous skull behind it,--the dazzling blue of
the sea covers devouring monsters in its depths--the green fields, the
lovely woodlands, are full of vile worms and noxious beetles,--and
space itself swarms with thick-strewn worlds,--flaming comets,--blazing
nebulae,--among which our earth is but a gnat's wing in a huge flame!
Horrible!--horrible!" And he spoke with a kind of vehement fury. "Let us
not think of it! Why should we insist on Truth? Let us have lies!--dear,
sweet lies and fond delusions! Let us believe that men are all honest,
and women all loving!--that there are virgins and saints and angels,
as well as bishops and curates, looking after us in this wild world of
terror,--oh, yes!--let us believe!--better the Pope's little private
snuggery of a Heaven, than the crushing truth which says 'Our God is a
consuming fire'! Knowledge deepens sorrow,--truth kills!--we must--we
must have a little love, and a few lies to lean upon!"

His voice faltered,--and a sudden ashy paleness overspread his
features,--his head fell back helplessly, and he seemed transfixed and
insensible. Leroy and one or two of the others rose in alarm, thinking
he had swooned, but Sergius Thord warned them back by a sign. The little
Pequita, slipping from the arms of Lotys, went softly up to him.

"Paul! Dear Paul!" she said in her soft childish tones.

Zouche stirred, and stretching out one hand, groped with it blindly in
the air. Pequita took it, warming it between her own little palms.

"Paul!" she said; "Do wake up! You have been asleep such a long time!"

He opened his eyes. The grey pallor passed from his face; he lifted his
head and smiled.

"So! There you are, Pequita!" he said gently; "Dear little one! So brave
and cheerful in your hard life!"

He lifted her small brown hand, and kissed it. The feverish tension
of his brain relaxed,--and two large tears welled up in his eyes, and
rolled down his cheeks. "Poor little girl!" he murmured weakly; "Poor
little hard-working girl!"

All the men sat silent, watching the gradual softening of Zouche's
drunken delirium by the mere gentle caress of the child; and Pasquin
Leroy was conscious of a curious tightening of the muscles of his
throat, and a straining compassion at his heart, which was more like
acute sympathy with the griefs and sins of humanity than any emotion he
had ever known. He saw that the thoughtful, pitiful eyes of Lotys were
full of tears, and he longed, in quite a foolish, almost boyish fashion,
to take her in his arms and by a whispered word of tenderness, persuade
those tears away. Yet he was a man of the world, and had seen and known
enough. But had he known them humanly? Or only from the usual standpoint
of masculine egotism? As he thought this, a strain of sweet and solemn
music stole through the room,--Louis Valdor had risen to his feet, and
holding the violin tenderly against his heart, was coaxing out of its
wooden cavity a plaintive request for sympathy and attention. Such
delicious music thrilled upon the dead silence as might have fitted
Shelley's exquisite lines.

   "There the voluptuous nightingales,
      Are awake through all the broad noon-day,
  When one with bliss or sadness fails,
      And through the windless ivy-boughs
  Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
      On its mate's music-panting bosom;
      Another from the swinging blossom,
  Watching to catch the languid close
      Of the last strain; then lifts on high
      The wings of the weak melody,
  Till some new strain of feeling bear
      The song, and all the woods are mute;
  When there is heard through the dim air
  The rush of wings, and rising there
      Like many a lake-surrounded flute
  Sounds overflow the listener's brain,
  So sweet that joy is almost pain."

"Thank God for music!" said Sergius Thord, as Valdor laid aside his bow;
"It exorcises the evil spirit from every modern Saul!"

"Sometimes!" responded Valdor; "But I have known cases where the evil
spirit has been roused by music instead of suppressed. Art, like virtue,
has two sides!"

Zouche was still holding Pequita's hand. He looked ill and exhausted,
like a man who had passed through a violent paroxysm of fever.

"You are a good child, Pequita!" he was saying softly; "Try to be always
so!--it is difficult--but it is easier to a woman than to a man! Women
have more of good in them than men!"

"How about the dance?" suggested Thord; "The hour is late,--close on
midnight--and Lotys must be tired."

"Shall I dance now?" enquired Pequita.

Lotys smiled and nodded. Four or five of the company at once got up, and
helped to push aside the table.

"Will you play for me, Monsieur Valdor?" asked the little girl, still
standing by the side of Zouche.

"Of course, my child! What shall it be? Something to suggest a fairy
hopping over mushrooms in the moonlight?--or Shakespeare's Ariel
swinging on a cobweb from a bunch of may?"

Pequita considered, and for a moment did not reply, while Zouche, still
holding her little brown hand, kissed it again.

"You are very fond of dancing?" asked Pasquin Leroy, looking at her dark
face and big black eyes with increasing interest.

She smiled frankly at him.

"Yes! I would like to dance before the King!"

"Fie, fie, Pequita!" cried Johan Zegota, while murmurs of laughter and
playful cries of 'Shame, Shame' echoed through the room.

"Why not?" said Pequita; "It would do me good, and my father too! Such
poor, sad people come to the theatre where I dance,--they love to see
me, and I love to dance for them--but then--they too would be pleased if
I could dance at the Royal Opera, because they would know I could then
earn enough money to make my father comfortable."

