about a hundred or more incriminating paper witnesses to certain matters
in which he had more than a lawful interest.

"It will be difficult now to trace my hand in the scheme!" he said
to himself, frowning heavily, as he considered various uncomfortable
contingencies arising out of his conversation with his late visitor.
"If the thunderbolt falls, it will crush Carl Pérousse--not me. Yes! It
means ruin for him--ruin and disgrace--but for me--well! I shall find
it as easy to damn Pérousse as it has been to support him, for he cannot
involve me without adding tenfold to his own disaster! I think it will
be safe enough for me--possibly not so safe for the Premier. However,
I will write to him to-morrow, just to let him know I received his
messenger."

In the meantime, while David Jost was thus cogitating unpleasant and
even dangerous possibilities, which were perhaps on the eve of occurring
to himself and certain of his associates in politics and journalism,
Pasquin Leroy was hurrying along the city streets under the light of
a clear, though pallid and waning moon. Few wanderers were abroad;
the police walked their various rounds, and one or two miserable women
passed him, like flying ghosts in the thin air of night. His mind was
in a turmoil of agitation; and the thoughts that were tossing rapidly
through his brain one upon the other, were such as he had never known
before. He had fathomed a depth of rascality and deception, which but a
short month ago, he could scarcely have believed capable of existence.
The cruel injury and loss preparing for thousands of innocent
persons through the self-interested plotting of a few men, was almost
incalculable,--and his blood burned with passionate indignation as he
realized on what a verge of misery, bloodshed, disaster and crime the
unthinking people of the country stood, pushed to the very edge of a
fall by the shameless and unscrupulous designs of a few financiers,
playing their gambling game with the public confidence,--and cheating
nations as callously as they would have cheated their partners at cards.

"Thank God, it is not too late!" he murmured; "Not quite too late to
save the situation!--to rescue the people from long years of undeserved
taxation, loss of trade and general distress! It is a supreme task that
has been given me to accomplish!--but if there is any truth and right
in the laws of the Universe, I shall surely not be misjudged while
accomplishing it!"

He quickened his pace;--and to avoid going up one of the longer
thoroughfares which led to the citadel and palace, he decided to cross
one of the many picturesque bridges, arched over certain inlets from the
sea, and forming canals, where barges and other vessels might be towed
up to the very doors of the warehouses which received their cargoes.
But just as he was about to turn in the necessary direction, he halted
abruptly at sight of two men, standing at the first corner in the way
of his advance, talking earnestly. He recognized them at once as Sergius
Thord and the half-inebriated poet, Paul Zouche. With noiseless step
he moved cautiously into the broad stretch of black shadow cast by the
great façade of a block of buildings which occupied half the length of
the street in which he stood, and so managing to slip into the denser
darkness of a doorway, was able to hear what they were saying. The full,
mellow, and persuasive tone of Thord's voice had something in it of
reproach.

"You shame yourself, Zouche!" he said; "You shame me; you shame us all!
Man, did God put a light of Genius in your soul merely to be quenched by
the cravings of a bestial body? What associate are you for us? How can
you help us in the fulfilment of our ideal dream? By day you mingle with
litterateurs, scientists, and philosophers,--report has it that you have
even managed to stumble your way into my lady's boudoir;--but by night
you wander like this,--insensate, furious, warped in soul, muddled
in brain, and only the heart of you alive,--the poor unsatisfied
heart--hungering and crying for what itself makes impossible!"

Zouche broke into a harsh laugh. Turning up his head to the sky, he
thrust back his wild hair, and showed his thin eager face and glittering
eyes, outlined cameo-like by the paling radiance of the moon.

"Well spoken, my Sergius!" he exclaimed. "You always speak well! Your
thoughts are of flame--your speech is of gold; the fire melts the
ore! And then again you have a conscience! That is a strange
possession!--quite useless in these days, like the remains of the tail
we had when we were all happy apes in the primeval forest, pelting the
Megatherium or other such remarkable beasts with cocoanuts! It was a
much better life, Sergius, believe me! A Conscience is merely a mental
Appendicitis! There should be a psychical surgeon with an airy lancet to
cut it out. Not for me!--I was born perfect--without it!"

He laughed again, then with an abrupt change of manner he caught Thord
violently by the arm.

"How can you speak of shame?" he said--"What shame is left in either
man or woman nowadays? Naked to the very skin of foulness, they flaunt
a nudity of vice in every public thoroughfare! Your sentiments, my grand
Sergius, are those of an old world long passed away! You are a reformer,
a lover of truth--a hater of shams--and in the days when the people
loved truth,--and wanted justice,--and fought for both, you would have
been great! But greatness is nowadays judged as 'madness'--truth as
'want of tact'--desire for justice is 'clamour for notoriety.' Shame?
There is no shame in anything, Sergius, but honesty! That is a disgrace
to the century; for an honest man is always poor, and poverty is the
worst of crimes." He threw up his arms with a wild gesture,--"The worst
of crimes! Do I not know it!"

Thord took him gently by the shoulder.

"You talk, Zouche, as you always talk, at random, scarcely knowing, and
certainly not half meaning what you say. There is no real reason in your
rages against fate and fortune. Leave the accursed drink, and you may
still win the prize you covet--Fame."

"Not I!" said Zouche scornfully,--"Fame in its original sense belonged
also to the growing-time of the world--when, proud of youth and the
glow of life, the full-fledged man judged himself immortal. Fame now is
adjudged to the biped-machine who drives a motor-car best,--or to the
fortunate soap-boiler who dines with a king! Poetry is understood to be
the useful rhyme which announces the virtues of pills and boot-blacking!
Mark you, Sergius!--my latest volume was 'graciously accepted by the
King'! Do you know what that means?"

"No," replied Thord, a trifle coldly; "And if it were not that I know
your strange vagaries, I should say you wronged your election as one of
us, to send any of your work to a crowned fool!"

Zouche laughed discordantly.

"You would? No, you would not, my Sergius, if you knew the spirit in
which I sent it! A spirit as wild, as reckless, as ranting, as defiant
as ever devil indulged in! The humility of my presentation letter to his
Majesty was beautiful! The reply of the flunkey-secretary was equally
beautiful in smug courtesy: 'Sir, I am commanded by the King to thank
you for the book of poems you have kindly sent for his acceptance!' I
say again, Thord, do you know what it means?"

"No; I only wish that instead of talking here, you would let me see you
safely home."

"Home! I have no home! Since _she_ died--" He paused, and a grey shadow
crossed his face like the hue of approaching sickness or death.
"I killed her, poor child! Of course you know that! I neglected
her,--deserted her--left her to die! Well! She is only one more added
to the list of countless women martyrs who have been tortured out of an
unjust world--and now--now I write verses to her memory!" He shivered as
with cold, still clinging to Thord's arm. "But I did not tell you what
great good comes of sending a book to the King! It means less to a
writer than to a boot-maker. For the boot-maker can put up a sign:
'Special Fitter for the ease of His Majesty's Corns'--but if a poet
should say his verse is 'accepted' by a monarch, the shrewd public take
it at once to be bad verse, and will have none of it! That is the case
with my book to-day!"

"Why did you send it?" asked Thord, with grave patience. "Your business
with kings is to warn, not to flatter!"

"Just so!" cried Zouche; "And if His Most Gracious and Glorious had been
pleased to look inside the volume, he would have seen enough to startle
him! It was sent in hate, my Sergius,--not in humility,--just as the
flunkey-secretary's answer was penned in derision, aping courtesy! How
you look, under this wan sky of night! Reproachful, yet pitying, as the
eyes of Buddha are your eyes, my Sergius! You are a fine fellow--your
brain is a dome decorated with glorious ideals!--and yet you are like
all of us, weak in one point, as Achilles in the heel. One thing could
turn you from man into beast--and that would be if Lotys loved--not
you--she never will love you--but another!"--Thord started back as
though suddenly stabbed, and angrily shook off his companion, who only
laughed again,--a shrill, echoing laugh in which there was a note of
madness and desolation. "Bah!" he exclaimed; "You are a fool after all!
You work for a woman as I did--once! But mark you!--do not kill her--as
I did--once! Be patient! Watch the light shine, even though it does not
illumine your path; be glad that the rose blooms for itself, if not for
you! It will be difficult!--meanwhile you can live on hope--a bitter
fruit to eat; but gnaw it to the last rind, my Sergius! Hope that Lotys
may melt in your fire, as a snowflake in the sun! Come! Now take the
poor poet home,--the drunken child of inspiration--take him home to his
garret in the slums--the poet whose book has been accepted by the King!"

Pulling himself up from his semi-crouching position, he seized Thord's
arm again more tightly, and began to walk along unsteadily. Presently he
paused, smiling vacantly up at the gradually vanishing stars.

"Lotys speaks to our followers on Saturday," he said; "You know that?"

Thord bent his head in acquiescence.

"You will be there, of course. I shall be there! What a voice she has!
Whether we believe what she says or not, we must hear,--and hearing, we
must follow. Where shall we drink in the sweet Oracle this time?"

"At the People's Assembly Rooms," responded Thord; "But remember,
Zouche, she does not speak till nine o'clock. That means that you will
be unfit to listen!"

"You think so?" responded Zouche airily, and leaning on Thord he
stumbled onward, the two passing close in front of the doorway where
Pasquin Leroy stood concealed. "But I am more ready to understand wisdom
when drunk, than when sober, my Sergius! You do not understand. I am
a human eccentricity--the result of an _amour_ between a fiend and an
angel! Believe me! I will listen to Lotys with all my devil-saintly
soul,--you will listen to her with all your loving, longing heart--and
with us two thus attentive, the opinions of the rest of the audience
will scarcely matter! How the street reels! How the old moon dances! So
did she whirl pallidly when Antony clasped his Egyptian Queen, and lost
Actium! Remember the fate of Antony, Sergius! Kingdoms would have been
seized and controlled by men such as you are, long before now--if there
had not always been a woman in the case--a Cleopatra--or a Lotys!"

Still laughing foolishly, he reeled onwards, Sergius Thord
half-supporting, half-leading him, with grave carefulness and brotherly
compassion. They were soon out of sight; and Pasquin Leroy, leaving his
dark hiding-place, crossed the bridge with an alert step, and mounted a
steep street leading to the citadel. From gaps between the tall leaning
houses a glimpse of the sea, silvered by the dying moonlight, flashed
now and again; and in the silence of the night the low ripple of small
waves against the breakwater could be distinctly heard. A sense of
holy calm impressed him as he paused a moment; and the words of an old
monkish verse came back to him from some far-off depth of memory:

  Lord Christ, I would my soul were clear as air,
  With only Thy pure radiance falling through!

He caught his breath hard--there was a smarting sense as of tears in his
eyes.

"So proudly throned, and so unloved!" he muttered. "Yet,--has not the
misprisal and miscomprehension been merited? Whose is the blame? Not
with the People, who, despite the prophet's warning, 'still put their
trust in princes'--but with the falsity and hollowness of the system!
Sovereignty is like an old ship stuck fast in the docks, and unfit
for sailing the wide seas--crusted with barnacles of custom and
prejudice,--and in every gale of wind pulling and straining at a rusty
chain anchor. But the spirit of Change is in the world; a hurrying
movement that has wings of fire, and might possibly be called
Revolution! It is better that the torch should be lighted from the
Throne than from the slums!"

He went on his way quickly,--till reaching the outer wall of the
citadel, he was challenged by a sentinel, to whom he gave the password
in a low tone. The man drew back, satisfied, and Leroy went on, mounting
from point to point of the cliff, till he reached a private gate leading
into the wide park-lands which skirted the King's palace. Here stood a
muffled and cloaked figure evidently watching for him; for as soon as
he appeared the gate was noiselessly opened for his admittance, and he
passed in at once. Then he and the person who had awaited his coming,
walked together through the scented woods of pine and rhododendrons, and
talking in low and confidential voices, slowly disappeared.

CHAPTER XIV

THE KING'S VETO

The Marquis de Lutera was a heavy sleeper, and for some time had been
growing stouter than was advisable for the dignity of a Prime Minister.
He had been defeated of late years in one or two important measures;
and his colleague, Carl Pérousse, had by gradual degrees succeeded in
worming himself into such close connection with the rest of the members
of the Cabinet, that he, Lutera, felt himself being edged out, not only
from political 'deals,' but from the profits appertaining thereto. So,
growing somewhat indifferent, as well as disgusted at the course affairs
were taking, he had made up his mind to retire from office, as soon as
he had carried through a certain Bill which, in its results, would have
the effect of crippling the people of the country, while helping on his
own interests to a considerable degree. At the immediate moment he had
a chance of looming large on the political horizon. Carl Pérousse could
not do anything of very great importance without him; they were both
too deeply involved together in the same schemes. In point of fact, if
Pérousse could bring the Premier to a fall, the Premier could do the
same by Pérousse. The two depended on each other; and Lutera, conscious
that if Pérousse gained any fresh accession of power, it would be to
his, Lutera's, advantage, was gradually preparing to gracefully resign
his position in the younger and more ambitious man's favour. But he was
not altogether comfortable in his mind since his last interview with the
King. The King had shown unusual signs of self-will and obstinacy.
He had presumed to give a command affecting the national policy; and,
moreover, he had threatened, if his command were not obeyed, to address
Parliament himself on the subject in hand, from the Throne. Such an
unaccustomed, unconstitutional idea was very upsetting to the Premier's
mind. It had cost him a sleepless night; and when he woke to a new day's
work, he was in an extremely irritable humour. He was doubtful how to
act;--for to complain of the King would not do; and to enlighten the
members of the Cabinet as to his Majesty's declared determination to
dispose amicably of certain difficulties with a foreign power, which
the Ministry had fully purposed fanning up into a flame of war, might
possibly awaken a storm of dissension and discussion.

