The two returned about five in the afternoon, after a reckless scamper over the rough country. The embarrassed lady and gentleman had been left far behind, unless, indeed, they had been wise, and returned home soberly by the road; but neither gave them even a passing thought. Sophia, with experiment in her mind, had mounted Prince Petros on a vicious cross-grained brute, and she knew that the horse’s seeming amenity that afternoon could not be natural to it. Petros had a seat; he had hands. In Sophia’s eyes there were few gifts of God more ennobling than these. The last mile up to the stable gates she had challenged him to race, following an old grass-grown track, intersected with hedges and fences; and Sophia, to her soul’s delight, had won. She had dismounted by the time he came up, and sitting on the horse-block, where she had made her first experiment in cigarettes ten years ago, breathless and triumphant at having beaten the jockey of the Austrian winner. He dismounted at the stable gate, and came up to her. A great braid of her black hair had escaped, and hung gloriously on the shoulder of her riding jacket; her face wasflushed. She was divinely beautiful; and in a sudden spasm of admiration:
‘Ah, you are enchanting!’ he cried, and the discreet groom led their horses away.
Sophia no longer doubted that she had found the companion of her life. The Prince had thundered up the hill of glass, and all the lore of fairy-tales made him hers. Personally she was attracted by him, by his slim, straight person, his dark, animated face, the languor of indolence and movement which cloaked his athleticism, his apt and ready conversation, and, above all—for she was something of an observer—by a certain indulgence of expression, habitual to him, which she did not wholly understand, but which suggested that the pursuits at which he so excelled were no more than toys to him. Moreover, it is charming to charm; the charmer usually feels kindly—out of her generosity—to the enslaved, and his involuntary cry, ‘Ah, you are enchanting!’ was delicious to her.
After dinner this pretty game of love-making had to yield place to the sterner and more serious duties of life, and the cards again occupied their undivided attention. Prince Petros acknowledged to an acquaintance with the rules ofvingt-et-un, and all the varieties of that charming game, which he said he had sometimes played at home with his sisters. The betting was high, the guests of the evening were amusing, and disposed to be well amused; the Guards’ band in the gallery of the ballroom next door was playing delightfully, and Luck wasin her most capricious mood. Later on the Prince gave a dance, and Sophia was only waiting for the announcement of the arrival of the first guests to leave the table and perform the much less congenial duty of receiving them.
Eleven struck, and a footman came to tell her that the first carriage was already coming up to the portico. Sophia was just at the end of her deal; the Prince was sitting on her right. He had lost once and gained once atrouge et noir. She held the pack ready to give him his third and last card.
‘For the last, Prince, and then I must go,’ she said. ‘No limit to the stake, if you wish.’
‘I stake all I possess and am onnoir,’ said he gravely.
‘You have lost,’ said Sophia, laughing. ‘It is a heart.’
‘Then have I won?’ he said in a low voice, looking at her.
She stood still a moment (the others had heard his stake, though not his last reply), and a faint flush spread over her face.
‘I was but jesting, and I will not beggar you,’ she said. ‘Now, alas! I must go. Oh for half an hour more! But, Prince, I think there will be time for one short game at bezique when the ball is over.’
‘But I was not jesting—I never jest when I am playing cards,’ he said. ‘Yes, let us play one game after the ball.’
The two danced with each other more than onceduring the evening, but for the most part Prince Petros was a model of sedulous gallantry to the official ladies of Rhodopé. The wife of the mayor, a stout, immovable lady, entirely lost her heart to him. Twice had he waltzed with her, or, rather, twice had he skipped round and round her, as a child may skip round a firmly-rooted tree. She, like the tree which is planted in the whirling earth, seemed to do little more than revolve on her axis once in twenty-four hours; but she enjoyed dancing, she said, very much, and it certainly made her very hot. Nor was he wanting here; he poured ices and exhilarating drinks down her capacious throat, as if to quench some wild internal conflagration, and the mayoress, so he told Sophia afterwards, had confided to him that she, too, was of princely line.
With the younger ladies he was no less successful. He was never tired of dancing, his steering was of so fine an order that it seemed an exhibition of luck, and the step of each of his partners he gaily asserted—as, indeed, he had shamelessly declared to the mayoress—suited his own exactly. He admired everything, and he flattered everybody, yet so adroitly that his partners only thought that they themselves were exceptionally enchanting that night. He told a young, æsthetically-dressed woman, the wife of the Prince’s aide-de-camp, that she reminded him of Whistler’s symphony in green, a title which his ready invention had coined on the spur of the moment, but which earned him a life-long gratitude, for Madame Elsprach had been secretly afraid thatshe had rather overdone it. In a word, when the ball was over, he felt that he had earned his game at bezique, and he got it.
Next morning he asked an audience of Prince Demetrius, and this was granted him. Armed with a permission from him, he inquired for Sophia, for they were soon to ride together. He found her in the garden, dressed for the ride, and alone.
‘Princess,’ he said, ‘I have come to pay you my stake. Will you accept it? Sophia, will you accept it?’
‘Yes, Petros,’ she replied.
Prince Petrosscarcely seemed to have overrated—though it was ever his habit to take a sufficiently rosy view of the verdict of the world on himself—the favourable impression he had made in those two days at Amandos. The officers whom he had met at the review admired his fine horsemanship no less than his amiability, for no man could be more agreeable without any suspicion of condescension than he. The ladies of the Court were entranced by the charm of his manners and the grace of his dancing. Sophia, as has been seen, was captive to the mastery of his bezique, and Prince Demetrius, a testimonial to the full as striking as any of these, had never snarled at him once. The fact of their betrothal was made known before the lapse of many days, and the news evoked bells, fireworks and universal approval.