"What a very matter-of-fact statement in favour of kings!" exclaimed Max
Graub;--"Here is a child who does not care a button for a king as king;
but she thinks he would be useful as a figure-head to dance to,--for
idiotic Fashion, grouping itself idiotically around the figure-head,
would want to see her dance also--and then--oh simple conclusion!--she
would be able to support her father! Truly, a king has often been put to
worse uses!"

"I think," said Pasquin Leroy, "I could manage to get you a trial at the
Royal Opera, Pequita! I know the manager."

She looked up with a sudden blaze of light in her eyes, sprang towards
him, dropped on one knee with an exquisite grace, and kissed his hand.

"Oh!--you will be goodness itself!" she cried;--"And I will be
grateful--indeed I will!--so grateful!"

He was startled and amazed at her impulsive action, and taking her
little hand, gently pressed it.

"Poor child!" he said;--"You must not thank me till I succeed. It is
very little to do--but I will do all I can."

"Someone else will be grateful too!" said Lotys in her rich thrilling
voice; and her eyes rested on him with that wonderful magnetic sweetness
which drew his soul out of him as by a spell; while Zouche, only
partially understanding the conversation said slowly:--

"Pequita deserves all the good she can get; more than any of us. We do
nothing but try to support ourselves; and we talk a vast amount about
supporting others,--but Pequita works all the time and says nothing. And
she is a genius--she does not know it, but she is. Give us the Dagger
Dance, Pequita! Then our friend Leroy can judge of you at your best, and
make good report of you."

Pequita looked at Lotys and received a sign of assent. She then nodded
to Valdor.

"You know what to play?"

Valdor nodded in return, and took up his violin. The company drew back
their seats, and sat, or stood aside, from the centre of the room.
Pequita disappeared for a moment, and returned divested of the plain
rusty black frock she had worn, and merely clad in a short scarlet
petticoat, with a low white calico bodice--her dark curls tumbling in
disorder, and grasping in her right hand a brightly polished, unsheathed
dagger. Valdor began to play, and with the first wild chords the
childish figure swayed, circled, and leaped forward like a young Amazon,
the dagger brandished aloft, and gleaming here and there as though it
were a snaky twist of lightning. Very soon Pasquin Leroy found himself
watching the evolutions of the girl dancer with fascinated interest.
Nothing so light, so delicate or so graceful had he ever seen as this
little slight form bending to and fro, now gliding with the grace of a
swan on water--now leaping swiftly as a fawn,--while the attitudes she
threw herself into, sometimes threatening, sometimes defiant, and often
commanding, with the glittering steel weapon held firmly in her tiny
hand, were each and all pictures of youthful pliancy and animation.
As she swung and whirled,--sometimes pirouetting so swiftly that her
scarlet skirt looked like a mere red flower in the wind,--her bright
eyes flashed, her dark hair tangled itself in still richer masses, and
her lips, crimson as the pomegranate, were half parted with her panting
breath.

"Brava! Brava!" shouted the men, becoming more and more excited as their
eyes followed the flash of the dagger she held, now directed towards
them, now shaken aloft, and again waved threateningly from side to side,
or pointed at her own bosom, while her little feet twinkled over
the floor in a maze of intricate and perfectly performed steps;--and
"Brava!" cried Pasquin Leroy, as breathless, but still glowing and
bright with her exertions, she suddenly out of her own impulse, dropped
on one knee before him with the glittering dagger pointed straight at
his heart!

"Would that please the King?" she asked, her pearly teeth gleaming into
a mischievous smile between the red lips.

"If it did not, he would be a worse fool than even I take him for!"
replied Leroy, as she sprang up again, and confronted him. "Here is a
little souvenir from me, child!--and if ever you do dance before his
Majesty, wear it for my sake!"

He took from his pocket a ring, in which was set a fine brilliant of
unusual size and lustre.

She looked at it a moment as he held it out to her.

"Oh, no," she faltered, "I cannot take it--I cannot! Lotys dear, you
know I cannot!"

Lotys, thus appealed to, left her seat and came forward. Taking the ring
from Leroy's hand, she examined it a moment, then gently returned it.

"This is too great a temptation for Pequita, my friend," she said
quietly, but firmly. "In duty bound, she would have to sell it in order
to help her poor father. She could not justly keep it. Let me be the
arbiter in this matter. If you can carry out your suggestion, and obtain
for her an engagement at the Royal Opera, then give it to her, but not
till then! Do you not think I am right?"

She spoke so sweetly and persuasively, that Leroy was profoundly
touched. What he would have liked would have been to give the child a
roll of gold pieces,--but he was playing a strange part, and the time to
act openly was not yet.

"It shall be as you wish, Madame!" he said with courteous deference.
"Pequita, the first time you dance before the King, this shall be
yours!"

He put aside the jewel, and Pequita kissed his hand impulsively,--as
impulsively she kissed the lips of her friend Lotys--and then came the
general dispersal and break-up of the assembly.

"Tell me;" said Sergius Thord, catching Leroy's hand in a close and
friendly grasp ere bidding him farewell; "Are you in very truth in
personal danger on account of serving our Cause?"

"No!" replied Leroy frankly, returning the warm pressure; "And rest
assured that if I were, I would find means to elude it! I have managed
to frighten Carl Pérousse, that is all--and Jost!"

"Jost!" echoed Sergius; "The Colossus of the Press? Surely it would take
more than one man to frighten him!"

Leroy laughed.

"I grant you the Jewish centres of journalism are difficult to shake!
But they all depend on stocks and shares!"