"We all want money!" said the Marquis gloomily, as he rose from his
tumbled bed to take his first breakfast, and read his early morning
letters--"And to crush a small and insolent race, whose country is rich
in mineral product, is simply the act of squeezing an orange for
the necessary juice. Life would be lost, of course, but we are
over-populated; and a good war would rid the country of many scamps
and vagabonds. Widows and orphans could be provided for by national
subscriptions, invested as the Ministry think fit, and paid to
applicants after about twenty years' waiting!" He smiled sardonically.
"The gain to ourselves would be incalculable; new wealth, new schemes,
new openings for commerce and speculation in every way! And now the King
sets himself up as an obstacle to progress! If he were fond of money, we
could explain the whole big combine, and offer him a share;--but with
a character such as he possesses, I doubt if it would work! With some
monarchs whom I could name, it would be perfectly easy. And yet,--for
the three years he has been on the throne, he has been passive
enough,--asking no questions,--signing such documents as he has been
told to sign,--uttering such speeches as have been written for him,--and
I was never more shocked and taken aback in my life than yesterday
morning, when he declared he had decided to think and act for himself!
Simply preposterous! An ordinary man who presumes to think and act for
himself is always a danger to the community--but a king! Good Heavens!
We should have the old feudal system back again."

He sipped his coffee leisurely, and opened a few letters; there were
none of very pressing importance. He was just about to glance through
the morning's newspaper, when his man-servant entered bearing a note
marked 'Private and Immediate.' He recognized the handwriting of David
Jost.

"Anyone waiting for an answer?" he enquired.

"No, Excellency."

The man retired. The Marquis broke the large splotchy seal bearing the
coat-of-arms which Jost affected, but to which he had no more right than
the man in the moon, and read what seemed to him more inexplicable than
the most confusing conundrum ever invented.

"MY DEAR MARQUIS,--I received your confidential messenger last night,
and explained the entire situation. He left for Moscow this morning, but
will warn us of any further developments. Sorry matters look so grave
for you. Should like a few minutes private chat when you can spare the
time.--

"Yours truly, DAVID JOST."

Over and over again the Marquis read this brief note, staring at its
every word and utterly unable to understand its meaning.

"What in the world is the fellow driving at!" he exclaimed angrily--"'My
messenger'! 'Explained the entire situation'! The devil! 'Left for
Moscow'! Upon my soul, this is maddening!" And he rang the bell sharply.

"Who brought this note?" he asked, as his servant entered.

"Mr. Jost's own man, Excellency."

"Has he gone?"

"Yes, Excellency."

"Wait!" And sitting down he wrote hastily the following lines:

"DEAR SIR,--Your letter is inexplicable. I sent no messenger to you last
night. If you have any explanation to offer, I shall be disengaged and
alone till 11.30 this morning.

"Yours truly,--DE LUTERA."

Folding, sealing, and addressing this, he marked it 'Private' and gave
it to his man.

"Take this yourself," he said, "and put it into Mr. Jost's own hands.
Trust no one to deliver it. Ask to see him personally, and then give it
to him. You understand?"

"Yes, Excellency."

His note thus despatched, the Marquis threw himself down in his
arm-chair, and again read Jost's mysterious communication.

"Whatever messenger has passed himself off as coming from me, Jost must
have been crazy to receive him without credentials," he said. "There
must be a mistake somewhere!"

A vague alarm troubled him; he was not moved by conscientious scruples,
but the idea that any of his secret moves should be 'explained' to a
stranger was, to say the least of it, annoying, and not conducive to
the tranquillity of his mind. A thousand awkward possibilities suggested
themselves at once to his brain, and as he carried a somewhat excitable
disposition under his heavy and phlegmatic exterior, he fumed and
fretted himself for the next half hour into an impatience which only
found vent in the prosaic and everyday performance of dressing himself.
Ah!--if those who consider a Prime Minister great and exalted, could
only see him as he pulls on his trousers, and fastens his shirt collar,
what a disillusion would be promptly effected! Especially if, like
the Marquis de Lutera, he happened to be over-stout, and difficult to
clothe! This particular example of Premiership was an ungainly man; his
proud position could not make him handsome, nor lend true dignity to his
deportment. Old Mother Nature has a way of marking her specimens, if we
will learn to recognize the signs she sets on certain particular 'makes'
of man. The Marquis de Lutera was 'made' to be a stock-jobber, not a
statesman. His bent was towards the material gain and good of himself,
more than the advantage of his country. His reasoning was a slight
variation of Falstaff's logical misprisal of honour. He argued; "If I
am poor, then what is it to me that others are rich? If I am neglected,
what do I care that the people are prosperous? Let me but secure and
keep those certain millions of money which shall ensure to me and my
heritage a handsome endowment, not only for my life, but for all
lives connected with mine which come after me,--and my 'patriotism' is
satisfied!"

He had just finished insinuating himself by degrees into his morning
coat, when his servant entered.

"Well!" he asked impatiently.

"Mr. Jost is coming round at once, Excellency. He ordered his carriage
directly he read your note."

"He sent no answer?"

"None, Excellency."

"When he arrives, show him into the library."

"Yes, Excellency."

The Marquis thereupon left his sleeping apartment, and descended to the
library himself. The sun was streaming brilliantly into the room, and
the windows, thrown wide open, showed a cheerful display of lawn and
flower-garden, filled with palms and other semi-tropical shrubs, for
though the Premier's house was in the centre of the fashionable quarter
of the city, it had the advantage of extensive and well-shaded grounds.
A law had been passed in the late King's time against the felling of
trees, it having been scientifically proved that trees in a certain
quantity, not only purify the air from disease germs affecting the human
organization, but also save the crops from many noxious insect-pests and
poisonous fungi. Having learned the lesson at last, that the Almighty
may be trusted to know His own business, and that trees are intended for
wider purposes than mere timber, the regulations were strict concerning
them. No one could fell a tree on his own ground without, first of all,
making a statement at the National Office of Aboriculture as to
the causes for its removal; and only if these causes were found
satisfactory, could a stamped permission be obtained for cutting it down
or 'lifting' it to other ground. The result of this sensible regulation
was that in the hottest days of summer the city was kept cool and shady
by the rich foliage branching out everywhere, and in some parts running
into broad avenues and groves of great thickness and beauty. The Marquis
de Lutera's garden had an additional charm in a beautiful alley of
orange trees, and the fragrance wafted into his room from the delicious
blossoms would have refreshed and charmed anyone less troubled, worried
and feverish, than he was at the time. But this morning the very
sunshine annoyed him;--never a great lover of Nature, the trees and
flowers forming the outlook on which his heavy eyes rested were almost
an affront. The tranquil beauty of an ever renewed and renewing
Nature is always particularly offensive to an uneasy conscience and an
exhausted mind.

The sound of wheels grinding along the outer drive brought a faint gleam
of satisfaction on his brooding features, and he turned sharply
round, as the door of the library was thrown open to admit Jost, whose
appearance, despite his jaunty manner, betokened evident confusion and
alarm.

"Good-morning, Mr. Jost!" said the Marquis stiffly, as his confidential
man ushered in the visitor,--then when the servant had retired and
closed the door, he added quickly--"Now what does this mean?"

Jost dropped into a chair, and pulling out a handkerchief wiped the
perspiration from his brow.

"I don't know!" he said helplessly; "I don't know what it means! I have
told you the truth! A man came to see me late last night, saying he was
sent by you on urgent business. He said you wished me to explain the
position we held, and the amount of the interests we had at stake, as
there were grave discoveries pending, and complexities likely to ensue.
He gave his name--there is his card!"

And with a semi-groan, he threw down the bit of pasteboard in question.

The Marquis snatched it up.

"'Pasquin Leroy'! I never heard the name in my life," he said fiercely.
"Jost, you have been done! You mean to tell me you were such a fool as
to trust an entire stranger with the whole financial plan of campaign,
and that you were credulous enough to believe that he came from
me--me--De Lutera,--without any credentials?"

"Credentials!" exclaimed Jost; "Do you suppose I would have received him
at all had credentials been lacking? Not I! He brought me the most sure
and confidential sign of your trust that could be produced--your own
signet-ring!"

The Marquis staggered back, as though Jost's words had been so many
direct blows on the chest,--his countenance turned a livid white.

"My signet-ring!" he repeated,--and almost unconsciously he looked at
the hand from which the great jewel was missing; "My signet!"--Then he
forced a smile--"Jost, I repeat, you have been done!--doubly fooled!--no
one could possibly have obtained my signet,--for at this very moment it
is on the hand of the King!"

Jost rose slowly out of his chair, his eyes protruding out of his head,
his jaw almost dropping in the extremity of his amazement.

"The King!"--he gasped--"The King!"

"Yes, man, the King!" repeated De Lutera impatiently,--"Only yesterday
morning his Majesty, having mislaid his own ring for the moment,
borrowed mine just before starting on his yachting cruise. How you
stare! You have been fooled!--that is perfectly plain and evident!"

"The King!" repeated Jost stupidly--"Then the man who came to me last
night--" He broke off, unable to find any words for the expression of
the thoughts which began to terrify him.

"Well!--the man who came to you last night," echoed the Marquis,--"He
was not the King, I suppose, was he?" And he laughed derisively.

"No--he was not the King," said Jost slowly; "I know _him_ well enough!
But it might have been someone in the King's service! For he knew, or
said he knew, the King's intentions in a certain matter affecting both
you and Carl Pérousse,--and in a more distant way, myself--and warned
me of a coming change in the policy. Ah!--it is now your turn to stare,
Marquis! You had best be on your guard, for if the person who came to me
last night was not your messenger, he was the King's spy! And, in that
case, we are lost!"

The Marquis paced the room with long uneven strides,--his mind was
greatly agitated, but he had no wish to show his perturbation too openly
to one whom he considered as a mere tool in his service.

"I know," went on Jost emphatically, "that the ring he wore was yours! I
noticed it particularly while I was talking to him. It would take a long
time and exceptional skill to make any imitation of that sapphire. There
is no doubt that it was your signet!"

The Premier halted suddenly in his nervous walk.

"You told him the whole scheme, you say?"

"I did."

"And his reply?"

"Was, that the King had discovered it, and proposed insisting on an
enquiry."

"And then?"

"Well! Then he warned me to look out for myself,--as anyone connected
with Carl Pérousse's financial deal would inevitably be ruined during
the next few weeks."

"Who is going to work the ruin?" asked the Marquis with a sneer; "Do you
not know that if the King dared to give an opinion on a national crisis,
he would be dethroned?"

"There are the People--" began Jost.

"The People! Human emmets--born for crushing under the heel of power!
A couple of 'leaders' in your paper, Jost, can guide the fool-mob any
way!"

"That depends!" said Jost hesitatingly; "If what the fellow said last
night be true--"

"It is not true!" said the Premier authoritatively. "We are going on
in precisely the same course as originally arranged. Neither King
nor People can interfere! Go home, and write an article about love of
country, Jost! You look in the humour for it!"

The Jew's expression was anything but amiable.

"What is to be done about last night?" he asked sullenly.

"Nothing at present. I am going to the palace at two o'clock--I shall
see the King, and find out whether my signet is lost, stolen or strayed.
Meanwhile, keep your own counsel! If you have been betrayed into giving
your confidence to a spy in the foreign service, as I imagine--(for the
King has never employed a spy, and is not likely to do so), and he makes
known his information, it can be officially denied. The official denial
of a Government, Jost, like charity, has before now covered a multitude
of sins!"

An instinctive disinclination for further conversation brought the
interview between them abruptly to a close, and Jost, full of a
suspicious alarm, which he was ashamed to confess, drove off to his
newspaper offices. The Premier, meantime, though harassed by secret
anxiety, managed to display his usual frigid equanimity, when, after
Jost's departure, his private secretary arrived at the customary time,
to transact under his orders the correspondence and business of the day.
This secretary, Eugène Silvano by name, was a quiet self-contained young
man, highly ambitious, and keenly interested in the political situation,
and, though in the Premier's service, not altogether of his way of
thinking. He called the Marquis's attention now to a letter that
had missed careful reading on the previous day. It was from the
Vicar-General of the Society of Jesus, expressing surprise and
indignation that the King should have refused the Society's request for
such land as was required to be devoted to religious and educational
purposes, and begging that the Premier would exert his influence with
the monarch to persuade him to withdraw or mitigate his refusal.

"I can do nothing;" said the Marquis irritably,--"the lands they want
belong to the Crown. The King can dispose of them as he thinks best."

The secretary set the letter aside.

"Shall I reply to that effect?" he enquired.

The Marquis nodded.

"I know," said Silvano presently with a slight hesitation, "that you
never pay any attention to anonymous communications. Otherwise, there is
one here which might merit consideration."

"What does it concern?"

"A revolutionary meeting," replied Silvano, "where it appears the woman,
Lotys, is to speak."

The Premier shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "You must enlighten me!
Who is the woman Lotys?"

"Ah, that no one exactly knows!" replied the secretary. "A
strange character, without doubt, but--" He paused and spoke more
emphatically--"She has power!"

Lutera gave a gesture of irritation.

"Bah! Over whom does she exercise it. Over one man or many?"

"Over one half the population at least," responded Silvano, quietly,
turning over a few papers without looking up.

The Marquis stared at him, slightly amused.

"Have you taken statistics of the lady's followers," he asked; "Are you
one of them yourself?"