Sophia’s acceptance of him delighted her father, and he would certainly have made himself odious had she refused him. He had no wish to see his daughter a second Queen Elizabeth, and the romance of such a figure in his eyes bore no comparison with the desired consummation of his hopes to see her amatron with a lusty and numerous progeny. His cousins he frankly looked upon in the light of obscene birds of prey, ready to batten on his own extinct line. Already, so it seemed to him, they were hopping hungrily about the steps of the throne of Rhodopé, but the news of Sophia’s betrothal scared them hurriedly away, and from afar they sent long congratulatory telegrams. Prince Demetrius smiled to himself when he thought how bitter must those honeyed words have been to their royal authors. The Grand Duke Nicholas, so he thought, alone acted in a self-respecting manner, for he sent no word.
As for the affianced husband, he was in a stupor of content. Thanks to his native amiability, to horsemanship nearly as native—for the Princes of Herzegovina were men almost born in the saddle—and to his carefully acquired skill at the cards, already the first and most difficult act of his ‘Empire of the East’ was finished. Had he been, in common with most gamblers, a victim to superstition, he might almost have been frightened at the ease of these first steps, and have taken such extreme favours of fortune with caution. But his own common-sense lulled him to security, and he played the assiduous suitor to perfection, and, indeed, it was no part he played.
Princess Sophia alone, and she hardly consciously, was a little afraid of what she had done. During the days that followed, and especially when the Prince had departed on a hurried visit home, andshe was left alone with her reflections, the thought that she was so soon to marry him, to be indissolubly his, came to her with a shock as if of sudden awakening. Two days’ intercourse, followed by a single word, had changed the whole course of her life; and though she had always taken it as a matter of certainty that she would some time marry, yet the imminence of it, the particulars of it and the ease with which the Fates had woven for her, hit her like a douche of chilly water. An attractive person, a fine horseman, a good card-player, these had been her formulated requirements exhaustively stated, and they were fully satisfied; the measure had been pressed down, and it ran over. He was all these superlatively, and though she had never been of the make to indulge in maidens’ fancies, in daydreams of tenor voices and faultless coiffures, yet she wondered if there was not something missing. Her rank necessarily limited the number of eligible suitors; in this she acquiesced fully, for she accepted the disabilities of being royal, and assuredly none so eligible as Petros had yet presented himself. But the illimitable choice of suitable helpmeets granted to the middle classes seemed to her in this month before her wedding to have something in its favour. Not that she repented her decision: she would have accepted him again and yet again, and yet a little inward voice said to her, ‘Is this all?’
The wedding was to be hurried on, and its celebration was fixed for the first possible day of July.Prince Petros had an ample fortune for himself, and it was not to be thought of that anyone but her father should make settlement on the Princess of Rhodopé. All that the old man wished was that there should be no delay.
‘I have been an unconscionable time living,’ he said one day to his daughter, ‘and I do not intend to be an unconscionable time dying. Besides, it is much easier when one is not in very good health to die than to live, and I have always wished to save myself trouble. So I propose to die pretty soon. I should like to see a grandson, Sophia, but that is all I want.’
Sophia started.
‘A grandson!’ she said. ‘That will make me a mother. How very ridiculous!’
‘Well, if you choose to look at it like that, I hope you will be ridiculous as soon as possible, and more than once. I think you have got a good husband; he is not a fool or a cad. That means a great deal. Nothing really matters besides that.’
‘I do not care for fools and cads,’ remarked Sophia.
‘I knew that, and that is why I was afraid you would not marry at all; for it is a sad truth that most men are one or the other, and many both. Your poor dear mother was a fool, Sophia,’ he added, with a touch of what might be called tenderness.
There was silence for a moment, and then Prince Demetrius went on:
‘Petros will save you a great deal of troublesome detail,’ he said, ‘just as you have of late saved it me. He loves to be popular, and I think he likes a parade of power. Let him have his fill of it. There is a great deal of tiresome business in the working of the state of Rhodopé, about school boards and potatoes—you well know the kind of thing. He will take all that off your hands, and at the same time win golden opinions for himself, and enjoy his little triumphs. In fact, it will add to the absurd veneration—for it is absurd—in which we are held by the people if you make yourself, when you are on the throne, rather more scarce than I have done. Let your appearances be something to be remembered; do not let the people get used to you.’
Sophia looked up.
‘Yes, I never thought of that; that will be a great advantage. Petros can constantly take my place in the Assembly, and I hope he will enjoy it more than I have done. He can see to the tobacco and potato bills during the day, and play cards in the evening. He likes detail—he told me so. He says it is only by great attention to details that anyone arrives at great results.’
‘Oh, he said that, did he?’ remarked her father, and then rejected the idea that had leaped unbidden into his mind, as out of the question. He little knew how nearly true Prince Petros’s words would prove.
Within a month from their betrothal the wedding was celebrated. Royal personages flocked from allcountries to Rhodopé, and the ports of Mavromáti and Búlteck were gay with the flags of all nations. The palace at Amandos, as well as the shooting-boxes on the hills above, were filled with guests, and the odour of the wedding bake-meats was in the air. Prince Demetrius was a miracle of courtesy to his visitors, thereby doing a violence to his normal nature. But he was so uncommonly pleased at the event, that this subversion of his habits may be forgiven him. Prince Petros played his part—if indeed such a term can be applied to a gratification so sincere—to admiration, and the more open-minded of those whom Prince Demetrius had alluded to as birds of prey confessed that so amiable a paragon had no more than his deserts.