A touch on his arm caused him to turn round,--Paul Zouche confronted
both him and Thord, with a solemn worn face, and lack-lustre eyes.

"Good-night, friends!" he said; "I have not kicked at a king with my
boot, but I have with my brain!--and the effort is exhausting! I am
going home to bed."

"Where is your home?" asked Leroy suddenly.

Zouche looked mysterious.

"In a palace, dear sir! A palace of golden air, peopled with winged
dreams! No money could purchase it;--no 'Empire Builder' could build
it!--it is mine and mine alone! And I pay no taxes!"

"Will you put this to some use for me?" said Leroy, holding out a gold
piece; "Simply as comrade and friend?"

Zouche stared at him.

"You mean it?"

"Of course I mean it! Zouche, believe me, you are going to be the
fashion! You will be able to do _me_ a good turn before long!"

Zouche took the gold piece, and as he took it, pressed the giver's hand.

"You mean well!" he said tremulously; "You know--as Sergius does, that
I am poor,--often starving--often drunk--but you know also that there
is something _here_!"--and he touched his forehead meaningly. "But to be
the 'fashion'! Bah! I do not belong to the Trade-ocracy! Nobody becomes
the 'fashion' nowadays unless they have cheated their neighbours by
short weight and falsified accounts! Good-night! You might be the King
from your looks;--but you have something better than kingship--Heart!
Good-night, Pequita! You danced well! Good-night, Lotys! You spoke well!
Everyone does everything well, except poor Zouche!"

Pequita ran up to him.

"Good-night, dear Paul!"

He stooped and kissed her gently.

"Good-night, little one! If ever you show your twinkling feet at the
Opera, _you_ will be the 'fashion'--and will you remember Paul then?"

"Always--always!" said Pequita tenderly; "Father and Lotys and I will
always love you!"

Zouche gave a short laugh.

"Always love me! Me! Well!--what strange things children will say, not
knowing in the least what they mean!"

He gave a vague salute to the entire company, and walked out of the
tavern with drooping head. Others followed him,--every man in going,
shook hands with Lotys and Sergius Thord,--the lamps were extinguished,
and the landlord standing in the porch of his tavern watched them all
file out, and bade them all a cordial farewell. Pequita's home was with
her father in the house where Sergius Thord dwelt, and Lotys kissing her
tenderly good-night, left her to Thord's care.

"And who will see you home, Lotys?" enquired Thord.

"May I for once have that honour?" asked Pasquin Leroy. His two
companions stared in undisguised amazement, and there was a moment's
silence.

Then Lotys spoke.

"You may!" she said simply.

There was another silence while she put on her hat, and wrapped herself
in her long dark cloak. Then Thord took Pequita by the hand.

"Good-night, Lotys!"

"Good-night, Sergius!"

Leroy turned to his two friends and spoke to them in a low tone.

"Go your ways!" he said peremptorily; "I will join you later!"

Vain were their alarmed looks of remonstrance; and in another moment all
the party had separated, and only Max Graub and Axel Regor remained on
the pavement outside the tavern, disconsolately watching two figures
disappearing in the semi-shadowed moonlight--Pasquin Leroy and
Lotys--walking closely side by side.

"Was there ever such a drama as this?" muttered Graub, "He may lose his
life at any moment!"

"If he does," responded Regor, "It will not be our fault. We do our best
to guard him from the consequence of one folly,--and he straightway runs
into another! There is no help for it; we have sworn to obey him, and we
must keep our oath!"

They passed slowly along the street, too absorbed in their own
uncomfortable reflections for the interchange of many words. By the
rules of the Revolutionary Committee, they were not allowed 'to follow
or track any other member' so they were careful to walk in a reverse
direction to that taken by their late comrades. The great bell of the
Cathedral boomed midnight as they climbed towards the citadel, and the
pale moon peeping whitely through piled-up fleecy clouds, shed a silver
glare upon the quiet sea. And down into the 'slums,' down, and ever
deeper, into the sad and cheerless 'Quarter of the Poor' Pasquin Leroy
walked as though he trod lightly on a path of flowers,--his heart
beating high, and his soul fully awakened within him, thrilled, he knew
not why, to the heart's core by the soft low voice of Lotys,--and glad
that in the glimpses of the moonlight her eyes were occasionally lifted
to his face, with something of a child's trust, if not of a woman's
tenderness.