Silvano raised his eyes,--clear dark eyes, deep-set and steady in their
glance.

"Were I so, I should not be here;" he replied--"But I know how she
speaks; I know what she does! and from a purely political point of view
I think it unwise to ignore her."

"What is this anonymous communication you speak of?" asked the Premier,
after a pause.

"Oh, it is brief enough," answered Silvano unfolding a paper, and he
read aloud:

"To the Marquis de Lutera, Premier.

"Satisfy yourself that those who meet on Saturday night where Lotys
speaks, have already decided on your downfall!"

"Oracular!" said the Marquis carelessly;--"To decide is one thing--to
fulfil the decision is another! Lotys, whoever she may be, can preach
to her heart's content, for all I care! I am rather surprised, Silvano,
that a man of your penetration and intelligence should attach any
importance to revolutionary meetings, which are always going on more
or less in every city under the sun. Why, it was but the other day,
the police were sent to disperse a crowd which had gathered round the
fanatic, Sergius Thord; only the people had sufficient sense to disperse
themselves. A street-preacher or woman ranter is like a cheap-jack or
a dispenser of quack medicines;--the mob gathers to such persons out of
curiosity, not conviction."

The secretary made no reply, and went on with other matters awaiting his
attention.

At a few minutes before two o'clock the Marquis entered his carriage,
and was driven to the palace. There he learned that the King was
receiving, more or less unofficially, certain foreign ambassadors and
noblemen of repute in the Throne-room. A fine band was playing military
music in the great open quadrangle in front of the palace, where pillars
of rose-marble, straight as the stems of pine-trees, held up fabulous
heraldic griffins, clasping between their paws the country's shield.
Flags were flying,--fountains flashing,--gay costumes gleamed here and
there,--and the atmosphere was full of brilliancy and gaiety,--yet the
Marquis, on his way to the audience-chamber, was rendered uncomfortably
aware of one of those mysterious impressions which are sometimes
conveyed to us, we know not how, but which tend to prepare us for
surprise and disappointment. Some extra fibre of sensitiveness in his
nervous organization was acutely touched, for he actually fancied he saw
slighting and indifferent looks on the faces of the various flunkeys and
retainers who bowed him along the different passages, or ushered him up
the state stairway, when--as a matter of fact,--all was precisely the
same as usual, and it was only his own conscience that gave imaginary
hints of change. Arrived at the ante-chamber to the Throne-room, he was
surprised to find Prince Humphry there, talking animatedly to the King's
physician, Professor Von Glauben. The Prince seemed unusually excited;
his face was flushed, and his eyes extraordinarily brilliant, and as
he saw the Premier, he came forward, extending his hand, and almost
preventing Lutera's profound bow and deferential salutation.

"Have you business with the King, Marquis?" enquired the young man
with a light laugh. "If you have, you must do as I am doing,--wait his
Majesty's pleasure!"

The Premier lifted his eyebrows, smiled deprecatingly, and murmuring
something about pressure of State affairs, shook hands with Von Glauben,
whose countenance, as usual, presented an impenetrable mask to his
thoughts.

"It is rather a new experience for me," continued the Prince, "to
be treated as a kind of petitioner on the King's favour, and kept in
attendance,--but no matter!--novelty is always pleasing! I have been
cooling my heels here for more than an hour. Von Glauben, too, has been
waiting;--contrary to custom, he has not even been permitted to enquire
after his Majesty's health this morning!"

Lutera maintained his former expression of polite surprise, but said
nothing. Instinct warned him to be sparing of words lest he should
betray his own private anxiety.

The Prince went on carelessly.

"Majesty takes humours like other men, and must, more than other men, I
suppose, be humoured! Yet there is to my mind something unnatural in a
system which causes several human beings to be dependent on another's
caprice!"

"You will not say so, Sir, when you yourself are King," observed the
Marquis.

"Long distant be the day!" returned the Prince. "Indeed, I hope it may
never be! I would rather be the simplest peasant ploughing the fields,
and happy in my own way, than suffer the penalties and pains surrounding
the possession of a Throne!"

"Only," put in Von Glauben sententiously, "you would have to take into
consideration, Sir, whether the peasant ploughing the fields is happy
in his own way. I have made 'the peasant ploughing the fields' a special
form of study,--and I have always found him a remarkably discontented,
often ill-fed--and therefore unhealthy individual."

"We are all discontented, if it comes to that!" said Prince Humphry with
a light laugh,--"Except myself! I am perfectly contented!"

"You have reason to be, Sir," said Lutera, bowing low.

"You are quite right, Marquis!--I have! More reason than perhaps you are
aware of!"

His eyes lightened and flashed; he looked unusually handsome, and
the Premier's shifty glance rested on him for a moment with a certain
curiosity. But he had not been accustomed to pay very much attention to
the words or actions of the Heir-Apparent, considering him to be a very
'ordinary' young man, without either the brilliancy or the ambition
which should mark him out as worthy of his exalted station. And before
any further conversation could take place, Sir Roger de Launay entered
the room and announced to the Marquis that the King was ready to receive
him. Prince Humphry turning sharply round, faced the equerry.

"I am still to wait?" he enquired, with a slight touch of hauteur.

Sir Roger bowed respectfully.

"Your instant desire to see the King, your father, Sir, was communicated
to his Majesty at once," he replied. "The present delay is by his
Majesty's own orders. I much regret----"

"Regret nothing, my dear Sir Roger," he said. "My patience does not
easily tire! Marquis, I trust your business will not take long?"

"I shall endeavour to make it as brief as possible, Sir," replied the
Premier deferentially as he withdrew.

It was with a certain uneasiness, however, in his mind that he followed
Sir Roger to the Throne-room. There was no possibility of exchanging so
much as a word with the equerry; besides, De Launay was not a talking
man. Passing between the lines of attendants, pages, lords-in-waiting
and others, he was conscious of a certain loss of his usual
self-possession as he found himself at last in the presence of the
King,--who, attired in brilliant uniform, was conversing graciously
and familiarly with a select group of distinguished individuals whose
costume betokened them as envoys or visitors from foreign courts in the
diplomatic service. Perceiving the Premier, however, he paused in his
conversation, and standing quite still awaited his approach. Then he
extended his hand, with his usual kindly condescension. Instinctively
Lutera's eyes searched that hand, with the expression of a guilty
soul searching for a witness to its innocence. There shone the great
sapphire--his own signet--and to his excited fancy its blue glimmer
emitted a witch-like glow of menace. Meanwhile the King was speaking.

"You are just a few minutes late, Marquis!" he said; "Had you come
a little earlier, you would have met M. Pérousse, who has matters of
import to discuss with you." Here he moved aside from those immediately
in hearing. "It is perhaps as well you should know I have 'vetoed'
his war propositions. It will rest now with you, to call a Council
to-morrow,--the next day,--or,--when you please!"

Completely taken aback, the Premier was silent for a moment, biting his
lips to keep down the torrent of rage and disappointment that threatened
to break out in violent and unguarded speech.

"Sir!--Your Majesty! Pardon me, but surely you cannot fail to understand
that in a Constitution like ours, the course decided upon by Ministers
_cannot_ be vetoed by the King?"

The monarch smiled gravely.

"'Cannot' is a weak word, Marquis! I do not include it in my vocabulary!
I fully grant you that a plan of campaign decided upon by Ministers as
you say, has _not_ been 'vetoed' by a reigning sovereign for at least
a couple of centuries,--and the custom has naturally fallen into
desuetude,--but if it should be found at any time,--(I do not say it
_has_ been found) that Ministers are engaged in a seriously mistaken
policy, and are being misled by the doubtful propositions of private
financial speculators, so much as to consider their own advantage more
important and valuable than the prosperity of a country or the good of
a people,--then a king who does _not_ veto the same is a worse criminal
than those he tacitly supports and encourages!"

Lutera turned a deadly white,--his eyes fell before the clear, straight
gaze of his Sovereign,--but he said not a word.

"A king's 'veto' has before now brought about a king's dethronement,"
went on the monarch; "Should it do so in my case, I shall not greatly
care,--but if things trend that way, I shall lay my thoughts openly
before the People for their judgment. They seldom or never hear the
Sovereign whom they pay to keep, speak to them on a matter gravely
affecting their national destinies,--but they shall hear _me_,--if
necessary!"

The Marquis moistened his dry lips, and essayed to pronounce a few
words.

"Your Majesty will run considerable risk----"

"Of being judged as something more than a mere dummy," said the
King--"Or a fool set on a throne to be fooled! True! But the risk can
only involve life,--and life is immaterial when weighed in the balance
against Honour. By the way, Marquis, permit me to return to you this
valuable gem";--Here drawing off the Premier's sapphire signet, he
handed it to him--"Almost I envy it! It is a fine stone!--and worthy of
its high service!"

"Your Majesty has increased its value by wearing it," said Lutera,
recovering a little of his strayed equanimity in his determination to
probe to the bottom of the mystery which perplexed his mind. "May I
ask----"

"Anything in reason, my dear Marquis," returned the King lightly, and
smiling as he spoke. "A thousand questions if you like!"

"One will suffice," answered the Premier. "I had an unpleasant dream
last night about this very ring----"

"Ah!" ejaculated the King; "Did you dream that I had dropped it in the
sea on my way to The Islands yesterday?"

He spoke jestingly, yet with a kindly air, and Lutera gained courage to
look boldly up and straight into his eyes.

"I did not dream that you had lost it, Sir," he answered--"but that
it had been stolen from your hand, and used by a spy for unlawful
purposes!"

A strange expression crossed the King's face,--a look of inward
illumination; he smiled, but there was a quiver of strong feeling under
the smile. Advancing a step, he laid his hand with a light, half-warning
pressure on the Premier's shoulder.

"Dreams always go by contraries, Marquis!" he said;--"I assure you, on
my honour as a king and a gentleman, that from the moment you lent it
to me, till now,--when I return it to you,--_that ring has never left my
finger_!"

CHAPTER XV

"MORGANATIC" OR--?

The Royal 'at home' was soon over. Many of those who had the felicity
of breathing in the King's presence that afternoon remarked upon his
Majesty's evident good health and high spirits, while others as freely
commented on the unapproachableness and irritability of the Marquis de
Lutera. Sir Walter Langton, the great English traveller, who was taking
his leave of the Sovereign that day, being bound on an expedition to the
innermost recesses of Africa, was not altogether agreeably impressed by
the Premier, whom he met on this occasion for the first and only time.
They had begun their acquaintance by talking generalities,--but drifted
by degrees into the dangerous circle of politics, and were skirting
round the edge of various critical questions of the day, when the
Marquis said abruptly:

"An autocracy would not flourish in your country, I presume, Sir Walter?
The British people have been too long accustomed to sing that they
'never, never will be slaves.' Your Government is really more or less of
a Republic."

"All Governments are so in these days, I imagine," replied Langton.
"Autocracy on the part of a monarch is nowhere endured, save in
Russia,--and what is Russia? A huge volcano, smouldering with fire, and
ever threatening to break out in flame and engulf the Throne! Monarchs
were not always wisdom personified in olden times,--and I venture to
consider them nowadays less wise and more careless than ever. Only a
return to almost barbaric ignorance and superstition would tolerate any
complete monarchical authority in these present times of progress. It
is only the long serfdom of Russia that hinders the triumph of Liberty
there, as elsewhere."

The Marquis listened eagerly, and with evident satisfaction.

"I agree with you!" he said. "You consider, then, that in no country,
under any circumstances, could the people be expected to obey their
monarch blindly?"

"Certainly not! Even Rome, with its visible spiritual Head and
Sovereign, has no real power. It imagines it has; but let it make any
decided step to ensnare the liberties of the people at large, and
the result would be somewhat astonishing! Personally--" and he smiled
gravely--"I have often thought that my own country would be very much
benefited by a couple of years existence under an autocrat--an autocrat
like Cromwell, for example. A man strong and fierce, intelligent and
candid,--who would expose shams and destroy abuses,--who would have no
mercy on either religious, social, or political fraud, and who would
perform the part of the necessary hard broom for sweeping the National
house. But, unfortunately, we have no such man. You have,--in your
Sergius Thord!"

The Premier heard this name with unconcealed amazement.

"Sergius Thord! Why he is a mere fanatic----"

"Pardon me!" interrupted Sir Walter,--"so was Cromwell!"

"But, my dear sir!" remonstrated the Marquis smilingly,--"Is it possible
that you really consider Sergius Thord any sort of an influence in this
country? If you do, I assure you you are greatly mistaken!"

"I think not," responded Sir Walter quietly; "With every respect for
you, Marquis, I believe I am not mistaken! Books written by Sergius
Thord are circulating in their thousands all over the world--his
speeches are reported not only here, but in journals which probably you
never hear of, in far-off countries,--in short, his propaganda is
simply enormous. He is a kind of new Rousseau, without,--so far as I
can learn,--Rousseau's private vices. He is a man I much wished to see
during my stay here, but I have not had the opportunity of finding him
out. He is an undoubted genius,--but I need not remind you, Marquis,
that a man is never a prophet in his own country! The world's
'celebrity' is always eyed with more or less suspicion as a strange sort
of rogue or vagabond in his own native town or village!"

At that moment, the King, having concluded a conversation with certain
of his guests, who were thereupon leaving the Throne-room, approached
them. He had not spoken a word to the Premier since returning him his
signet-ring, but now he said:

"Marquis, I was almost forgetting a special request I have to make of
you!"

"A request from you is a command, Sir!" replied Lutera with hypocritical
deference and something of a covert sneer, which did not escape the
quick observation of Sir Walter Langton.