The entertainment, both of the visitors of the Prince and of the native populace, endorsed the reputation for hospitality which Rhodopé has always enjoyed. Down the sides of the square in which stood the cathedral where the wedding was to be celebrated ran immense tables at which all comers were feasted. Oxen were roasted whole in the market-place, and the cellars of the Prince poured out, like the opened sluices of a river in flood, the garnered sunshine of summers long past. Magnificent, too, were the presents of the bride and bridegroom. There were ropes of pearls, some like misty moons, some pink, some black, and of extraordinary lustre; two diamond tiaras, in the centre of one of which blazed the famous‘Blue Wonder,’ a stone from Golconda of priceless worth; a necklace of opals set in diamonds; a ruby brooch of unmatched depth of colour, each stone being of the true pigeon’s blood; eighteen gold shoe-horns, on each of which was the Princess’s monogram and a crown in diamonds; a bezique-box of chrysoprase, with hinges and lock of gold (this was from the bridegroom to the bride); four beautiful bicycles; eight complete Louis Seize tea services, with cups of royal blue Sèvres; five gold-fitted tea-baskets for four people; and a perfect grove of gold-handled umbrellas, among which lay gold-mounted dressing-cases, like boulders in a pine-wood, and enough antique candlesticks to illuminate the whole kingdom. More curious still was a roulette-board, of which the marble was a sapphire, and all the numbers set in precious stones, and (for the folk of Rhodopé knew their beloved Princess’s tastes, and were anxious to give her presents which would certainly be useful to her) two thousand packs of picquet cards, a gift from the Board-school children of Amandos.
The cathedral—that small but exquisite building, built, it is said, on the designs of Prince Djem—was not sufficient to seat more than the invited guests of Prince Demetrius and the chief officials of the State; but outside tiers and tiers of benches had been erected in the streets, and immense wedge-shaped stands on the flat roofs of the municipal buildings which line the square. The enthusiasm was prodigious; long before the head of the procession reached the square, the shouting from the folk who lined the route from the Palace was like the roar of the sea, and when the Guards and the first of the royal carriages appeared, the people rose like one man, and every throat was loud with the Rhodopé National Anthem. Never had Prince Petros worn a more engaging smile than when, from his fine black charger, he acknowledged right and left the thunder of their welcome; never had Sophia looked more graciously magnificent than when she bowed from the carriage containing her and Prince Demetrius. The maddening music of the shouts touched her heart, and the bet that she had made with the Princess Charlotte of Roumania, that they would not reach the square under an hour from the time they left the Palace, was, even though she had won, completely effaced from her mind, and Princess Charlotte never paid.
The two left Amandos the evening after the wedding for their honeymoon, which they were to spend on Prince Demetrius’s yacht, cruising in the Mediterranean. The twelve miles of road down to Mavromáti was illuminated with Oriental gorgeousness, and a continuous torchlight procession of runners, picturesquely clothed in the national costume, accompanied them down to the sea. Every half-mile there was a fresh relay of a hundred, who ran with them their appointed course, and then, throwing their torches in the air by way of salute, gave way to the next. The port was one blaze of coloured light, and the yachtFelatrunea ship from Fairyland. Sophia, warm-hearted and impulsive, was greatly affected by the enthusiasm of the people; it was for her they had made the darkness many-coloured; it was the wishes for her happiness that turned the wonted silence of night into a chorus of sound. Once during the drive down she had touched Petros on the arm.
‘It is for me they have done this, these dear folk,’ she said.
‘Yes, darling, for us,’ said Petros; and Sophia thought, but without resentment, that there was just a touch of correction in his voice.
‘Yes, for us,’ she repeated; and her emotion almost made her feel she loved him, for the inward voice which had queried ‘Is this all?’ was answered by, ‘Is this not enough?’
The yacht put off as soon as they were on board, and after waiting on deck—Danae to the golden showers of fireworks—till the shore had faded to a blur of light, they went below. Supper was prepared for them, and on another table were candles and the bezique packs, put there by some thoughtful servant.
Sophia saw them, and her eyes grew bright and dim.
‘How kind they all are!’ she said. ‘They think of everything.’
Prince Petros had also seen.
‘Yes, a game of bezique would be pleasant after supper,’ he said; but Sophia, womanlike and unreasonable, felt a touch chilled.
In halcyon weather they hastened a south-westerly course, and the second day saw them gliding, under the cloud-cowled head of Etna, through the Straits of Messina. They made the straits by three in the afternoon, and dusk showed them the beacon of Stromboli lit on the starboard bow. It had been almost tacitly agreed that they were to go straight to Monte Carlo, or, as Sophia put it, that very pleasant place, somewhere on the Riviera, where you could play for small stakes without a raid from the police.
But soon after they had got free of the Straits, it became evident that the halcyon days were over, for a stiff gale was blowing, and as the yacht threw the knots over its quarter, the sea, which on leaving the Straits was choppy, grew frankly rough, and they pitched considerably to the head sea, even the bowsprit now and then dipping, and raising itself again with a little whiff of spray. They were sitting on the aft deck, and Sophia was feeling exhilarated by the leap and shock of the encountered waves.
‘Oh, Petros!’ she exclaimed, ‘is it not wild and splendid? I love the sea! And here we are, you and I only.’
She stopped suddenly, for Petros had left her; only a dark figure was scudding sideways to the companion ladder.