CHAPTER XXI

AN INVITATION TO COURT

The spring was now advancing into full summer, and some time had passed
since the Socialist party had gathered under their leaders to the voice
of Lotys. Troublous days appeared to be impending for the Senate, and
rumours of War,--war sometimes apparently imminent, and again suddenly
averted,--had from time to time worried the public through the Press.
But what was even more disturbing to the country, was the proposed
infliction of new, heavy and irritating taxes, which had begun to affect
the popular mind to the verge of revolt. Twice since Lotys had spoken
at the People's Assembly Rooms had Sergius Thord addressed huge mass
meetings, which apparently the police had no orders to disperse, and his
power over the multitude was increasing by leaps and bounds. Whenever
he spoke, wherever he worked, the indefatigable Pasquin Leroy was
constantly at his side, and he, in his turn began to be recognized
by the Revolutionary Committee as one of their most energetic
members,--able, resolute, and above all, of an invaluably inscrutable
and self-contained demeanour. His two comrades were not so effectual
in their assistance, and appeared to act merely in obedience to his
instructions. Their attitude, however, suited everyone concerned as
well as, if not better than, if they had been overzealous. Owing to what
Leroy had stated concerning the possibility of his arrest as a spy,
his name was never mentioned in public by one single member of the
Brotherhood; and to the outside Socialist following, he therefore
appeared simply as one of the many who worked under Sergius Thord's
command. Meanwhile, there were not lacking many other subjects for
popular concern and comment; all of which in their turn gave rise to
anxious discussion and vague conjecture. A Cabinet Council had been
held by the Premier, at which, without warning, the King had attended
personally, but the results were not made known to the public. Yet
the general impression was that his Majesty seemed to be perfectly
indifferent to the feelings or the well-being of his subjects; in fact,
as some of them said with dismal shakings of the head, "It was all a
part of the system; kings were not allowed to do anything even for the
benefit of their people." And rising Socialism, ever growing stronger,
and amassing in its ranks all the youthful and ambitious intellects of
the time, agreed and swore that it was time for a Republic. Only by a
complete change of Government could the cruelly-increasing taxation
be put down; and if Government was to be changed, why not the dummy
figure-head of Government as well?

Thus Rumour talked, sometimes in whispers--sometimes in shouts;--but
through it all the life of the Court and fashion went on in the same
way,--the King continued to receive with apparent favour the most
successful and most moneyed men from all parts of the world; the Queen
drove or walked, or rode;--and the only prospective change in the social
routine was the report that the Crown Prince was about to leave the
country for a tour round the world, and that he would start on his
journey in his own yacht about the end of the month. The newspapers made
a great fuss in print over this projected tour; but the actual people
were wholly indifferent to it. They had seen very little of the Crown
Prince,--certainly not enough to give him their affection; and whether
he left the kingdom or stayed in it concerned them not at all. He had
done nothing marked or decisive in his life to show either talent,
originality of character, or resolution; and the many 'puffs' in the
press concerning him, were scarcely read at all by the public, or
if they were, they were not credited. The expression of an ordinary
working-man with regard to his position was entirely typical of the
general popular sentiment;--"If he would only do something to prove he
had a will of his own, and a mind, he would perhaps be able to set the
Throne more firmly on its legs than it is at present."

How thoroughly the young man _had_ proved that he indeed possessed 'a
will of his own,' was not yet disclosed to the outside critics of his
life and conduct. Only the King and Queen, and Professor von Glauben
knew it;--for even Sir Roger de Launay had not been entrusted with the
story of his secret marriage. The Queen had received the news with her
usual characteristic immobility. A faint cold smile had parted her lips
as she listened to the story of her son's romance,--and her reply to the
King's brief explanation was almost as brief:--

"Nearly all the aristocracy marry music-hall women!" she said; "One
should therefore be grateful that a Crown Prince does not go lower in
his matrimonial choice than an innocent little peasant!"

"The marriage is useless, of course," said the King; "It has satisfied
Humphry's exalted notions of honour; but it can never be acknowledged or
admitted."

"Of course not!" she agreed languidly; "It certainly clears up the
mystery of The Islands, which you were so anxious to visit;--and
I suppose the next thing you will do is to marry him again to some
daughter of a Royal house?"

"Most assuredly!"

"As _you_ were married to _me?_" she said, raising her eyes to his
face with that strange deep look which spoke eloquently of some mystery
hidden in her soul.

His cheeks burned with an involuntary flush. He bowed.

"Precisely! As I married you!" he replied.

"The experiment was hardly successful!" she said with her little cold
smile. "I fear you have often regretted it!"

He looked at her, studying her beauty intently,--and the remembrance of
another face, far less fair of feature, but warm and impassioned by the
lovely light of sympathy and tenderness, came between his eyes and hers,
like a heavenly vision.

"Had you loved me," he said slowly, "I might never have known what it
was to need love!"

A slight tremor ran through her veins. There was a strange tone in his
voice,--a soft cadence to which she was unaccustomed,--something that
suggested a new emotion in his life, and a deeper experience.

"I never loved anyone in my life!" she answered calmly--"And now the
days are past for loving. Humphry, however, has made up for my lack of
the tender passion!"

She turned away indifferently, and appeared to dismiss the matter
altogether from her mind. The first time she saw her son, however, after
hearing of his marriage, she looked at him curiously.

"And so your wife is very lovely, Humphry!" she said with a slightly
derisive smile.

He was not startled by the suddenness of her observation nor put out by
it.

"She is the loveliest woman I have ever seen,--not excepting yourself,"
he replied.

"It is a very foolish affair!" she continued composedly; "But
fortunately in our line of life such things are easily arranged;--and
your future will not be spoiled by it. I am glad you are going abroad,
as you will very soon forget!"

The Prince regarded her steadfastly with something of grave wonderment
as well as compassion,--but he made no reply, and with the briefest
excuse left her presence as soon as possible, in order to avoid further
conversation on the subject. She, herself, however, found her mind
curiously perturbed and full of conjectures concerning her son's idyllic
love-story, in which all considerations for her as Queen and mother
seemed omitted,--and where she, as it were, appeared to be shut outside
a lover's paradise, the delights of which she had never experienced.
The King held many private conferences with her on the matter, in which
sometimes Professor von Glauben was permitted to share;--and the
upshot of these numerous discussions resulted in a scheme which was as
astonishing in its climax as it was unexpected. Over and over again it
has been proved to nations as well as to individuals, that the whole
course of events may be changed by the fixed determination of one
resolute mind; but it is not often that the moral force of a mere girl
succeeds in competing with the authority of kings and parliaments. But
so it chanced on this occasion, and in the following manner.