"In certain cases it should be so," returned the King tranquilly; "And
in this you will probably make it so! I have received a volume of poems
by one Paul Zouche. His genius appears to me deserving of encouragement.
A grant of a hundred golden pieces a year will not be too much for his
hundred best poems. Will you see to this?"

The Marquis bowed.

"I have never heard of the man in question," he replied hesitatingly.

"Probably not," returned the King smiling;--"How often do Premiers read
poetry, or notice poets? Scarcely ever, if we may credit history! But in
this case----"

"I will make myself immediately acquainted with Paul Zouche, and inform
him of your Majesty's gracious intention," the Marquis hastened to say.

"It is quite possible he may refuse the grant," continued the King;
"Sometimes--though seldom--poets are prouder than Prime Ministers!"

With a brief nod of dismissal he turned away, inviting Sir Walter
Langton to accompany him, and there was nothing more for the Marquis to
do, save to return even as he had come, with two pieces of information
puzzling his brain,--one, that the King's 'veto' had stopped a
declaration of war,--unless,--which was a very remote contingency,--he
and his party could persuade the people to go against the King,--the
other, that some clever spy, with the assistance of a fraudulent
imitation of his signet-ring, had become aware of the financial
interests involved in a private speculation depending on the intended
war, which included himself, Carl Pérousse, and two or three other
members of the Ministry. And, out of these two facts might possibly
arise a whole train of misfortune, ruin and disgrace to those concerned.

It was considerably past three o'clock in the afternoon when the King,
retiring to his own private cabinet, desired Sir Roger de Launay to
inform Prince Humphry that he was now prepared to receive him. Sir Roger
hesitated a moment before going to fulfil the command. The King looked
at him with an indulgent smile.

"Things are moving too quickly, you think, Roger?" he queried. "Upon
my soul, I am beginning to find a new zest in life! I feel some twenty
years younger since I saw the face of the beautiful Gloria yesterday! We
must promote her sailor husband, and bring his pearl of the sea to our
Court!"

"It was on this very subject, Sir, that Von Glauben wished to see your
Majesty the first thing this morning," said Sir Roger;--"But you refused
him so early an audience. Yet you will remember that yesterday you told
him you wished for an explanation of his acquaintance with this girl. He
was ready and prepared to give it, but was prevented,--not only by your
refusal to see him,--but also by the Prince."

Drawing up a chair to the open window, the King seated himself
deliberately, and lit a cigar.

"Presumably the Prince knows more than the Professor!" he said calmly;
"We will hear both, and give Royalty the precedence! Tell Prince Humphry
I am waiting for him."

Sir Roger withdrew, and in another two or three minutes returned,
throwing open the door and ushering in the Prince, who entered with a
quick step, and brief, somewhat haughty salutation. Puffing leisurely at
his cigar, the King glanced his son up and down smilingly, but said not
a word. The Prince stood waiting for his father to speak, till at last,
growing impatient and waiving ceremony, he began.

"I came, Sir, to spare Von Glauben your reproaches,--which he does not
merit. You accused him yesterday, he tells me, of betraying your trust;
he has neither betrayed your trust nor mine! I alone am to blame in this
matter!"

"In what matter?" enquired the King quietly.

Prince Humphry coloured deeply, and then grew pale. There was a ray of
defiance in the light of his fine eyes, but the tumult within his soul
showed itself only in an added composure of his features.

"You wish me to speak plainly, I suppose," he said;--"though you know
already what I mean. I repeat,--I, and I alone, am to blame,--for--for
anything that seemed strange to you yesterday, when you met Von Glauben
at The Islands."

The King's serious face lightened with a gleam of laughter.

"Nothing seemed very strange to me, Humphry," he said, "except the
one fact that I found Von Glauben,--whom I supposed to be studying
scientific problems,--engaged in studying a woman instead! A very
beautiful woman, too, who ought to be something better than a sailor's
wife. And I do not understand, as yet, what he has to do with her,
unless--" Here he paused and went on more slowly--"Unless he is, as
I suspect, acting for you in some way, and trying to tempt the fair
creature with the prospect of a prince's admiration while the sailor
husband is out of the way! Remember, I know nothing--I merely hazard a
guess. You are an habitué of The Islands;--though I learned, on enquiry
of the interesting old gentleman who was good enough to be my host, Réné
Ronsard, that nobody had ever seen you there. They had only seen your
yacht constantly cruising about the bay. This struck me as curious, I
must confess. Some of your men were well known,--particularly one,--the
husband of the pretty girl I saw. Her name, it seems, is Gloria,--and I
must admit that it entirely suits her. I can hardly imagine that if you
have visited The Islands as often as you seem to have done, you can
have escaped seeing her. She is too beautiful to remain unknown to
you--particularly if her husband is, as they tell me, in your service. I
asked her to give me his name, but she refused it point-blank. I do not
wish to accuse you of an amour, which you are perhaps quite innocent
of--but certain things taken in their conjunction look suspicious,--and
I would remind you that honour in princes,--as in all men,--should come
before self-indulgence."

"I entirely agree with you, Sir!" said the Prince, composedly; "And
in the present case honour has been my first thought, as it will be my
last. Gloria is my wife!"

"Your wife!" The King rose, his tall figure looking taller, his eyes
sparkling with anger from under their deep-set brows. "Your wife! Are
you mad, Humphry! You!----the Heir-Apparent to the Throne! You have
married her!"

"I have!" replied the Prince, and the words now came coursing rapidly
from his lips in his excitement--"I love her! I love her with all my
heart and soul!--and I have given her the only shield and safeguard love
in this world can give! I have married her in my own name--the name of
our family,--which neither she nor any of the humble folk out yonder
have ever heard--but she is wedded to me as fast as Church and Law can
make it,--and there is only one wrong connected with my vows to her--she
does not know who I am. I have deceived her there,--but in nothing else.
Had I told her of my rank, she would never have married me. But now she
is mine,--and for her sake I am willing to resign all pretension to the
Throne in favour of my brother Rupert. Let it be so, I implore you! Let
me live my own life of love and liberty in my own way!"

Rigid as a statue the King stood,--his lips were set hard and his eyes
lowered. Long buried thoughts rose up from the innermost recesses of his
being, and rushed upon his brain in a deluge of remembrance and regret.
What!--after all these years, had the ghost of his first love, the
little self-slain maiden of his boyhood's dream, risen to avenge herself
in the life of his son? The strangeness of the comparison between
himself as he was now, and the eager passionate youth he was then,
smote him with a sense of sharp pain. Away in those far-off days he had
believed in love as the chief glory of existence; he had considered it
as the poets would have us consider it,--a saving, binding, holding and
immortal influence, which leads to all pure and holy things, even unto
God Himself, the Highest and Holiest of all. When he lost that belief,
how great was his loss!--when he ceased to experience that pure
idealistic emotion, how bitter became the monotony of living! Rapidly
the stream of memory swept over his innermost soul and shook his nerves,
and it was only through a strong effort of self-repression that at last,
lifting up his eyes he fixed them on the flushed face of his son, and
said in measured tones.

"This is a very unexpected and very unhappy confession of yours,
Humphry! You have acted most unwisely!--you have been disloyal to me,
who am not only your father, but your King! You have proved yourself
unworthy of the nation's trust,--and you have deceived, more cruelly
than you think, an innocent and too-confiding girl. I shall not dispute
the legality of your marriage;--that would not be worth my while.
You have no doubt taken every step to make it as binding as
possible;--however, that is but a trifling matter in your case. You
know that such a marriage is, and can only be morganatic;--and as the
immediate consequence of your amazing folly, a suitable Royal alliance
must be arranged for you at once. The nuptials can be celebrated with
the attainment of your majority next year."

He spoke coldly and calmly, but his heart was beating with mingled wrath
and pain, and even while he thus pronounced her doom, the exquisite
face of Gloria floated before him like the vision of a perfect innocence
ruined and betrayed. He realised that he possibly had an unusual
character to reckon with in her,--and he had lately become fully aware
that there was as much determination and latent force in the disposition
of his son, as in the mother who had given him birth. Pale and composed,
the young Prince heard him in absolute silence, and when he had
finished, still waited a moment, lest any further word should fall
from the lips of his parent and Sovereign. Then he spoke in quite as
measured, cold and tranquil a manner as the King had done.

"I need not remind you, Sir, that the days of tyranny are over. You
cannot force me into bigamy against my will!"

His father uttered a quick oath.

"Bigamy! Who talks of bigamy?"

"You do, Sir! I have married a beautiful and innocent woman,--she is my
lawful wife in the sight of God and man; yet you coolly propose to give
me a second wife under the 'morganatic' law, which, as I view it, is
merely a Royal excuse for bigamy! Now I have no wish to excuse myself
for marrying Gloria,--I consider she has honoured me far more than I
have honoured her. She has given me all her youth, her life, her love,
her beauty and her trust, and whatever I am worth in this world shall
be hers and hers only. I am quite prepared"--and he smiled somewhat
sarcastically,--"to make it a test case, and appeal to the law of the
realm. If that law tolerates a crime in princes, which it would punish
in commoners, then I shall ask the People to judge me!"

"Indeed!" And the King surveyed him with a touch of ironical amusement
and vague admiration for his audacity. "And suppose the people fail to
appreciate the romance of the situation?"

"Then I shall resign my nationality;" said the young man coolly;
"Because a country that legalises a wrong done to the innocent, is not
worth belonging to! Concerning the Throne,--as I told you before--I am
ready to abandon it at once. I would rather lose all the kingdoms of the
world than lose Gloria!"

There was a pause, during which the King took two or three slow paces
up and down the room. At last he turned and faced his son; his eyes were
softer--his look more kindly.

"You are very much in love just now, Humphry!" he said; "And I do not
wish to be too hard on you in this matter, for there can be no question
as to the extraordinary beauty of the girl you call your wife----"

"The girl who _is_ my wife," interrupted the Prince decisively.

"Very well; so let it be!" said his father calmly; "The girl who _is_
your wife--for the present! I will give you time--plenty of time--to
consider the position reasonably!"

"I have already considered it," he declared.

"No doubt! You think you have considered it. But if _you_ do not want to
meditate any further upon your marriage problem, you must allow me the
leisure to do so, as one who has seen more of life than you,--as one who
takes things philosophically--and also--as one who was young--once;--who
loved--once;--and who had his own private dreams of happiness--once!" He
rested a hand on his son's shoulder, and looked him full and fairly in
the eyes. "Let me advise you, Humphry, to go abroad! Travel round the
world for a year!"

The Prince was silent,--but his eyes did not flinch from his father's
steady gaze. He seemed to be thinking rapidly; but his thoughts were not
betrayed by any movement or expression that could denote anxiety. He was
alert, calm, and perfectly self-possessed.

"I have no objection," he said at last; "A year is soon past!"

"It is," agreed the King, with a sense of relief at his ready assent;
"But by the end of that time----"

"Things will be precisely as they are now," said the Prince tranquilly;
"Gloria will still be my wife, and I shall still be her husband!"

The King gave a gesture of annoyance.

"Whatever the result," he said, "she cannot, and will not be Crown
Princess!"

"She will not envy that destiny in my brother Rupert's wife," said
Prince Humphry quietly; "Nor shall I envy my brother Rupert!"

"You talk like a fool, Humphry!" said the King impatiently; "You cannot
resign your Heir-Apparency to the Throne, without giving a reason;--and
so making known your marriage."

"That is precisely what I wish to do," returned the young man. "I have
no intention of keeping my marriage secret. I am proud of it! Gloria is
mine--the joy of my soul--the very pulse of my life! Why should I hide
my heart's light under a cloud?"

His voice vibrated with tender feeling,--his handsome features were
softened into finer beauty by the passion which invigorated him, and his
father looking at him, thought for a moment that so might the young gods
of the fabled Parnassus have appeared in the height of their symbolic
power and charm. His own eyes grew melancholy, as he studied this
vigorous incarnation of ardent love and passionate resolve; and a slight
sigh escaped him unconsciously.

"You forget!" he said slowly, "you have, up to the present deceived the
girl. She does not know who you are. When she hears that you have played
a part,--that you are no sailor in the service of the Crown Prince, as
you have apparently represented yourself to be, but the Crown Prince
himself, what will she say to you? Perhaps she will hate you for the
deception, as much as she now loves you!"

A shadow darkened the young Prince's open countenance, but it soon
passed away.

"She will never hate me!" he said,--"For when I do tell her the truth,
it will be when I have resigned all the ridiculous pomp and circumstance
of my position for her sake----"

"Perhaps she will not let you resign it!" said the King; "She may be as
unselfish as she is beautiful!"

There was a slight, very slight note of derision in his voice, and the
Prince caught it up at once.

"You wrong yourself, Sir, more than you wrong my wife by any lurking
misjudgment of her," he said, with singularly masterful and expressive
dignity. "As her husband, and the guardian of her honour, I also claim
her obedience. What I desire is her law!"

The King laughed a little forcedly.

"Evidently you have found the miracle of the ages, Humphry!" he said;
"A woman who obeys her master! Well! Let us talk no more of it. You have
been guilty of an egregious folly,--but nothing can make your marriage
otherwise than morganatic. And when the State considers a Royal alliance
for you advisable, you will be compelled to obey the country's wish,--or
else resign the Throne."

"I shall obey the country's wish most decidedly," said the Prince,
"unless it asks me to commit bigamy,--as you suggest,--in which case I
shall decline! Three or four Royal sinners of this class I know of,
who for all their pains have not succeeded in winning the attachment of
their people, either for themselves or their heirs. Their people know
what they are, well enough, and despise their fraudulent position as
heartily as I do! I am perfectly convinced that if it were put to the
vote of the country, no people in the world would wish their future
monarch to be a bigamist!"