That evening her husband had a little soup in the privacy of his cabin, for the sea continued boisterous, and Sophia dined alone. It was exceedingly rough; the fiddles were on the table, and she had to make swoops and dashes at her food, and peck, as it were, at her glass. But though she ate with an excellent appetite (for the sea air always made her hungry), she had a clouded brow. She was sorry for Petros’ indisposition, but she felt not the slightest inclination to sit by his bedside, read to him, or remind him that his was only a transient agony. In fact, it was ridiculous that a man should be sea-sick, as ridiculous as that a man should not be able to ride; and as a matter so superficial as a man’s seat on a horse had been among the factors which attracted her to him, so she found that a matter so superficial as this failure of his internal mechanism to stand a rough sea was a factor on the other side. The whole affair, however, was so infinitesimal that she soon dismissed it from a mind that never indulged in that melancholy diversion self-analysis, and she played several games of Russian patience by herself, and obtained fresh light on the subject of the maliciousness of inanimate things.
The yacht arrived at ‘that very pleasant place on the Riviera’ two days after, and the newly-married pair spent a very interesting fortnight there. One thing alone troubled Sophia, and that was the discovery that her husband played on a finely elaborated and seemingly successful system, involving all sorts of abstruse sums in multiplication. Now, this to her was a shock, for she was of the type of gambler which, for want of a better word, we may call theromantic. Primarily she played for the sake of the play, and it was not the winning of money which she enjoyed so much as the winning in the abstract. The whole charm of the thing to her lay in that rolling marble the momentum of which no one knew, not even the croupier who set it going. She backed her luck, another unknown agent, against the immutable and incalculable laws of gravity and friction, and though she had all the gambler’s fine superstitions, and would back a run of luck, and never lay a sou on No. 13, it was the utter uncertainty of the thing which fascinated her.
She almost felt that Petros ought to have made a clean breast of it before he married her, classing it among those confessions which many men may have to make before they take a girl to share their lives, and she was a little hurt he had not done so. Eventually she decided one day to talk the matter over with him.
‘Yes; I was surprised, and—shall I say it?—a little disappointed, dear,’ she said, ‘when I found out that you had a system. Why did you not tell me? Well, never mind. When a game depends on its uncertainty, any subtraction from that surely subtracts from its charm. Suppose anyone invented an infallible system——’
Petros frowned, for he was just multiplying one hundred and seventy-three by fourteen, and dividing it by seventeen, a calculation often incidental to the system in question.
‘Mine is infallible,’ he interrupted rather sharply.
‘Yet you lost heavily all the morning, did you not?’
‘I shall win heavily all the evening, you will see;’ and he made a note of some figures.
‘Oh, Petros, leave the calculation alone a minute,’ she said, ‘and listen to me. I don’t think of roulette as a means of livelihood.’
Petros laughed.
‘That is just as well, dear Sophia,’ he said, ‘for you would not exactly have paid your way since you have been here.’
‘Oh, hear me out,’ she replied. ‘It is the excitement I love it for. I do not think of Monte Carlo as a sort of Stock Exchange, where the acute make money and the stupid lose it. A system reduces it to just that—a sort of Stock Exchange without any bulls and bears, whatever they are.’
‘I prefer to win,’ said Petros.
‘Yes; so do I, but I would not promise never to go to the tables if the croupier gave me an annuity to keep away.’
‘It depends on the size of the annuity.’
‘Ah, then, that is exactly where we differ,’ said she, rising. ‘I should be no happier for an annuity, nor, indeed, would you, but I am a great deal happier for a little excitement. It is a lovely afternoon. What a wonderful colour the sea is! Let us go to the tables.’
Petros won largely that afternoon, and the system justified itself as far as it is possible for a system tobe justified. But the charm of him considered merely as a gambler, as a man who had made a fortune at Homburg, had terribly faded in Sophia’s eyes; indeed, to win money at the tables on a system seemed to her slightly sordid, a kind of trade, and the money thus won, she imagined, would have a kind of stuffy smell about it. The feeling she knew was unreasonable, and she did not defend it; but she never fell into the error of reasoning about a conviction, and concluding that she was made so and her husband otherwise, she dismissed the matter as far as possible from her mind.
She herself on the last day that they were there had one of those runs of luck which occur once in a lifetime. Four times she staked a hundred napoleons on one number, and twice out of the four times, incredible to state, won. Then she played on the colour for half an hour, and lost scarcely once out of ten times, and, to crown all, backed the bank for the last hour and cleared as much again. Petros was aghast; he himself would never have backed one number, and to do so four times seemed to him either imbecile or criminal, and he could not say to himself that Sophia was imbecile. It materially added to his annoyance to see her win twice, while the sordid and infallible system was losing on an average fifty francs an hour—a monotonous and inglorious form of adventure. He felt warmly on the subject, and as they were rowed across to the yacht thatnight addressed a remark to Sophia which keenly resented.
‘I would as soon think of backing one number,’ he said, ‘as of robbing my father.’
‘And I would as soon think of playing on a system’ returned Sophia, with spirit, ‘as of sea-sick.’
Prince Demetriuswas not destined to see the fulfilment of his remoter hope, and to take a grandchild on his knee. In the September of this year, directly after the return of Sophia and her husband, he underwent an operation for tumour, and in November it was found that there was a recrudescence of the malady. A portion of the growth was removed by the forceps and sent for examination to Professor Virchow at Berlin, who reported unfavourably on it. The growth, it appeared on examination, was malignant, and the professor feared that there was no doubt that it was cancerous. He wrote at length to the Prince’s medical adviser, stating that life might perhaps be prolonged by a second operation, but that the reappearance of the disease so short a time after the first operation indicated that the knife could not effect a permanent cure. It was advisable, so he thought, to acquaint Princess Sophia with the true state of the case, and let the patient decide whether he would undergo a second operation or not. To one in his state of health this would be risky, if notpositively dangerous—in fact, the case was exactly one of those when it was right that the patient should decide.