One glorious early morning, the sun having risen without a cloud in the
deep blue of the sky, and the sea being as calm as an inland lake, the
King's yacht was seen to weigh anchor and steam away at her fullest
speed towards The Islands. Little or no preparation had been made
for her short voyage; there was no Royal party on board, and the only
passenger was Professor von Glauben. He sat solitary on deck in a
luxurious chair, smoking his meerschaum pipe, and dubiously considering
the difficult and peculiar situation in which he was placed. He made
no attempt to calculate the possible success or failure of his
mission--'for,' said he very sagely, 'it all depends on a woman, and God
alone knows what a woman will do! Her ways are dark and wonderful, and
altogether beyond the limit of the comprehension of man!'

His journey was undertaken at the King's command; and equally by the
King's command he had been compelled to keep it a secret from Prince
Humphry. He had never been to The Islands since the King's 'surprise
visit' there, and he was of course not aware that Gloria now knew the
real rank and position of her supposed 'sailor' husband. He was at
present charged to break the news to her, and bring her straightway to
the palace, there to confront both the King and Queen, and learn from
them the true state of affairs.

"It is a cruel ordeal," he said, shaking his head sorrowfully; "Yet I
myself am a party to its being tried. For once in my life I have pinned
my faith on the unspoilt soul of an unworldly woman. I wonder what will
come of it? It rests entirely with Gloria herself, and with no one else
in the world!"

As the yacht arrived at its destination and dropped anchor at some
distance from the pier, owing to the shallowness of the tide at that
hour of the day, The Islands presented a fair aspect in the dancing
beams of the summer sunlight. Numbers of fruit trees were bursting into
blossom,--the apple, the cherry, the pink almond and the orange blossom
all waved together and whispered sweetness to one another in the pure
air, and the full-flowering mimosa perfumed every breath of wind.
Fishermen were grouped here and there on the shore, mending or drying
their nets; and in the fields beyond could be perceived many workers
pruning the hedges or guiding the plough. The vision of a perfect
Arcadia was presented to the eye; and so the Professor thought, as
getting into the boat lowered for him, he was rowed from the yacht to
the landing-place, and there dismissed the sailors, warning them that at
the first sound of his whistle they should swiftly come for him again.

"What a pity to spoil her peace of mind--her simplicity of life!" he
thought, as he walked at a slow and reluctant pace towards Ronsard's
cottage; "And I fear we shall have trouble with the old man! I wonder if
his philosophy will stand hard wear and tear!"

The pretty, low timber-raftered house confronted him at the next bend in
the road, and presented a charming aspect of tranquillity. The grass in
front of it was smooth as velvet and emerald-green, and in one of the
flower borders Ronsard himself was digging and planting. He looked up as
he heard the gate open, but did not attempt to interrupt his work;--and
Von Glauben advanced towards him with a considerable sense of anxiety
and insecurity in his mind. Anon he paused in the very act of greeting,
as the old man turned his strong, deeply-furrowed countenance upon him
with a look of fierce indignation and scorn.

"So! You are here!" he said; "Have you come to look upon the evil your
Royal master has worked? Or to make dutiful obeisance to Gloria as
Crown-Princess?"

Von Glauben was altogether taken aback.

"Then--you know--?" he stammered.

"Oh yes, I know!" responded Ronsard sternly and bitterly; "I know
everything! There has been full confession! If the husband of my Gloria
were more prince than man, my knife would have slit his throat! But he
is more man than prince!--and I have let him live--for her sake!"

"Well--that is so far good!" said Von Glauben, wiping the perspiration
from his brow, and heaving a deep sigh of relief; "And as you fully
comprehend the situation, it saves me the trouble of explaining it! You
are a philosopher, Ronsard! Permit me to remind you of that fact! You
know, like myself, that what is done, even if it is done foolishly,
cannot be undone!"

"I know it! Who should know it so well as I!" and Ronsard set a delicate
rose-tree roughly in the hole he had dug for it, and began to fiercely
pile in the earth around it;--"Fate is fate, and there is no gainsaying
it! The law of Compensation will always have its way! Look you,
man!--and listen! I, Réné Ronsard, once killed a king!--and now in my
old age, the only creature I ever loved is tricked by the son of a king!
It is just! So be it!"

He bent his white head over his digging again, and Von Glauben was for
a moment silent, vaguely amazed and stupefied by this sudden declaration
of a past crime.

"You should not say 'tricked,' my friend!" he at last ventured to
remark; "Prince Humphry is an honest lad;--he means to keep his word!"

Ronsard looked up, his eyes gleaming with fury.

"Keep his word? Bah! How can he? Who in this wide realm will give him
the honourable liberty to keep his word? Will he acknowledge Gloria as
his wife before the nation?--she a foundling and a castaway? Will he
make her his future queen? Not he! He will forsake her, and live with
another woman, in sin which the law will sanctify!"

He went on planting the rose-tree, then,--dropping his spade,--tossed up
his head and hands with a wild gesture.