"How you stick to a word and a phrase!" exclaimed the King irritably;
"The morganatic rule does away with the very idea of bigamy!"

"How do you prove it, Sir?" queried the Prince. "Bigamy is the act of
contracting a second marriage while the first partner is alive. It is
punished severely in commoners;--why should Royalty escape?"

The King began to laugh. This boy was developing 'discursive
philosophies' such as his own old tutor had abhorred.

"Upon my life, I do not know, Humphry!" he declared; "You must ask the
departed shades of those who made themselves responsible for kingship
in the first place. Personally, I do not come under the law. I have only
married once myself!"

His son looked full at him;--and the intensity of that look affected
and unsteadied his usual calm nerves. But he was not one to shirk an
unpleasant suggestion.

"You would say, Humphry, if your filial respect permitted you, that my
one marriage has been amplified in various other ways. Perfectly true!
When women lie down and ask you to walk over them, you do it if you are
a man and a king! When, on the contrary, women show you that they do
not care whether you are royal or the reverse, and despise you more than
admire you, you run after them for all you are worth! At least I do! I
always have done so. And, to a certain extent, it has been amusing. But
the limit is reached. I am growing old!" Here he took up the cigar he
had thrown aside when his son had first startled him by the announcement
of his marriage, and relighting it, began to smoke peaceably. "I am, as
I say, growing old. I have never found what is called love. You have--or
think you have! Enjoy your dream, Humphry--but--take my advice and go
abroad! See whether travel does not work a change in you or,--in her!"
He paused a moment, and while the Prince still regarded him fixedly,
added; "Will you tell the Queen?"

"I will leave you to tell her, Sir, with your permission;" replied the
Prince; "I cannot expect her sympathy."

"Von Glauben, then, is the only person you have trusted with your
confidence?"

"Von Glauben was no party to my marriage, Sir. I was married fully three
months before I told him. He was greatly vexed and troubled,--but when
he saw Gloria, he was glad."

"Glad!" echoed the King; "For what reason, pray?"

"I am afraid, Sir," said the young man with a smile, "his gladness was
but a part of his science! He said it was better for a prince to wed
a healthy and beautiful commoner, than the daughter of a hundred
scrofulous kings!"

With a movement of intense indignation, the monarch sprang up from the
chair in which he had just seated himself.

"Now, by Heaven!" he exclaimed; "Von Glauben goes too far! He shall
suffer for this!"

"Why?" queried the Prince calmly; "You know that what he says is
perfectly true. True? Why, there is scarcely a Royal house in the world
save our own, without its hereditary curse of disease or insanity.
We pay more attention to the breeding of horses than the breeding of
kings!"

The plain candour and veracity of the statement, left no room for
denial.

"You have seen Gloria," went on the Prince; "You know she is the most
beautiful creature your eyes ever rested upon! Von Glauben told me you
were stricken dumb, and almost stupefied at sight of her----"

"Damn Von Glauben!" said the King.

His son smiled ever so slightly, but continued.

"You have made yourself acquainted with her history--"

"Yes!" said the King; "That she is a foundling picked up from the sea--a
castaway from a wreck!--no one knows who her father and mother were, and
yet you, in your raving madness and folly of love, would make her Crown
Princess and future Queen!"

The Prince went on unheedingly.

"She is beautiful--and the simple method of her bringing up has left her
unspoilt and innocent. She is ignorant of the world's ways--because--"
and his voice sank to a reverential tenderness--"God's ways are more
familiar to her!" He paused, but his father was silent; he therefore
went on. "She is healthy, strong, simple and true,--more fit for a
throne, if such were her destiny, than any daughter of any Royal house I
know of. Happy the nation that could call such a woman their Queen!"

"As I have already told you, Humphry," returned the King, "you are in
love!--with the love of a headstrong, passionate boy for a beautiful and
credulous girl. I do not propose to discuss the subject further. You are
willing to go abroad, you tell me,--then make your preparations at once.
I will select one or two necessary companions for you, and you can start
when you please. I would let Von Glauben accompany you, but--for the
present--I cannot well spare him. Your intended voyage must be made
public, and in this way nothing will be known of the manner in which
you have privately chosen to make a fool of yourself. I will explain
the situation to the Queen;--but beyond that I shall say nothing. Let me
know by to-morrow how soon you can arrange your departure."

The Prince bowed composedly, and was about to retire, when the King
called him back.

"You do not ask my pardon, Humphry, for the offence you have committed?"

The young man flushed, and bit his lip.

"Sir, I cannot ask pardon for what I do not consider is wrong! I have
married the woman I love; and I intend to be faithful to her. You
married a woman you did not love--and the result, according to my views,
and also according to my experience of my mother and yourself, is
more or less regrettable. If I have offended you, I sincerely beg your
forgiveness, but you must first point out the nature of the offence.
Surely, it must be more gratifying to you to know that I prefer to be a
man of honour than a common seducer?"

The King looked at him, and his own eyes fell under his son's clear
candid gaze.

"Enough! You may go!" he said briefly.

The door opened and closed again;--he was gone.

The King, left alone, fixed his eyes on the sparkling line of the sea,
brightly blue, and the flower-bordered terrace in front of him. Life was
becoming interesting;--the long burdensome monotony of years had changed
into a variety of contrasting scenes and colours,--and in taking up the
problem of human life as lived by others, more than as lived by himself,
he had entered on a new path, untrodden by conventionalities, and
leading, he knew not whither. But, having begun to walk in it, he was
determined to go on--and to use each new experience as a guide for the
rest of his actions. His son's marriage with a commoner--one who indeed
was not only a commoner but a foundling--might after all lead to good,
if properly taken in hand,--and he resolved not to make the worst of it,
but rather to let things take their own natural course.

"For love," he said to himself somewhat bitterly, "in nine cases out of
ten ends in satiety,--marriage, in separation by mutual consent! Let
the boy travel for a year, and forget, if he can, the fair face which
captivates him,--for it is a fair face,--and more than that,--I honestly
believe it is the reflex of a fair soul!"

His eyes grew dreamy and absorbed; away on the horizon a little white
cloud, shaped like the outspread wings of a dove, hovered over the sea
just where The Islands lay.

"Yes! Let him see new scenes--strange lands, and varying customs; let
him hear modern opinions of life, instead of reading the philosophies of
Aurelius and Epictetus, and the poetry written ages ago by the dead wild
souls of the past;--and so he will forget--and all will be well!
While for Gloria herself,--and the old revolutionist Ronsard--we shall
doubtless find ways and means of consolation for them both!"

Thus he mused,--yet in the very midst of his thoughts the echoing memory
of a golden voice, round and rich with delight and triumph rang in his
ears:

  "My King crown'd me!
    And I and he
  Are one till the world shall cease to be!"

CHAPTER XVI

THE PROFESSOR ADVISES

"I have discovered the secret of successful living, Professor," said
the King, a couple of hours later as, walking in one of the many thickly
wooded alleys of the palace grounds, he greeted Von Glauben, who had
been told to meet him there, and who had been waiting the Royal approach
with some little trepidation,--"It is this,--to draw a straight line of
conduct, and walk in it, regardless of other people's crooked curves!"

The Professor looked at him, and saw nothing but kindliness expressed
in his eyes and smile,--therefore, taking courage he replied without
embarrassment,--

"Truly, Sir, if a man is brave enough to do this, he may conquer
everything but death, and even face this last enemy without much alarm."

"I agree with you!" replied the monarch; "And Humphry's line has
certainly been straight enough, taken from the point of his own
perspective! Do you not think so?"

Von Glauben hesitated a moment--then spoke out boldly.

"Sir, as you now know all, I will frankly assure you that I think
his Royal Highness has behaved honourably, and as a true man! Society
pardons a prince for seducing innocence--but whether it will pardon him
for marrying it, is quite another question! And that is why I repeat,
he has behaved well. Though when he first told me he was married, I
suffered a not-to-be-explained misery and horror; 'For,' said he--'I
have married an angel!' Which naturally I thought (deducting a certain
quantity of the enthusiasm of youth for the statement) meant that he had
married a bouncing housemaid with large hands and feet. 'That is well,'
I told him--'For divorce is now made easy in this country, and you can
easily return the celestial creature to her native element!' At which
I resigned myself to hear some oaths, for violent expletives are
always refreshing to the masculine brain-matter. But his Royal Highness
maintained the good breeding which always distinguishes him, and merely
proceeded with his strange confession of romance,--which, as you, Sir,
are now happily aware of it, I need not recapitulate. Your knowledge of
the matter has lifted an enormous burden from my mind; Ach! Enormous!"

He gave a deep breath, and drew himself up to his full height--squared
his shoulders, and then, as it were stood firm, as though waiting
attack.

The King laughed good-naturedly, and took him by the arm.

"Tell me all you know, Von Glauben!" he said; "I am acquainted with the
gist and upshot of the matter,--namely, Humphry's marriage; but I am
wholly ignorant of the details."

"There is little to tell, Sir," said Von Glauben;--"Of the Prince's
constant journeyings to The Islands we were all aware long ago; but
the cause of those little voyages was not so apparent. To avoid the
suspicion with which a Royal visitor would be viewed, the Prince, it
appears, assumed to be merely one of the junior officers on his own
yacht,--and under this disguise became known and much liked by the
Islanders generally. He fell in love at first sight with the beautiful
girl your Majesty saw yesterday--Gloria; 'Glory-of-the-Sea'--as I
sometimes call her, and they were married by the old parish priest in
the little church among the rocks--the very church where, as her adopted
father, Ronsard, tells me, he heard the choristers singing a 'Gloria in
Excelsis' on the day he found her cast up on the shore."

"Well!" said the King, seeing that he paused; "And is the marriage
legal, think you?"

"Perfectly so, Sir!" replied Von Glauben; "Registered by law, as well
as sanctified by church. The Prince tells me he married her in his
own name,--but no one,--not even the poor little priest who married
them,--knew the surname of your Majesty's distinguished house, and I
believe,--nay I am sure--" here he heaved an unconscious sigh, "it will
bring a tragedy to the girl when she knows the true rank and title of
her husband!"

"How came _you_ to make her acquaintance? Tell me everything!--you know
I will not misjudge you!"

"Indeed, Sir, I hope you will not!" returned the Professor
earnestly;--"For there was never a man more hopelessly involved than
myself in the net prepared for me by this romantic lover, who has
the honour to be your son. In the first place, directly I heard this
confession of marriage, I was for telling you at once; but as he had
bound me by my word of honour before he began the story, to keep his
confidence sacred, I was unable to disburden myself of it. He said he
wanted to secure me as a friend for his wife. 'That,' said I firmly, 'I
will never be! For there will be difficulty when all is known; and if
it comes to a struggle between a pretty fishwife and the good of a
king--ach!--mein Gott!--I am not for the fishwife!'"

The King smiled; and Von Glauben went on.

"Well, he assured me she was not a fishwife. I said 'What is she then?'
'I tell you,' he replied, 'she is an angel! You will come and see her;
you will pass as an old friend of her sailor husband; and when you have
seen her you will understand!' I was angry, and said I would not go with
him; but afterwards I thought perhaps it would be best if I did, as I
might be able to advise him to some wise course. So I accompanied him
one afternoon in the past autumn to The Islands (he was married last
summer) and saw the girl,--the 'Glory-of-the-Sea.' And I must confess
to your Majesty, my heart went down before her beauty and innocence in
absolute worship! And if you were to kill me for it, I cannot help it--I
am now as devoted to her service as I am to yours!"

"Good!" said the King gently;--"Then you must help me to console her in
Humphry's absence!"

Professor Von Glauben's eyes opened widely, with a vague look of alarm.

"In his absence, Sir?"

"Yes! I am sending him abroad. He is quite willing to go, he tells me.
His departure will make all things perfectly easy for us. The girl must
remain in her present ignorance as to the position of the man she has
really married. The sailor she supposes him to be will accompany the
Prince on his yacht,--and it must be arranged that he never returns! She
is young, and will easily be consoled!"

Von Glauben was silent.

"_You_ will not betray the Prince's identity with her lover," went
on the King, "and no one else knows it. In fact, you will be the very
person best qualified to tell her of his departure, and--in due time, of
his fictitious death!"

They were walking slowly under the heavy shadow of crossed ilex
boughs,--and Von Glauben came to a dead halt.

"Sir," he said, in rather unsteady accents; "With every respect for your
Majesty, I must altogether decline the task of breaking a pure heart,
and ruining a young life! Moreover, if your Majesty, after all your
recent experiences,"--and he laid great emphasis on these last words,
"thinks there is any ultimate good to be obtained by keeping up a lie,
and practising a fraud, the lessons we have learned in these latter days
are wholly unavailing! You began this conversation with me by speaking
of a straight line of conduct, which should avoid other people's crooked
curves. Is this your Majesty's idea of a straight line?"

He spoke with unguarded vehemence, but the King was not offended. On the
contrary, he looked whimsically interested and amused.

"My dear Von Glauben, you are not usually so inconsistent! Humphry
himself has kept up a lie, and practised a fraud on the girl----"

"Only for a time!" interrupted the Professor hastily.

"Oh, we all do it 'only for a time.' Everything--life itself--is 'only
for a time!' You know as well as I do that this absurd marriage can
never be acknowledged. I explained as much to Humphry; I told him he
could guard himself by the morganatic law, provided he would consent
to a Royal alliance immediately--but the young fool swore it would be
bigamy, and took himself off in a huff."