The Prince’s doctor did as the pathologist suggested, and consulted Princess Sophia. She was perfectly clear that it was better to tell her father, and then leave the decision with him. Stricken as she was, for she had a strong personal affection for her father independent of the natural tie of relationship, she offered to tell him herself of the professor’s report, and the doctor gladly accepted her proposal.
It was one of the Prince’s good days on which she went to acquaint him with his condition, and the exceeding pain which he had suffered for more than a week was sensibly less. For a great part of this period he had been kept as far as possible under the dulling influence of morphia; but he had slept a natural sleep the night before, and had awoke his own man.
Outside the day was typically autumnal; the great groves of chestnuts, which stretched down from the lawn to the river, were in the short blaze of their gaudy liveries, and a coolness ineffably brisk and bracing was in the air. There had been a slight frost during the night, already the more brilliant of the leaves were falling, and the sweet odour of cleanliness came in through the open windows. The Princess, as she walked slowly from the room where she had breakfasted to her father’s bedroom, was touched in a way that hitherto hadbeen unknown to her, with the terrible thoughtlessness of inanimate things. This shedding of the russet foliage was but a simulated tragedy; next spring the trees would again be green and luxuriant as if no winter had ever interrupted their perennial vigour; winter to them was but a time for sleep, a renovation of their life, while to the puny sons of men no spring restored the ravages of time past. She looked out over the inimitable freshness of the land as she waited to know if her father could receive her, and the sense of contrast between the infinitesimal limits of humanity and its infinite possibilities caused her eyes to fill with tears. How momentous and trivial a thing was life!
Yes, he would see her at once; and she entered.
Prince Demetrius was in a humour at which imagination might boggle. He had enjoyed a good night; his pain was relieved, and he had reverted to his own diabolical temper.
Sophia stood for a moment in the doorway, hidden from the bed where her father lay by a screen, her nerves shrinking from that which lay before her, and steeling herself to go in. A voice from the bed, with an extraordinary degree of acidity in it, helped her to make the effort needed.
‘I should have thoughtà priori,’ remarked Prince Demetrius, ‘that a door must either be shut or open, but you, Sophia, seem to have grasped the subtlety of touch which is necessary to the leaving of it neither one nor the other. Pleasedecide which you intend to do, and for God’s sake do it.’
She drew a long breath, shut the door, and came to the bedside.
‘Good-morning, father,’ she said. ‘They told me you had a very good night. I am so glad;’ and she kissed him on the forehead.
‘The worst of a good night,’ remarked her father, ‘is that you do not know it is good until it is over. The pleasure of it is as unreal as the pain of a regret. Personally I never regret anything. Fools regret, and even a knave can repent.’
Sophia stood there silent; the burden of what she had to say took from her the power of initiating trivialities; but her father went on, rasping like a file.
‘When a thing is done, it is done, and things for the most part do not produce any consequences at all, though people who have addled their brains with trivial thinking tell us that they do. Moralists and philosophers are the most shallow people in the world, for argument is ever less sound than conviction. This morning, Sophia, you look as if you were inclined to argue. Please don’t do that, or, if you must argue—I know it may happen to any of us—please go and argue in the passage, where I can’t hear you.’
Sophia sat down by the bedside.
‘I am not come to argue,’ she said; ‘but, father, I am come to talk. I am come to tell you something.’
‘Tell it, then,’ said Demetrius, with the composure of a tree.
‘It is this: I have a report from Berlin, and a question to ask you—— ’ and she stopped.
‘The message first, the question afterwards,’ said Prince Demetrius, and his composure seemed quite unshaken.
‘Professor Virchow has sent a most unfavourable report; your malady is malignant——’ and she stopped again.
‘Why the devil not say cancer, and have done with it?’ asked that man of iron.
‘You are right. And the question I have to ask you is whether you will have another operation or not. They say it is for you to decide. It will be dangerous, but it will, if successful, prolong your life a little.’
Prince Demetrius turned slightly in bed to look at Sophia, for her voice was unsteady.
‘Then it is the silliest question I ever heard,’ he said. ‘Of course I shall have nothing of the sort done. Blow your nose, Sophia, and don’t cry. If you allude to the subject again, I shall send you out of the room. Tell the doctors this only, that if ever they ask me anything so absurd again, I shall dispense with their services. The matter is closed. And now, if you have nothing to do, we will playécarté, please. Napoleon points, and a hundred francs on the game. Do you remember playing with me for the first time when you were a little girl? You playedwell even then; now you are nearly as good as I am.’
From that day the Prince grew rapidly worse, and he suffered much. For many hours in the day he was under morphia, but a small interval only would elapse between the passing off of the of the narcotic and the return of pain. But in these intervals he was powerfully lucid and incisive.
‘It is this,’ he said once—‘this mockery of life which the medical fools thought I might wish to be prolonged. A man must have a singularly low opinion of consciousness if he thinks this is worth having. It is a bore, an awful bore, Sophia, and reminds me of waiting at a station for one’s train, which is the most inglorious way I know of passing the time.’
‘Would you care that I should read you the news?’ Sophia would ask sometimes.
‘Certainly not,’ he answered. ‘At last I feel irresponsible. Nobody can do anything which concerns me, except to leave the door open when I prefer it shut. Really, if one has to be somewhere, to be on a death-bed is one of the very best places. Nothing can touch one; it is like getting out of a tunnel full of jarring noises.’