"What, and who is this God who so ordains our destiny!" he exclaimed;
"For surely this is His work,--not mine! Hidden away from all the world
with my life's secret buried in my soul, I, without wife, or children or
friends, or any soul on earth to care whether I lived or died, was sent
an angel comforter;--the child I rescued from the sea! 'Gloria, Gloria
in excelsis Deo!' the choristers sang in the church when I found her! I
thought it true! With her,--in every action, in every thought and
word, I strove,--and have faithfully striven,--to atone for my past
crime;--for I was forced through others to kill that king! When proved
guilty of the deed, I was told by my associates to assume madness,--a
mere matter of acting,--and, being adjudged as insane, I was sent with
other criminals on a convict ship, bound for a certain coast-prison,
where we were all to be kept for life. The ship was wrecked off the
rocks yonder, and it was reported that every soul on board went down,
but I escaped--only I,--for what inscrutable reason God alone knows!
Finding myself saved and free, I devoted my life to hard work, and to
doing all the good I could think of to atone--to atone--always to atone!
Then the child was sent to me; and I thought it was a sign that my
penance was accepted; but no!--no!--the compensating curse falls,--not
on me,--not on me, for if only so, I would welcome it--but on Her!--the
child of my love--the heart of my heart!--on Her!"

He turned away his face, and a hard sob broke from his labouring chest.
Von Glauben laid a gentle, protective hand on his shoulder.

"Ronsard, be a man!" he said in a kind, firm voice; "This is the first
time you have told me your true history--and--I shall respect your
confidence! You have suffered much--equally you have loved much! Doubt
not that you are forgiven much. But why should you assume, or foresee
unhappiness for Gloria? Why talk of a curse where perhaps there is only
an intended blessing? Is she unhappy, that you are thus moved?"

Ronsard furtively dashed away the tears from his eyes.

"She? Gloria unhappy? No,--not yet! The delights of spring and summer
have met in her smile,--her eyes, her movements! It was she herself who
told me all! If he had told me, I would have killed him!"

"Eminently sensible!" said Von Glauben, recovering his usual phlegmatic
calm; "You would have killed the man she loves best in the world. And so
with perfect certainty you would have killed her as well,--and probably
yourself afterwards. A perfect slaughterhouse, like the last scene in
Hamlet, by the so admirable Shakespeare! It is better as it is. Life is
really very pleasant!"

He sniffed the perfumed air,--listened with appreciation to the trilling
of a bird swinging on a bough of apple-blossom above him, and began to
feel quite easy in his mind. Half his mission was done for him, Prince
Humphry having declared himself in his true colours. "I always said,"
mused the Professor, "that he was a very honest young man! And I think
he will be honest to the end." Aloud he asked:

"When did you know the truth?"

"Some days since," replied Ronsard. "He--Gloria's husband--I can as yet
call him by no other name--came suddenly one evening;--the two went out
together as usual, and then--then my child returned alone. She told
me all,--of the disguise he had assumed--and of his real identity--and
I--well! I think I was mad! I know I spoke and acted like a madman!"

"Nay, rather say like a philosopher!" murmured Von Glauben with a
humorous smile; "Remember, my good fellow, that there is no human being
who loses self-control more easily and rapidly than he who proclaims the
advantage of keeping it! And what did Gloria say to you?"

Ronsard looked up at the tranquil skies, and was for a moment silent.
Then he answered.

"Gloria is--just Gloria! There is no woman like her,--there never
will be any woman like her! She said nothing at all while I raged and
swore;--she stood before me white and silent,--grand and calm, like some
great angel. Then when I cursed _him,_--she raised her hand, and like
a queen she said: 'I forbid you to utter one word against him!' I stood
before her mute and foolish. 'I forbid you!' She,--the child I reared
and nurtured--menaced me with her 'command' as though I were her slave
and servant! You see I have lost her!--she is not mine any more--she is
_his_--to be treated as he wills, and made the toy of his pleasure! She
does not know the world, but I know it! I know the misery that is in
store for her! But there is yet time--and I will live to avenge her
wrong!"

"Possibly there will be no wrong to avenge," said Von Glauben
composedly; "But if there is, I have no doubt you would kill another
king!" Ronsard turned pale and shuddered. "It is stupid work, killing
kings," went on the Professor; "It never does any good; and often
increases the evil it was intended to cure. Your studies in philosophy
must have taught you that much at least! As for your losing Gloria,--you
lost her in a sense when you gave her to her husband. It is no use
complaining now, because you find he is not the man you took him for.
The mischief is done. At any rate you are bound to admit that Gloria
has, so far, been perfectly happy; she will be happy still, I truly
believe, for she has the secret of happiness in her own beautiful
nature. And you, Ronsard, must make the best of things, and meet fate
with calmness. To-day, for instance, I am here by the King's command,--I
bear his orders,--and I have come for Gloria. They want her at the
Palace."

Ronsard stepped out of his flower-border, and stood on the greensward
amazed, and indignantly suspicious.

"They want her at the Palace!" he repeated; "Why? What for? To do her
harm? To make her miserable? To insult and threaten her? No, she shall
not go!"

"Look here, my friend," said the Professor with mild patience; "You
have--for a philosopher--a most unpleasant habit of jumping to wrong
conclusions! Please endeavour to compose the tumult in your soul, and
listen to me! The King has sent for Gloria, and I am instructed to take
charge of her, and escort her to the presence of their Majesties. No
insult, no threat, no wrong is intended. I will bring her back again
safe to you immediately the audience is concluded. Be satisfied,
Ronsard! For once 'put your trust in princes,' for her husband will be
there,--and do you think he would suffer her to be insulted or wronged?"