"He was right! It would be bigamy;--it _is_ bigamy!", said the
Professor; "Call it by what name you like in Court parlance, the act of
having two wives is forbidden in this country. The wisest men have come
to the conclusion that one wife is enough!"

"Humphry's ideas being so absolutely childish," went on the King, "it is
necessary for him to expand them somewhat. That is why I shall send
him abroad. You have a strong flavour of romance in your Teutonic
composition, Von Glauben,--and I can quite sympathise with your
admiration for the 'Glory-of-the-Sea' as you call her. From a man's
point of view, I admire her myself. But I know nothing of her moral or
mental qualities; though from her flat refusal to give me her husband's
name yesterday, I judge her as wilful,--but most pretty women are that.
And as for my line of conduct, it will, I assure you, be perfectly
'straight,'--in the direction of my duty as a King,--apart altogether
from sentimental considerations! And in this, as in other things,--"
he paused and emphasised his words--"I rely on your honour and faithful
service!"

The Professor made no reply. He was, thinking deeply. With a kind of
grim scorn, he pointed out to himself that his imagination was held
captive by the mental image of a woman, whose eyes had expressed trust
in him; and almost as tenderly as the lover in Tennyson's 'Maud' he
could have said that he 'would die, To save from some slight shame one
simple girl.' Presently he braced himself up, and confronted his Royal
master.

"Sir," he said very quietly, yet with perfect frankness; "Your Majesty
must have the goodness to pardon me if I say you must not rely upon
me at all in this matter! I will promise nothing, except to be true to
myself and my own sense of justice. I have given up my own country for
conscience' sake--I can easily give up another which is not my own, for
the same reason. In the matter of this marriage or 'mésalliance' as the
worldly would call it,--I have nothing whatever to do. While the Prince
asked me to keep his secret, I kept it. Now that he has confided it to
your Majesty, I am relieved and satisfied; and shall not in any way, by
word or suggestion, interfere with your Majesty's intentions. But, at
the same time, I shall not assist them! For as regards the trusting
girl who has been persuaded that she has won a great love and complete
happiness for all her life,--I have sworn to be her friend;--and I must
respectfully decline to be a party to any further deception in her case.
Knowing what I know of her character, which is a pure and grand one, I
think it would be far better to tell her the whole truth, and let her
be the arbiter of her own destiny. She will decide well and truly, I am
sure!"

He ceased; the King was silent. Von Glauben studied his face
attentively.

"You are a thinker, Sir,--a student and a philosopher. You are not
one of those kings who treat their kingship as a license for the free
exercise of intolerant humours and vicious practices. Were you no
monarch at all, you would still be a sane and thoughtful man. Take my
humble advice, Sir--for once put the unspoilt nature of a pure woman to
the test, and find out what a grand creature God intended woman to
be, in her pristine simplicity and virtue! Send for Gloria to this
Court;--tell her the truth!--and await the result with confidence!"

There was a pause. The King walked slowly up and down; at last he spoke.

"You may be right! I do not say you are wrong. I will consider your
suggestion. Certainly it would be the straightest course. But first a
complete explanation is due to the Queen. She must know all,--and if
her interest can be awakened by such a triviality as her son's
love-affair--" and he smiled somewhat bitterly,--"perhaps she may agree
to your plan as the best way out of the difficulty. In any case"--here
he extended his hand which the Professor deferentially bowed over--"I
respect your honesty and plain speaking, Professor! I have reason to
approve highly of sincerity,--wherever and however I find it,--at the
present crisis of affairs. For the moment, I will only ask you to be on
your guard with Humphry;--and say as little as possible to him on the
subject of his marriage or intended departure from this country.
Keep everything as quiet as may be;--till--till we find a clear and
satisfactory course to follow, which shall inflict as little pain as
possible on all concerned. And now, a word with you on other matters."

They walked on side by side, through the garden walks and ways,
conversing earnestly,--and by and by penetrating into the deeper
recesses of the outlying woodlands, were soon hidden among the crossing
and recrossing of the trees. Had they kept to the open ground, from
whence the wide expanse of the sea could be viewed from end to end,
their discussions might perhaps have been interrupted, and themselves
somewhat startled,--for they would have seen Prince Humphry's yacht,
with every inch of canvas stretched to the utmost, flying rapidly before
the wind like a wild white bird, winging its swift, straight way to the
west where the sun shot down Apollo-like shafts of gold on the gleaming
purple coast-line of The Islands.

CHAPTER XVII

AN "HONOURABLE" STATESMAN

It is not easy to trace the causes why it so often happens that
semi-educated, and more or less shallow men rise suddenly to a height
of brilliant power and influence in the working of a country's policy.
Sometimes it is wealth that brings them to the front; sometimes the
strong support secretly given to them by others in the background,
who have their own motives to serve, and who require a public
representative; but more often still it is sheer unscrupulousness,--or
what may be described as 'walking over' all humane and honest
considerations,--that places them in triumph at the helm of affairs. To
rise from a statesman to be a Secretary of State augurs a certain
amount of brain, though not necessarily of the highest quality; while it
certainly betokens a good deal of dash and impudence. Carl Pérousse, one
of the most prominent among the political notabilities of Europe, had
begun his career by small peddling transactions in iron and timber
manufactures; he came of a very plebeian stock, and had received only
a desultory sort of education, picked up here and there in cheap
provincial schools. But he had a restless, domineering spirit of
ambition. Ashamed of his plebeian origin, and embittered from his
earliest years by a sense of grudge against those who moved in the
highest and most influential circles of the time, the idea was always in
his mind that he would one day make himself an authority over the
very persons, who, in the rough and tumble working-days of his younger
manhood, would not so much as cast him a word or a look. He knew that
the first thing necessary to attain for this purpose was money; and he
had, by steady and constant plod, managed to enlarge and expand all his
business concerns into various, important companies, which he set afloat
in all quarters of the world,--with the satisfactory result that by
the time his years had run well into the forties, he was one of the
wealthiest men in the country. He had from the first taken every
opportunity to insinuate himself into politics; and in exact proportion
to the money he made, so was his success in acquiring such coveted
positions in life as brought with them the masterful control of various
conflicting aims and interests. His individual influence had extended by
leaps and bounds till he had become only secondary in importance to
the Prime Minister himself; and he possessed a conveniently elastic
conscience, which could be stretched at will to suit any party or any
set of principles. In personal appearance he was not prepossessing.
Nature had branded him in her own special way 'Trickster,' for those who
cared to search for her trademark. He was tall and thin, with a narrow
head and a deeply-lined, clean-shaven countenance, the cold immovability
of which was sometimes broken up by an unpleasant smile, that merely
widened the pale set lips without softening them, and disclosed a
crooked row of smoke-coloured teeth, much decayed. He had small eyes,
furtively hidden under a somewhat restricted frontal development,--his
brows were narrow,--his forehead ignoble and retreating. But despite a
general badness, or what may be called a 'smirchiness' of feature, he
had learned to assume an air of superiority, which by its sheer audacity
prevented a casual observer from setting him down as the vulgarian he
undoubtedly was; and his amazing pluck, boldness and originality in
devising ways and means of smothering popular discontent under various
'shows' of apparent public prosperity, was immensely useful to all such
'statesmen,' whose statesmanship consisted in making as much money
as possible for themselves out of the pockets of their credulous
countrymen. He was seldom disturbed by opposing influences; and even now
when he had just returned from the palace with the full knowledge that
the King was absolutely resolved on vetoing certain propositions he had
set down in council for the somewhat arbitrary treatment of a certain
half-tributary power which had latterly turned rebellious, he was more
amused than irritated.

"I suppose his Majesty wants to distinguish himself by a melodramatic
_coup d'état_" he said, leaning easily back in his chair, and studying
the tips of his carefully pared and polished finger-nails;--"Poor fool!
I don't blame him for trying to do something more than walk about his
palace in different costumes at stated intervals,--but he will find his
'veto' out of date. We shall put it to the country;--and I think I can
answer for that!"

He smiled, as one who knows where and how to secure a triumph, and his
equanimity was not disturbed in the least by the unexpected arrival of
the Premier, who was just then announced, and who, coming in his turn
from the King's diplomatic reception, had taken the opportunity to call
and see his colleague on his way home.

"You seem fatigued, Marquis!" he said, as, rising to receive his
distinguished guest, he placed a chair for him opposite his own. "Was
his Majesty's conversazione more tedious than usual?"

Lutera looked at him with a dubious air.

"No!--it was brief enough so far as I was immediately concerned," he
replied;--"I do not suppose I stayed more than twenty minutes in
the Throne-room altogether. I understand you have been told that our
proposed negotiations are to be vetoed?"

Pérousse smiled.

"I have been told--yes!--but I have been told many things which I do
not believe! The King certainly has the right of veto; but he dare not
exercise it."

"Dare not?" echoed the Marquis--"From his present unconstitutional
attitude it seems to me he dare do anything!"

"I tell you he dare not!" repeated Pérousse quietly;--"Unless he wishes
to lose the Throne. I daresay if it came to that, we should get on quite
as well--if not better--with a Republic!"

Lutera looked at him with an amazed and reluctant admiration.

"_You_ talk of a Republic? You,--who are for ever making the most loyal
speeches in favour of the monarchy?"

"Why not?" queried Pérousse lightly;--"If the monarchy does not do as it
is told, whip it like a naughty child and send it to bed. That has been
easily arranged before now in history!"

The Marquis sat silent,--thinking, or rather brooding heavily. Should
he, or should he not unburden himself of certain fears that oppressed
his mind? He cleared his throat of a troublesome huskiness and began,--

"If the purely business transactions in which you are engaged----"

"And you also," put in Pérousse placidly.

The Premier shifted his position uneasily and went on.

"I say, if the purely business transactions of this affair were publicly
known----"

"As well expect Cabinet secrets to be posted on a hoarding in the open
thoroughfare!" said Pérousse. "What afflicts you with these sudden pangs
of distrust at your position? You have taken care to provide for all
your own people! What more can you desire?"

Lutera hesitated; then he said slowly:--

"I think there is only one thing for me to do,--and that is to send in
my resignation at once!"

Carl Pérousse raised himself a little out of his chair, and opened his
narrow eyes.

"Send in your resignation!" he echoed; "On what grounds? Do me the
kindness to remember, Marquis, that I am not yet quite ready to take
your place!"

He smiled his disagreeable smile,--and the Marquis began to feel
irritated.

"Do not be too sure that you will ever have it to take," he said with
some acerbity; "If the King should by any means come to know of your
financial deal----"

"You seem to be very suddenly afraid of the King!" interrupted Pérousse;
"Or else strange touches of those catch-word ideals 'Loyalty' and
'Patriotism' are troubling your mind! You speak of _my_ financial
deal,--is not yours as important? Review the position;--it is simply
this;--for years and years the Ministry have been speculating in office
matters,--it is no new thing. Sometimes they have lost, and sometimes
they have won; their losses have been replaced by the imposition of
taxes on the people,--their gains they have very wisely said nothing
about. In these latter days, however, the loss has been considerably
more than the gain. 'Patriotism,' as stocks, has gone down. 'Honour'
will not pay the piper. We cannot increase taxation just at present; but
by a war, we can clear out some of the useless population, and invest in
contracts for supplies. The mob love fighting,--and every small victory
won, can be celebrated in beer and illuminations, to expand what is
called 'the heart of the People.' It is a great 'heart,' and always
leaps to strong drink,--which is cheap enough, being so largely
adulterated. The country we propose to subdue is rich,--and both you and
I have large investments of land there. With the success which our arms
are sure to obtain, we shall fill not only the State coffers (which have
been somewhat emptied by our predecessors' peculations), but our own
coffers as well. The King 'vetoes' the war; then let us hear what the
People say! Of course we must work them up first; and then get their
verdict while they are red-hot with patriotic excitement. The Press,
ordered by Jost, can manage that! Put it to the country; (through
Jost);--but do not talk of resigning when we are on the brink of
success! _I_ will carry this thing through, despite the King's 'veto'!"

"Wait!" said the Marquis, drawing his chair closer to Pérousse, and
speaking in a low uneasy tone; "You do not know all! There is some
secret agency at work against us; and, among other things, I fear that
a foreign spy has been inadvertently allowed to learn the mainspring of
our principal moves. Listen, and judge for yourself!"

And he related the story of David Jost's midnight experience, carefully
emphasising every point connected with his own signet-ring. As he
proceeded with the narration, Pérousse's face grew livid,--once or twice
he clenched his hand nervously, but he said nothing till he had heard
all.

"Your ring, you say, had never left the King's possession?"

"So the King himself assured me, this very afternoon."

"Then someone must have passed off an imitation signet on David Jost,"
continued Pérousse meditatively. "What name did the spy give?"

"Pasquin Leroy."

Carl Pérousse opened a small memorandum book, and carefully wrote the
name down within it.

"Whatever David Jost has said, David Jost alone is answerable for!"
he then said calmly--"A Jew may be called a liar with impunity, and
whatever a Jew has asserted can be flatly denied. Remember, he is in our
pay!"

"I doubt if he will consent to be made the scapegoat in this affair,"
said Lutera; "Unless we can make it exceptionally to his advantage;--he
has the press at his command."

"Give him a title!" returned Pérousse contemptuously; "These Jew
press-men love nothing better!"

The Marquis smiled somewhat sardonically.

"Jost, with a patent of nobility would cut rather an extraordinary
figure!" he said; "Still he would probably make good use of
it,--especially if he were to start a newspaper in London! They would
accept him as a great man there!"

Pérousse gave a careless nod; his thoughts were otherwise occupied.

"This Pasquin Leroy has gone to Moscow?"