He raised himself in bed a little.
‘I wish I had been your child, Sophia,’ he said, ‘and that is really all I want. I have lived quite long enough on my own account. There, don’t cry. I shall have another half-hour, I suppose, before the disgusting pain returns, so let us playpicquet. We shall have time for onepartie, and then I shall send you away.’
But death was merciful, and came quicker than the doctors had anticipated, and on the first of January the Princess Sophia was proclaimed hereditary monarch of the realm of Rhodopé.
Onemorning in the July of the next year Sophia and Petros were sitting at their half-past-twelve breakfast in the broad north veranda of the palace at Amandos. A big Persian rug was spread under the table, but otherwise the black-and-white marble floor was uncarpeted for coolness. To the west the awnings were down, but the whole long of the gallery towards the north was open to the breeze which pleasantly tempered the extreme warmth of the day. Over the town hung a blue haze of trembling heat, but the air was dry and invigorating, and though the thermometer registered a hundred degrees, not oppressive.
Coffee had just been served, and as the servants withdrew Sophia lit a cigarette.
‘About August, Petros,’ she said. ‘I want very much to go away the first week at latest, and I really see no reason why I should not.’
‘The House will not rise till September,’ said he.
‘Oh, the House, the House!’ cried she. ‘What does it matter what the House does? Let it fall down if it chooses! I have signed my name sooften during the last month that if I go on I shall get writer’s cramp. What is writer’s cramp, by the way? And what do all my signatures amount to? Somebody has a concession for vine-growing, somebody is put in prison for a year, a firm is given leave to supply smokeless powder instead of Eley’s. I am sick of it all! I should like to turn Rhodopé into a limited company, and have it run by Durand, or Spiers and Pond, and pay one of their barmaids so much a year to impersonate me. I want to go away for a month or two as soon as possible, and what is more, Petros, I am going.’
‘If you have settled that, why argue about the matter,’ said he, ‘or trouble to consult me?’
‘Well, I wanted to know your opinion as to whether it is really advisable for me to stop. At the same time, if I had thought you would really disagree with me, I should not have asked you. But the thing is done now. What do you think about it?’
Petros was silent a moment. He had a plan in his head, and he wished to play his cards to advantage.
‘Well, here is my opinion,’ he said at length, ‘You have asked for it, and you shall have it, though, as a rule, you don’t like being advised, and I don’t care about advising. You are reigning Princess of this country, and that delightful position——’
Sophia laughed.
‘I would sooner be a milkmaid,’ she said, ‘but such a thing is not possible.’
‘And that delightful position,’ continued Petros, with the irritating manner of a man unaware of an interruption, ‘has certain responsibilities attached to it. You cannot get rid of them except by sheer gross neglect of your duties, but to tell you the truth, they are not very onerous. One of them is that you should preserve the form, at any rate, of attending to the business of the House. I do not think you need really fear writer’s cramp from signing their resolutions, whatever writer’s cramp may be; I suppose it is the result of writing. But you must perform your simple duties——’
‘I have seen that in copper-plate hand in the copy-books I used to do when I was a child,’ remarked Sophia.
‘That is where I got it from. It seems to me very true, though a little stale. I do not interfere with you, as you very well know, and I am, of course, powerless to prevent you going away when you wish. But I think you will make a very great mistake if you go away now.’
‘Tant pis,’ said she. ‘Let us start on the last day of this month. And oh, Petros, there is a little place on the Riviera——’
Petros rose and walked about in seeming agitation for a moment or two. He was managing his cards beautifully. Then he turned sharply to her.
‘Go, then, Sophia,’ he said; ‘but I shall not come with you.’
Sophia stared.
‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘I promise never torefer to your system. And the sea is usually calm at this time of year.’
‘That is not the reason.’
‘What is it, then?’ she asked.
‘Because the mischief which your absence during a sitting of the House will entail will be sensibly lessened—I do not wish to overrate my position—if I remain here, and have the air of attending very sedulously to the affairs of the State. There are certain businesses of the kind which you have allowed me to transact for you before—the less important Bills, in fact; with your permission, I will attend to them again. We want a fresh strain of blood in the trooper’s horses, for instance; at any rate, I can go carefully into the expenses and business incidental to that. I know a little about horse-breeding; I may even be useful on that question. The Bill will come before the House in the second week in August. I can, at least, serve on a committee. Later, when the House rises, I will join you. How does my plan strike you?’
Sophia was touched.
‘It is good of you to suggest that, Petros,’ she said. ‘It would be absurd for me to refuse your offer. You will not be very dull here? No? And it won’t look odd, will it, if I go and you stop here? I have a horror of doing things that look odd.’
‘Not so odd, at any rate, as if we both went away,’ said Petros.
‘And much less odd than if I stopped here allAugust,’ remarked Sophia in self-defence. ‘It would be an imbecility.’
Sophia got up from the table, and went indoors to the nursery to see the adorable Leonard, the four-months-old baby. Petros’s arrangement seemed to her to be in every way admirable. Apart from the convenience of getting away when she wanted, it gave her the opportunity of getting away alone. She was fond of her husband, but constantly irritated by him. She had no idea of letting herself be schooled by him into dependence, to be taught the duty of royalty by him, and she never forgot that she was Princess of Rhodopé, and he her husband. More than once had he attempted to point out to her his idea of what a wife’s attitude should be to her husband, and what a monarch’s attitude towards the people, and her retort had been not far to seek. She was autocrat of Rhodopé, and she was not going to be taught by anybody.