Ronsard's sunken eyes looked wild,--his aged frame trembled violently,
and he gave a hopeless gesture.

"I do not know--I do not know!" he said incoherently; "I am an old man,
and I have always found it a wicked world! But--if you give me your word
that she shall come to no harm, I will trust _you_!"

Silently Von Glauben took his hand and pressed it. Two or three minutes
passed, weighted with unuttered and unutterable thoughts in the minds of
both men; and then, in a somewhat hushed voice, the Professor said:

"Ronsard, I am just now reminded of the tragic story of Rudolf of
Austria, who killed himself through the maddening sorrow of an ill-fated
love! We, in our different lines of life should remember that,--and let
no young innocent heart suffer through our follies--our rages against
fate--our conventions--our more or less idiotic laws of restraint and
hypocrisy. The tragedy of Prince Rudolf and the unhappy Marie Vetsera
whom he worshipped, was caused by the sin and the falsehood of
others,--not by the victims of the cruel catastrophe. Therefore, I say
to you, my friend, be wise in time!--and control the natural stormy
tendency of your passions in this present affair. I assure you, on my
faith and honour as a man, that the King has a kindly heart and a brave
one,--together with a strong sense of justice. He is not truly known to
his people;--they only see him through the pens of press reporters, or
the slavish descriptions of toadies and parasites. Then again, the Crown
Prince is an honourable lad; and from what I know of him, he is not
likely to submit to conventional usages in matters which are close to
his life and heart. Gloria herself is of such an exceptional character
and disposition, that I think she may be safely left to arbitrate her
own destiny----"

"And the Queen?" interrupted Ronsard suddenly;--"She, at any rate, as a
woman, wife and mother, will be gentle?"

"Gentle, she certainly is," said Von Glauben, with a slight sigh; "But
only because she does not consider it worth while to be otherwise! God
has put a stone in the place where her heart should be! However,--she
will have little to say, and still less to do with to-day's business.
You tell me you will trust me; I promise you, you shall not repent your
trust! But I must see Gloria herself. Where is she?"

Ronsard pointed towards the cottage.

"She is in there, studying," he said; "Books of the old time;--books
that few read. She gets them all from Sergius Thord. How would it be,
think you, if he knew?"

The pleasantly rubicund countenance of the Professor grew a shade paler.

"Sergius Thord--Sergius Thord?--H'm--h'm--let me see!--who is he? Ah!
I remember,--he is the Socialist lion, for ever roaring through the
streets and seeking whom he may devour! I daresay he is not without
cleverness!"

"Cleverness!" echoed Ronsard; "That is a tame word! He has genius, and
the people swear by him. Since the proposed new taxation, and other
injustices of the Government, he has gained adherents by many thousands.
You,--whom I once took to be a mere German schoolmaster, a friend of the
young 'sailor' whom my child so innocently wedded,--you whom I now know
to be the King's physician--surely you cannot live on the mainland, and
in the metropolis, without knowing of the power of Sergius Thord?"

"I know something--not much;" replied the Professor guardedly; "But
come, my friend, _I_ have not deceived you! I was in very truth a poor
'German schoolmaster,' once,--before I became a student of medicine
and surgery. And that I am the King's physician, is merely one of
those accidental circumstances which occur in a world of chance.
But schoolmaster as I have been, I doubt if I would set our
'Glory-of-the-Sea' to study books recommended to her by Sergius Thord.
The poetry of Heine is more suitable to her age and sex. Let us break
in upon her meditations." And he walked across the grass with one arm
thrust through that of Ronsard; "For she must prepare herself. We ought
to be gone within an hour."

They passed under the low, rose-covered porch into a wide square room,
with raftered ceiling and deep carved oak ingle nook,--and here at the
table, with a quarto volume opened out before her, sat Gloria, resting
her head on one fair hand, her rich hair falling about her in loose
shining tresses, and her whole attitude expressive of the deepest
absorption in study. As they entered, she looked up and smiled,--then
rose, her hand still resting on the open book.

"At last you have come again, dear Professor!" she said; "I began to
think you had grown weary in well-doing!"

Von Glauben stared at her, stricken speechless for a moment. What
mysterious change had passed over the girl, investing her with such an
air of regal authority? It was impossible to say. To all appearance she
was the same beautiful creature, clad in the same simple white homespun
gown,--yet were she Empress of half the habitable globe, she could
not have looked more environed with dignity, sweetness and delicately
gracious manner. He understood the desolating expression of
Ronsard,--'You see I have lost her!--she is not mine any more--she is
his!' He recognised and was suddenly impressed by that fact;--she
was 'his'--the wife of the Crown Prince and Heir-Apparent to the
Throne;--and evidently with the knowledge of her position had arisen the
pride of love and the spirit of grace to support her honours worthily.
And so, as Von Glauben met her eyes, which expressed their gentle wonder
at his silence, and as she extended her hand to him, he came slowly
forward and bowing low, respectfully kissed that hand.