"According to his own words, he was leaving this morning."

"I daresay that statement is a blind. I should not at all wonder if he
is still in the city. I will get an exact description of him from Jost,
and set Bernhoff on his track."

"Do not forget," said the Marquis impressively, "that he told Jost in
apparently the most friendly and well-meaning manner possible, that the
King had discovered the whole plan of our financial campaign. He even
reported _me_ as being ready to resign in consequence----"

"Which apparently you are!" interpolated Pérousse with some sarcasm.

"I certainly have my resignation in prospect," returned Lutera
coldly--"And, so far, this mysterious spy has seemingly probed my
thoughts. If he is as correct in his report concerning the King, it is
impossible to say what may be the consequence."

"Why, what can the King do?" demanded Pérousse impatiently, and with
scorn for the vacillating humour of his companion; "Granted that he knew
everything from the beginning----"

"Including your large land purchases and contract concessions in the
very country you propose war with," put in the Marquis,--"Say that he
knew you had resolved on war, and had already started a company for the
fabrication of the guns and other armaments, out of which you get the
principal pickings--what then?"

"What then?" echoed Pérousse defiantly--"Why nothing! The King is as
powerless as a target in a field, set up for arrows to be aimed at! He
dare not divulge a State secret; he has no privilege of interference
with politics; all he can do is to 'lead' fashionable society--a poor
business at best--and at present his lead is not particularly apparent.
The King must do as We command!"

He rose and paced up and down with agitated steps.

"To-day, when he told me he had resolved to 'veto' my propositions, I
accepted his information without any manifestation of surprise. I merely
said it would have to be stated in the Senate, and that reasons would
have to be given. He agreed, and said that he himself would proclaim
those reasons. I told him it was impossible!"

"And what was his reply?" asked the Marquis.

"His reply was as absurd as his avowed intention. 'Hitherto it has been
impossible,' he said; 'But in Our reign we shall make it possible!' He
declined any further conversation with me, referring me to you and our
chief colleagues in the Cabinet."

"Well?"

"Well! I pay no more attention to a King's sudden caprice than I do to
the veering of the wind! He will alter his mind in a few days, when the
exigency of the matters in hand becomes apparent to him. In the same
way, he will revoke his decision about that grant of land to the
Jesuits. He must let them have their way."

"What benefit do we get by favouring the Jesuits?" asked Lutera.

"Jost gets a thousand a year for putting flattering notices of the
schools, processions, festivals and such nonsense in his various
newspapers; and our party secures the political support of the Vatican
in Europe,--which just now is very necessary. The Pope must give his
Christian benediction not only to our Educational system, but also to
the war!"

"Then the King has set himself in our way already, even in this matter?"

"He has! Quite unaccountably and very foolishly. But we shall persuade
him still to be of our opinion. The ass that will not walk must be
beaten till he gallops! I have no anxiety whatever on any point; even
the advent of Jost's spy, with an imitation of your signet on his finger
appears to me quite melodramatic, and only helps to make the general
situation more interesting,--to me at least;--I am only sorry to see
that you allow yourself to be so much concerned over these trifles!"

"I have my family to think of," said the Marquis slowly; "My reputation
as a statesman, and my honour as a minister are both at stake." Pérousse
smiled oddly, but said nothing. "If in any way my name became a subject
of popular animadversion, it would entirely ruin the position I believe
I have attained in history. I have always wished,--" and there was a
tinge of pathos in his voice--"my descendants to hold a certain pride in
my career!"

Pérousse looked at him with grim amusement.

"It is a curious and unpleasant fact that the 'descendants' of these
days do not care a button for their ancestors," he said; "They generally
try to forget them as fast as possible. What do the descendants of
Robespierre, (if there are any), care about him? The descendants of
Wellington? The descendants of Beethoven or Lord Byron? Among the many
numerous advantages attending the world-wide fame of Shakespeare is that
he has left no descendants. If he had, his memory would have been more
vulgarised by _them,_ than by any Yankee kicker at his grave! One of the
most remarkable features of this progressive age is the cheerful ease
with which sons forget they ever had fathers! I am afraid, Marquis, you
are not likely to escape the common doom!"

Lutera rose slowly, and prepared to take his departure.

"I shall call a Cabinet Council for Monday," he said; "This is Friday.
You will find it convenient to attend?"

Pérousse, rising at the same time, assented smilingly.

"You will see things in a better and clearer light by then," he said.
"Rely on me! I have not involved you thus far with any intention of
bringing you to loss or disaster. Whatever befalls you in this affair
must equally befall me; we are both in the same boat. We must carry
things through with a firm hand, and show no hesitation. As for the
King, his business is to be a Dummy; and as Dummy he must remain."

Lutera made no reply. They shook hands,--not over cordially,--and
parted; and as soon as Pérousse heard the wheels of the Premier's
carriage grinding away from his outer gate, he applied himself
vigorously to the handle of one of the numerous telephone wires fitted
up near his desk, and after getting into communication with the quarter
he desired, requested General Bernhoff, Chief of the Police, to attend
upon him instantly. Bernhoff's headquarters were close by, so that he
had but to wait barely a quarter of an hour before that personage,--the
same who had before been summoned to the presence of the
King,--appeared.

To him Pérousse handed a slip of paper, on which he had written the
words 'Pasquin Leroy.'

"Do you know that name?" he asked.

General Bernhoff looked at it attentively. Only the keenest and closest
observer could have possibly detected the slight flicker of a smile
under the stiff waxed points of his military moustache, as he read it.
He returned it carefully folded.

"I fancy I have heard it!" he said cautiously; "In any case, I shall
remember it."

"Good! There is a man of that name in this city; trace him if you
can! Take this note to Mr. David Jost"--and while he spoke he hastily
scrawled a few lines and addressed them--"and he will give you an
exact personal description of him. He is reported to have left for
Moscow,--but I discredit that statement. He is a foreign spy, engaged,
we believe, in the work of taking plans of our military defences,--he
must be arrested, and dealt with rigorously at once. You understand?"

"Perfectly," replied Bernhoff, accepting the note handed to him; "If he
is to be discovered, I shall not fail to discover him!"

"And when you think you are on the track, let me have information at
once," went on Pérousse; "But be well on your guard, and let no one
learn the object of your pursuit. Keep your own counsel!"

"I always do!" returned Bernhoff bluntly. "If I did not there might be
trouble!"

Pérousse looked at him sharply, but seeing the wooden-like impassiveness
of his countenance, forced a smile.

"There might indeed!" he said; "Your tact and discretion, General,
do much to keep the city quiet. But this affair of Pasquin Leroy is a
private matter."

"Distinctly so!" agreed Bernhoff quietly; "I hold the position
entirely!"

He shortly afterwards withdrew, and Carl Pérousse, satisfied that he had
at any rate taken precautions to make known the existence of a spy in
the city, if not to secure his arrest, turned to the crowding business
on his hands with a sense of ease and refreshment. He might not have
felt quite so self-assured and complacent, had he seen the worthy
Bernhoff smiling broadly to himself as he strolled along the street,
with the air of one enjoying a joke, the while he murmured,--

"Pasquin Leroy,--engaged in taking plans of the military defences--is
he? Ah!--a very dangerous amusement to indulge in! Engaged in taking
plans!--Ah!--Yes!--Very good,--very good; excellent! Do I know the
name? Yes! I fancy I might have heard it! Oh, yes, very good
indeed--excellent! And this spy is probably still in the city?
Yes!--Probably! Yes--I should imagine it quite likely!"

Still smiling, and apparently in the best of humours with himself
and the world at large, the General continued his easy stroll by the
sea-fronted ways of the city, along the many picturesque terraces,
and up flights of marble steps built somewhat in the fashion of the
prettiest corners of Monaco, till he reached the chief promenade and
resort of fashion, which being a broad avenue running immediately
under and in front of the King's palace facing the sea, was in the late
sunshine of the afternoon crowded with carriages and pedestrians. Here
he took his place with the rest, saluting a fellow officer here, or a
friend there,--and stood bareheaded with the rest of the crowd, when
a light gracefully-shaped landau, drawn by four greys, and escorted
by postillions in the Royal liveries, passed like a triumphal car,
enshrining the cold, changeless and statuesque beauty of the Queen,
upon whom the public were never weary of gazing. She was a curiosity to
them--a living miracle in her unwithering loveliness; for, apparently
unmoved by emotion herself, she roused all sorts of emotions in others.
Bernhoff had seen her a thousand times, but never without a sense of new
dazzlement.

"Always the same Sphinx!" he thought now, with a slight frown shading
the bluff good-nature of his usual expression; "She is a woman who
will face Death as she faces Time,--with that cold smile of hers which
expresses nothing but scorn of all life's little business!"

He proceeded meditatively on his way to the palace itself, where, on
demand, he was at once admitted to the private apartments of the King.

CHAPTER XVIII

ROYAL LOVERS

Silver-white glamour of the moon, and velvet darkness of deep branching
foliage held the quiet breadth of The Islands between them. Low on the
shore the fantastic shapes of one or two tall cliffs were outlined black
on the fine sparkling sand,--tiny waves rose from the bosom of the calm
sea, and cuddling together in baby ripples made bubbles of their crests,
and broke here and there among the pebbles with low gurgles of laughter,
and in the warm silence of the southern night the nightingales began to
tune up their delicate fluty voices with delicious tremors and pauses in
the trying of their song. The under-scent of hidden violets among moss
flowed potently upon the quiet air, mingled with strong pine-odours and
the salt breath of the gently heaving sea,--and all the land seemed as
lonely and as fair as the fabled Eden might have been, when the first
two human mated creatures knew it as their own. To every soul that loves
for the first time, the vision of that Lost Paradise is granted; to
every man and woman who know and feel the truth of the divine passion is
vouchsafed a flashing gleam of glory from that Heaven which gives them
to each other. For the voluptuary--for the animal man,--who like his
four-footed kindred is only conscious of instinctive desire, this pure
expansion of the heart and ennobling of the thought is as a sealed
book,--a never-to-be-divulged mystery of joy, which, because he cannot
experience it, he is unable to believe in. It is a glory-cloud in
which the privileged ones are 'caught up and received out of sight.' It
transfuses the roughest elements into immortal influences,--it colours
the earth with fairer hues, and fills the days with beauty; every hour
is a gem of sweet thought set in the dreaming soul, and the lover, at
certain times of rapt ecstasy, would smile incredulously were he told
that anyone living could be unhappy. For love goes back to the beginning
of things,--to the time when the world was new. It has its birth in that
primeval light when 'the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy.' If it is real, deep, passionate and
disinterested love, it sees no difficulties and knows no disillusions.
It is a sufficient assurance of God to make life beautiful. But in these
days of the eld-time of nations, when all things are being mixed and
prepared for casting into a new mould of world-formation, where we and
our civilizations are not, and shall not be,--any more than the Egyptian
Rameses is part of us now,--love in its pristine purity, faith and
simplicity, is rare. Very little romance is left to hallow it; and it is
doubtful whether the white moon, swinging like a silver lamp in heaven
above the peaceful Islands, shed her glory anywhere on any such
lovers in the world, as the two who on this fair night of the southern
springtime, with arms entwined round each other, moved slowly up and
down on the velvet greensward outside Ronsard's cottage,--Gloria and her
'sailor' husband.

Gloria was happy,--and her happiness made her doubly beautiful. Clad in
her usual attire of white homespun, with her rich hair falling unbound
over her shoulders in girl-fashion, and just kept back by a band of
white coral, she looked like a young goddess of the sea; her lustrous,
starlike eyes gazed up into the tender responsive ones of the handsome
stripling she had so trustfully wedded, and not a shadow of doubt
or fear darkened the heaven of her confidence. She did not know how
beautiful she was,--she did not realise that her body was like one of
the unfettered, graceful and perfectly-proportioned figures of women
left to our wondering reverence by the Greek sculptors,--she had never
thought about herself at all, not even to compare her fair brilliancy
of skin with the bronzed, weather-beaten faces of the fisher-folk among
whom she dwelt. Resting her delicate classic head against the encircling
arm of her lover and lord, her beauty seemed almost unearthly in its
pure transparency of feature, outlined by the silver glimmer of the
moonbeams; and the young man by her side, with his handsome dark head,
tall figure and distinguished bearing, looked the fitting mate for her
fair, blossoming womanhood. No two lovers were ever more ideally matched
in physical perfection; and as they moved slowly to and fro on the soft
dark grass, brushing the dewy scent from hanging rose-boughs that pushed
out inviting tufts of white and pink bloom here and there from the
surrounding foliage, they would have served many a poet for some sweet
idyll, or romance in rhyme, which should hold in its stanzas the magic
of immortality. Yet there was a shade of uneasiness in the minds of
both,--Prince Humphry was more silent than usual, and seemed absorbed
in thought; and Gloria, looking timidly up from time to time at the dark
poetic face of her 'sailor' lover, felt with a woman's quick instinct
that something was troubling him, and remorsefully concluded that she
was to blame,--that he had heard of her having been seen by the King,
and that he was evidently vexed by it. He had arrived that evening
suddenly and unexpectedly; for she and her 'little father,' as she
called Réné Ronsard, had just begun their frugal supper, when the Crown
Prince's yacht swept into the bay and dropped anchor. Half an hour later
he, the much-beloved 'junior officer' in the Crown Prince's service had
appeared at the cottage door, greatly to their delight, for they did not
expect to see him so soon. They had supped together, and then Ronsard
himself had gone to superintend a meeting at a small social club he had
started for the amusement of the fisher-folk, wisely leaving the young
wedded lovers to themselves. And they had for a long time been very
quiet, save for such little words of love as came into tune with the
interchange of caresses,--and after a pause of anxious inward thought,
Gloria ventured on a timid query.