Petros, she found, was not only master of the subtleties of bezique, he knew also the most refined secrets of irritating conversation. With all his varied gifts, he had the misfortune to be a pedant, a schoolmaster in private life, and, what is worse, to be quite unconscious of his pedantry. Sophia resented with every fibre in her nature his attempts to instruct her, to develop her mind, and, indeed, the chief result of his schooling had been to develop her impatience of him. Living with him was like living in a stuffy room with only high-backed chairs.He was for ever wanting her to sit up straight, and listen to improving conversation, whereas she wanted to lounge imperially by an open window. Something of the blood of generations of irresponsible rulers ran in her veins; the unbridled license of Eastern tyrants had mingled with the refinement of the student line of Florence to compound a subtle temperament. He had once alluded to some wise act of the Czar, wishing her to draw a lesson from it, but in a moment her nose was in the air.
‘The Romanoffs were feeding pigs when we were kings,’ she had said.
Her education, so to speak, had been the work of generations of ancestors, accomplished prenatally, and she owed more to them than to her tutors. It was Tamburlaine who had smoked a cigarette on the horse-block, and Lorenzo, more than her masters, who had given her that quick artistic perception that made the great singers of Europe love to sing to her accompaniment. The blood of the great Catherine was hers, too, and hers by inheritance the intolerance of rulers. ‘C’est mon plaisir’ was reason enough with her. Indeed, she needed a clever husband and a loyal people. The former she had got in a way, but his cleverness was more akin to cunning than to wisdom or broadness of vision. To trace the process of thought was to him as valuable as the conception itself, and it pleased him more to make an infinitesimal deduction correctly than to blunder splendidly. She was headstrong, and would never be small; he was a master offinesse, but could never be big. She was royal to her finger-tips, he was only the cadet of a family that happened to be reigning. Her second need—a large loyalty from her people—was more completely hers than he guessed. What she did was right, and how firmly the people of Rhodopé held that creed he was to learn. The spirit preached from Potsdam had possession of their hearts.
Petros sat still on the veranda after she had left him, and smoked contentedly. If Sophia found him irritating, he at any rate bore the knowledge with equanimity. He had not looked for domestic bliss in his marriage; for he did not aim at domesticity, and he did not believe in bliss. But every day found him more thankful that he had married her, for he believed in ambition, especially when it was his own. Rhodopé seemed to him more enviable than ever, and he fully intended to make a bid for it. Rhodopé, he said to himself with sublime self-sufficiency as he was shaving, wanted a master; and he looked at his image in the glass. The very fact that Sophia had chosen to marry him amounted to a guarantee of his excellent qualities in the minds of her subjects; and he was quick enough to see how popular he was, and complacently shallow enough not to guess at the grand reason for his popularity. He was eminently possessed of the power to please, and when he found himself pleasing he not unnaturally referred it to his own power.
A further cause for gratification this morning lay in the fact that Sophia had been so willing to leaveto deal with the affairs of the kingdom alone. She had closed with his offer as soon as it had been made, and, as this was the first real step that he had taken since his marriage in the prosecution of his aims, he was pleased that it should have gone forward without a stumble. He intended to use her absence to take several more steps in the same direction.
The Assembly of Rhodopé is peculiarly constituted. In all it numbers sixty members, of whom two-thirds enjoy hereditary seats, and one-third are elected by vote every three years. But there was in those days no sharp division into parties; no socialism as yet masqueraded in the streets under the very penetrable disguise of philanthropy; and those who had only small estates of their own had not yet begun to initiate Bills whereby larger holders should be deprived of their lands. On the other hand, even the hereditary voters were not all of blindly Conservative disposition, and the general tendency of politics was to be mildly progressive. The Prime Minister, elected by the House, was the President, and represented the monarch in his absence; but when the hereditary Prince or Princess was present, he took his seat in the body of the House. The Crown, however, possessed the power of deposing the Prime Minister and appointing a one at discretion. This prerogative had not since the great political crisis of 1793, and generally considered obsolete. But it had never been repealed, and nothing stood in the way ofits being exercised should the Sovereign decide to do so.
Princess Sophia left on the first of August in the royal yachtFelatrune. Her departure had been made somewhat hurriedly, and she had given but scanty attention to the discussion of the management of the affairs of State in her absence. Prince Petros, however, insisted that he should be given some clear notion of how far he was to be considered Regent, and how far he was to telegraph for her instructions. He had made a copy on a sheet of foolscap of the Bills which would come before the House before it broke up in September, and she ran her eye quickly over them.
‘Tobacco, potatoes—potatoes, tobacco,’ she said; ‘there is nothing there that I cannot leave completely to you. I will write a short address to the House, if I have time, in which I nominate you as my Regent, and Malakopf will read it out to them. Here, I will do it now; give me a bit of paper.’
Sophia scribbled some half-dozen lines, signed them, and addressed the envelope to the Prime Minister, Malakopf.
‘I understand that I am to take your place in every way,’ said Petros, to whom she had not shown the note.
‘Yes, I have said that,’ said Sophia. ‘Don’t introduce a Bill for deposing me, you know; and if there is any unexpected crisis, let me know by telegraph. Of course there won’t be, for crises never happen in Rhodopé, and the unexpectednever happens anywhere. I have complete confidence in you, Petros. And don’t be terribly conscientious; if possible, let me not hear a word of these three-halfpenny concerns till you join me. I want an entire holiday.’
‘A holiday will do you good, dear Sophia,’ said he; ‘I am afraid the heat has tired you. In turn, let me ask you not to make the State bankrupt at Monte Carlo.’