"Princess," he said, in a voice that trembled ever so slightly; "I shall
never be weary in well-doing,--if you are good enough to call my
service and friendship for you by that name! I hesitated to come
before,--because I thought--I feared--I did not know!--"

"I understand!" said Gloria tranquilly; "You did not think the Prince,
my husband, would tell me the truth so soon! But I know all, and now--I
am glad to know it! Dearest," and she moved swiftly to Ronsard who was
standing silent in the doorway--"come in and sit down! You make yourself
so tired sometimes in the garden;" and she threw a loving arm about him.
"You must rest; you look so pale!"

For all answer, he lifted the hand that hung about his neck, to his lips
and kissed it tenderly.

"They want you, Gloria!" he said tremulously; "They want you at the
Palace. You must go to-day!"

She lifted her brilliant eyes enquiringly to Von Glauben, who responded
to the look by at once explaining his mission. He was there, he said, by
the King's special command;--their Majesties had been informed of their
son's marriage by their son himself; and they desired at once to see
and speak with their unknown daughter-in-law. The interview would be
private; his Royal Highness the Crown Prince would be present;--it might
last an hour, perhaps longer,--and he, Von Glauben, was entrusted to
bring Gloria to the Palace, and escort her back to The Islands again
when all was over. Thus, with elaborate and detailed courtesy, the
Professor unfolded the nature of his enterprise, while Gloria, still
keeping one arm round Ronsard, heard and smiled.

"I shall obey the King's command!" she said composedly; "Though,--having
no word from the Prince, my husband, concerning this mandate,--I might
very well refuse to do so! But it may be as well that their Majesties
and their son's wife should plainly, and once for all, understand each
other. Dear Professor, you look sadly troubled. Is there some little
convention, some special ceremonial of so-called 'good manners,' which
you are commissioned to teach me, before I make my appearance at Court
under your escort?"

Her lovely lips smiled,--her eyes laughed,--she looked the very
incarnation of Beauty triumphant. Von Glauben's brain whirled,--he felt
bewitched and dazzled.

"I?--to teach you anything? No, my princess!--and please think how
loyally I have called you 'Princess' from the beginning!--I have always
told you that you have a spiritual knowledge far surpassing all material
wisdom. Conventions and ceremonials are not for you,--you will make
fashion, not follow it! I am not troubled, save for your sake, dear
child!--for you know nothing of the world, and the ways of the Court may
at first offend you--"

"The ways of Hell must have seemed dark to Proserpine," said Ronsard in
his harsh, strong voice; "But Love gave her light!"

"A very just reminder!" said Von Glauben, well pleased;--"Consider
Gloria to be the new Proserpine to-day! And now she must forgive me for
playing the part of a tyrannical friend, and urging her to hasten her
preparations."

Gloria bent down and kissed Ronsard gently.

"Trust me, little father!" she whispered; "You have not taught me great
lessons of truth in vain!"

Aloud she said.

"The King and Queen wish to see me and speak with me,--and I know the
reason why! They desire to fully explain to me all that my husband
has already told me,--which is that according to the rules made for
monarchs, our marriage is inadmissible. Well!--I have my answer ready;
and you, Professor, shall hear me give it! Wait but a few moments and I
will come with you."

She left the room. The two men looked at each other in silence. At last
Von Glauben said:--

"Ronsard, I think you will soon reap the reward of your
'life-philosophy' system! You have fed that girl from her childhood on
strong intellectual food, and trained the mental muscles rather than the
physical ones. Upon my word, I believe you will see a good result!"

Ronsard, who had grown much calmer and quieter during the last few
minutes, raised himself a little from the chair into which he had sunk
with an air of fatigue, and looked dreamily towards the open lattice
window, where the roses hung in a curtain of crimson blossom.

"If it be so, I shall praise God!" he said; "But the years have come and
gone with me so peacefully since I made my home on these quiet shores,
that the exercise of what I have presumed to call 'philosophy' has had
no chance. Philosophy! It is well to preach it,--but when the blow of
misfortune falls, who can practise it?"

"You can," replied the Professor;--"I can! Gloria can! I think we all
three have clear brains. There is a tendency in the present age
to overlook and neglect the greatest power in the whole human
composition,--the mental and psychical part of it. Now, in the present
curious drama of events, we have a chance given to exercise it; and it
will be our own faults if we do not make our wills rule our destinies!"

"But the position is intolerable--impossible!" said Ronsard, rising and
pacing the room with a fresh touch of agitation. "Nothing can do away
with the fact that we--my child and I--have been cruelly deceived!
And now there can be only one of two contingencies; Gloria must be
acknowledged as the Prince's wife,--in which case he will be forced to
resign all claim to the Throne;--or he must marry again, which makes her
no wife at all. That is a disgrace which her pride would never submit
to, nor mine;--for did I not kill a king?"

"Let me advise you for the future not to allude to that disagreeable
incident!" said Von Glauben persuasively: "Exercise discretion,--as I
do! Observe that I do not ask you what king you killed;--I am as careful
on that matter as I am concerning the reasons for which I myself left
my native Fatherland! I make it a rule never to converse on painful
subjects. You tell me you have tried to atone; then believe that the
atonement is made, and that Gloria is the sign of its acceptance,
and--happy augury!--here she comes."

They both instinctively turned to confront the girl as she entered. She
had changed her ordinary white homespun gown for another of the same
kind, equally simple, but fresh and unworn; her glorious bronze-chestnut
hair was unbound to its full rippling length, and was held back by a
band or fillet of curiously carved white coral, which surmounted the