"Dearest,--are you _very_ angry with me?"

He started,--and stopping in his walk, turned the fair face up between
his two hands, as one might lift a rose on its stem, and kissed it
tenderly.

"Angry? How can I ever be angry with you, Sweet? Besides what cause have
I for anger?"

"I thought, perhaps--" murmured Gloria, "that if the Professor told you
what I did yesterday,--when the King came--"

"He did tell me;" and the Prince still gazed down on that heavenly
beauty which was the light of the world to him. "He told me that you
sang;--and that your golden voice was a musical magnet which drew his
Majesty to your feet! I am not surprised,--it was only natural! But
I could have wished it had not happened just yet; however, it has
happened, and we must make the best of it!"

"It was my fault," said the girl penitently;--"I had the fancy to sing;
and I _would_ sing, though the good Professor told me not to do so!"

The Prince was silent. He was bracing his mind to the inevitable. He had
determined that on this very night Gloria should know the truth. For he
was instinctively certain that if he went abroad, as his father wished
him to do, some means would be taken to remove her altogether from the
country before his return; and his idea was to tell her all, and make
her accompany him on his travels. As his wife, she was bound to obey
him, he argued within himself; she should, she must go with him!
Unconsciously Gloria's next words supplied him with an opening to the
subject.

"Why did you never tell me that the Professor was in the King's
service?" she asked. "He seemed to know him quite well,--indeed, almost
as a friend!"

"He is the King's physician," answered the Prince abruptly; "And,
therefore, he is very greatly in the King's confidence."

He walked on, still keeping his arm round her, and seemed not to see the
half-frightened glance she gave him.

"The King's physician!" she echoed;--"He does not seem a great person at
all,--he is quite a simple old German man!"

Her lover smiled.

"To be physician to the King, my Gloria, is not a very wonderful honour!
It merely implies that the man so chosen is perhaps the ablest fencer
with sickness and death; the greatness is in the simple old German
himself, not in the King's preference. Von Glauben is a good man."

"I know it;" said Gloria gently; "He is good,--and very kind. He said
he would always be my friend,--but he was very strange in his manner
yesterday, and almost I was vexed with him. Do you know what he said? He
asked me what I should do if you--my husband, had deceived me? Can you
imagine such a thing?"

Now was the supreme moment. With a violently beating heart the Prince
halted, and putting both arms round her waist, drew her up to him in
such a way that their eyes looked close into each other's, and their
lips were within kissing touch.

"Yes, my sweetest one! I can imagine such a thing! Such a thing is
possible! Consider it to be true! Consider that I _have_ deceived you!"

She did not move from his clasp, but into her large, lovely trusting
eyes came a look of grief and terror, and her face grew ashy pale.

"In what way?" she whispered faintly; "Tell me! I--I--cannot believe
it!"

"Gloria,--Gloria! My love, my darling! Do not tremble so! Do not fear!
I have not deceived you in any evil way,--what I have done was for
your good and mine; but now--now there is no longer any need of
deception,--you may, and _shall_ know all the truth, my wife, my dearest
in the world! You shall know me as I truly am at last!"

She moved restlessly in his strong clasp,--she was trembling from head
to foot, as if her blood was suddenly chilled.

"As you truly are!" she echoed, with pale lips--"Are you not then what I
have believed you to be?"

And she made an effort to withdraw herself entirely from his embrace.
But he held her fast.

"I am your husband, Gloria!" he said, "and you are my wife! Nothing can
alter that; nothing can change our love or disunite our lives. But I am
not the poor naval officer I have represented myself to be!--though I am
glad I adopted such a disguise, because by its aid I wooed and won your
love! I am not in the service of the Crown Prince,--except in so far
as I serve my own needs! Why, how you tremble!"--and he held her
closer--"Do not be afraid, my darling! Lift up your eyes and look at me
with your own sweet trusting look,--do not turn away from me, because
instead of being the Prince's servant, I am the Prince himself!"

"The Prince!" And with a cry of utter desolation, Gloria wrenched
herself out of his arms, and stood apart, looking at him in wild alarm
and bewilderment. "The Prince! You--you!--my husband! You,--the King's
son! And you have married _me_!--oh, how cruel of you!--how cruel!--how
cruel!"

Covering her face with her hands, she broke into a low sobbing,--and the
Prince, cut to the heart by her distress, caught her again in his arms.

"Hush, Gloria!" he said, with an accent of authority, though his own
voice was tremulous; "You must not grieve like this! You will break my
heart! Do you not understand? Do you not see that all my life is bound
up in you?--that I give it to you to do what you will with?--that I care
nothing for rank, state or throne without you?--that I will let all the
world go rather than lose you? Gloria, do not weep so!--do not weep!
Every tear of yours is a pang to me! What does it matter whether I am
prince or commoner? I love you!--we love each other!--we are one in the
sight of Heaven!"

He held her passionately in his arms, kissing the soft clusters of hair
that fell against his breast, and whispering all the tenderest words
of endearment he could think of to console and soothe her anguish. By
degrees she grew calmer, and her sobs gradually ceased. Dashing the
tears from her eyes, she looked up,--her face white as marble.

"You must not tell Ronsard!" she said in faint tones that shook with
fear; "He would kill you!"

The Prince smiled indulgently; his only thought was for her, and so long
as he could dry her tears, Ronsard's rage or pleasure was nothing to
him.

"He would kill you!" repeated Gloria, with wide open tear-wet eyes;
"He hates all kings, in his heart!--and if he knew that you--_you_--my
husband,--were what you say you are;--if he thought you had married me
under a disguise, only to leave me and never to want me any more----"

"Gloria, Gloria!" cried the Prince, in despair; "Why will you say such
things! Never to want you any more! I want you all my life, and every
moment of that life! Gloria, you must listen to me--you must not turn
from me at the very time I need you most! Are you not brave? Are you not
true? Do you not love me?"

With a pathetic gesture she stretched out her hands to him.

"Oh, yes, I love you!" she said; "I love you with all my heart! But you
have deceived me!--my dearest, you have deceived me! And if you had
only told me the truth, I would never,--for your own sake,--have married
you!"

"I know that!" said the Prince; "And that is why I determined to win you
under the mask of poverty! Now listen, my Princess and my Queen!--for
you are both! I want all your help--all your love--all your trust! Do
not be afraid of Ronsard; he will, he can do nothing to harm me! You are
my wife, Gloria,--you have promised before God to obey me! I claim your
obedience!"

She stood silent, looking at him,--pale and fair as an ivory statue of
Psyche, seen against the dark background of the heavily-branched trees.
Her mind was stunned and confused; she had not yet grasped the full
consciousness of her position,--but as he spoke, the old primitive
lessons of faith, steadfastness of purpose, and unwavering love and
trust in God, which her adopted father had instilled into her from
childhood, rose and asserted their sway over her startled, but unspoilt
soul.

"You need not claim it!" she said, slowly; "It is yours always! I shall
do whatever you tell me, even if you command me to die for your sake!"

With a swift impulsive action, full of grace and spirit, he dropped on
one knee and kissed her hand.

"And so I pledge my faith to my Queen!" he said joyously. "Gloria! my
'Glory-of-the-Sea'!--you will forgive me for having in this one thing
misled you? Think of me as your sailor lover still!--it is a much harder
thing to be a king's son than a simple, independent seafarer! Pity me
for my position, and help me to make it endurable! Come now with me down
to that rocky nook on the shore where I first saw you,--and I will tell
you exactly how everything stands,--and how I trust to your love for me
and your courage, to clear away all the difficulties before us. You do
not love me less?"

"I could not love you less!" she replied slowly; "but I cannot think of
you as quite the same!"

A shadow of pain darkened his face.

"Gloria," he said sadly; "If your love was as great as mine you would
forgive!"

She stood a moment wavering and uncertain; their eyes were riveted
on each other in a strange spiritual attraction--her soft lips were a
little relaxed from their gravity as she steadfastly regarded him. She
was embarrassed, conscious, and very pale; but he drank in gratefully
the wonder and shy worship of those pure eyes,--and waited. Suddenly
she sprang to him and closed her arms about his neck, kissing him with
simple and loving tenderness.

"I do forgive! Oh, I do forgive!" she murmured; "Because I love you, my
darling--because I love you! Whatever you wish I will do for your love's
sake--believe me!--but I am frightened just now!--it is as if I did not
know you--as if someone had taken you suddenly a long way off! Give me
a little time to recover my courage!--and to know"--here a faint smile
trembled on her beautiful curved mouth--"to know,--and to _feel_,--that
you are still my own!--even though the world may try to part you from
me!--still my very own!"

The warmth of passionate feeling in her face flushed it into a rose-glow
that spread from chin to brow,--and clasping her to his breast, he gave
her the speechless answer that love inscribes on eyes and lips,--then,
keeping his arm tenderly about her, he led her gently into the path
through the pinewood, which wound down to their favourite haunt by the
sea.

The moonlight had now increased in brilliancy, and illumined the
landscape with all the opulence, splendour and superabundance of
radiance common to the south,--the air was soft and balmy, and one great
white cloud floating lazily under the silver orb, moved slowly to the
centre of the heavens,--the violet-blue of night falling around it like
an imperial robe of state. The two youthful figures passed under the
pine-boughs, which closed over them odorously in dark arches of shadow,
and wended their slow way down to the seashore, from whence they could
see the Royal yacht lying at anchor, every tapering line of her fair
proportions distinctly outlined against the sky, and all her
masts shining as if they had been washed with silver dew; and
the Heir-Apparent to a throne was,--for once in the history of
Heir-Apparents,--happy--happy in knowing that he was loved as princes
seldom or never are loved,--not for his power, not for his rank, but
simply for himself alone, by one of the most beautiful women in the
world, who,--if she knew neither the ways of a Court, nor the wiles of
fashion,--had something better than either of these,--the sanctity of
truth and the strength of innocence.

Réné Ronsard, coming back from his pleasurable duties as host and
chairman to his fishermen-friends, found the cottage deserted, and
smiled, as he sat himself down in the porch to smoke, and to wait for
the lover's return.

"What a thing it is to be young!" he sighed, as he gazed meditatively
at the still beauty of the night around him;--"To be young,--and in
love with the right person! Hours go like moments--the grass is never
damp--the air is never cold--there is never time enough to give all the
kisses that are waiting to be given; and life is so beautiful, that we
are almost able to understand why God created the universe! The rapture
passes very quickly, unfortunately--with some people;--but if I ever
prayed for anything--which I do not--I should pray that it might
remain with Gloria! It surely cannot offend the Supreme Being who is
responsible for our existence, to see one woman happy out of all the
tortured millions of them! One exception to the universal rule would not
make much difference! The law that the strong should prey on the weak,
nearly always prevails,--but it is possible to hope and believe that on
rare occasions the strong may be magnanimous!"

He smoked on placidly, considering various points of philosophic
meditation, and by and by fell into a gentle doze. The doze deepened
into a dream which grew sombre and terrible,--and in it he thought
he saw himself standing bareheaded on a raised platform above surging
millions of people who all shouted with one terrific uproar of
unison--"Regicide! Regicide!" He looked down upon his hands, and saw
them red with blood!--he looked up to the heavens, and they were flushed
with the same ominous hue. Blood!--blood!--the blood of kings,--the dust
of thrones!--and he, the cause! Choked and tormented with a parching
thirst, it seemed in the dream that he tried to speak,--and with all
his force he cried out--"For her sake I did it! For her sake!" But
the clamour of the crowd drowned his voice,--and then it was as if the
coldness of death crept slowly over him,--slowly and cruelly, as though
his whole body were being enclosed within an iceberg,--and he saw
Gloria, the child of his love and care, laid out before him dead,--but
robed and crowned like a queen, and placed on a great golden bier of
state, with purple velvet falling about her, and tall candles blazing
at her head and feet. And voices sang in his ears--"Gloria! Gloria in
excelsis Deo!"--mingling with the muffled chanting of priests at some
distant altar; and he thought he made an attempt to touch the royal
velvet pall that draped her beautiful lifeless body, when he was roughly
thrust back by armed men with swords and bayonets who asked him "What do
you here? Are you not her murderer?"--and he cried out wildly "No, no!
Never could I have harmed the child of my love! Never could I hurt a
hair of her head, or cause her an hour's sorrow! She is all I had in
the world!--I loved her!--I loved her! Let me see her!--let me
touch her!--let me kiss her once again!" And then the scene suddenly
changed,--and it was found that Gloria was not dead at all, but walking
peacefully alone in a garden of flowers, with lilies crowning her,
and all the sunshine about her; and that the golden bier of state had
changed into a ship at sea which was floating, floating westward bearing
some great message to a far country, and that all was well for him and
his darling. The troubled vision cleared from his brain, and his sleep
grew calmer; he breathed more easily, and flitting glimpses of fair
scenes passed before his dreaming eyes,--scenes in some peaceful and
beautiful world, where never a shadow of sorrow or trouble darkened the
quiet contentment of happy and innocent lives. He smiled in his sleep,
and heaved a deep sigh of pleasure,--and so, gently awoke, to feel a
light touch on his shoulder, and to see Gloria standing before him. A
smile was on her face,--the fragrance of the woodlands and the sea clung
about her garments,--she held a few roses in her hand, and there was
something in her whole appearance that struck him as new, commanding,
and more than ever beautiful.

"You have returned alone?" he said wonderingly.

"Yes. I have returned alone! I have much to tell you, dear! Let us go
in!"

CHAPTER XIX

OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE STATE