‘It wants a man with a system to do that,’ laughed Sophia.
Petros and Leonard, an amazingly sunny infant, went down to Mavromáti to see the Princess off, and returned together to Amandos about six o’clock. Petros did not care for children, and the unconscious Leonard merely roused in him a sense of futile envy at the thought that the boy would some day be Prince of Rhodopé, not merely the husband of its Princess. The Assembly met at three o’clock next day, and he spent a solitary but arduous evening going over very carefully a scheme he had in his mind. He was naturally a cautious man—a man with a system, as Sophia had said, but occasionally he would embark in a risky concern. His investments of all kinds, whether of money or brains, were either very safe or paid an enormous percentage.
The Prime Minister at this time was a man named Malakopf, originally no doubt of Russian birth, whose family had been settled in Rhodopé for many generations. Russian he might or might not be; Jew he certainly was, and he had all the financialsagacity of that remarkable race. His probity, however, stood in great need of demonstration; and he was known to have been mixed up in a very lucrative but more than questionable transaction, some ten years before, on the Vienna Bourse. There had been a most unpleasant scene on this occasion between him and Prince Demetrius, who spoke his mind with singular frankness, and Malakopf’s affection for the reigning House of Rhodopé was supposed to be of the most tepid temperature.
Sophia detested the man; with her habitual force of expression, she had said that to be in the room with him was like having tea with a centipede: one never knew where it would be next, and the prevalent impression was that it was crawling up one’s back. But Petros from the first had made much of him; he had often told his wife that so acute a financier was a goose who laid golden eggs for the State. It would be of the nature of suicide to strangle anything so intimately connected with the well-being of the principality. He might be like a centipede, socially speaking, if she would have it so; politically he was invaluable. Besides, he was a man with power; he could be a dangerous enemy, and it was always well to make friends with people who might be dangerous enemies.
Sophia’s nose had gone in the air at this.
‘My family is not accustomed to make friends with centipedes,’ she had said. ‘But, of course, you can do as you please, Petros.’
To-day Prince Petros sought him in his privateroom off one of the lobbies of the House. He was a bent, withered little man, but nimble in movement, and there was a shifty brightness in his eye. He got up at the Prince’s entry, and bowed low to him.
‘An unexpected pleasure, your Highness,’ he said. ‘Indeed, I was told that Princess Sophia left Mavromáti yesterday, and I had supposed you had not yet returned. I am shamefully ill-posted in the news of our Court, but I have some transactions of great moment on hand, which must be my excuse.’
Now Malakopf knew that Petros had returned to Rhodopé, and Petros knew that he knew it. Thus comment was needless.
‘My wife left yesterday,’ said he, ‘but, as you see, I am already back again. The Princess was in need of a holiday. State affairs’—he spoke with slow emphasis, and looked Malakopf full in the face—‘State affairs have tired her terribly this summer. She has been head over ears in work.’
No shadow of a smile came over the Prime Minister’s face.
‘Indeed, it must be so,’ he answered. ‘Never a moment’s relaxation or amusement! An iron will!’
But Prince Petros was satisfied; he was sure Malakopf had completely understood him.
‘I came to talk to you on an important matter,’ said the Prince, taking a seat. ‘Naturally, my wife and I could not both be absent during the sitting of the House, and she gave me to understand that shewas sending you a document, which she wished to be communicated to the Assembly, conferring on me—so I took her meaning to be—powers which amount—which really amount—to a Regency during her absence.’
Malakopf, though he was not naturally slow, appeared to take some moments before he grasped what the Prince had said. He fixed his eye on the window so long, without stirring a muscle, that the Prince spoke again.
‘No doubt you have seen the document,’ he said, with a little nervousness. ‘From the few words the Princess let fall to me on the subject, I gathered—wrongly perhaps—that such was the purport of it.’ At last the Prime Minister turned briskly in his chair.
‘That, I think, we may consider to be the purport of it,’ he said. ‘And I don’t suppose that the Princess Sophia has ever taken a more prudent and far-sighted determination. Indeed, it might be even more far-sighted than she supposes.’
The Prince knew that he was, so to speak, skating on ice which might prove to be thin. Malakopf knew it equally well, and he applauded inwardly and derisively the other’s caution.
‘You flatter me,’ said the Prince; and Malakopf silently but sincerely agreed with him. But he let no palpable pause precede his answer.
‘Flattery,’ he said, ‘is the unwilling tribute of a wise man to his inferior, or a fool to his superior. Dear Prince, how can I flatter you? For you areour beloved Princess’s husband, and indeed I have glimmerings of sense. But let us approach the point with more particularity. We must consider—must we not?—what will be your proper place in the Assembly. You represent the Princess Sophia, and as her representative you take the chair whenever you are present. But here the legal point comes in: you have no seat—an anomaly as I have always felt—in the Assembly at all. How would it be, then, if you absented yourself to-day, and that I, after reading the Princess’s message, proposed a resolution that during her absence you should be,ex officio, a Member of the House? Then you would have a seat there, and your position after that, as her representative, would make you President.’ He paused a moment, and with a look amazingly frank, ‘We understand each other, do we not?’ he almost whispered, and he approached as near to a chuckle as his prudence allowed.
‘You are admirably lucid,’ said Petros, returning his gaze.
‘And you, too,’ thought Malakopf; but he did not say so, and ceased chuckling.
‘Let us, then, act thus,’ he continued: ‘this afternoon I will take the vote of the House on the matter. It is almost unnecessary for me to send you the report, for there can be only one conclusion. However, by six o’clock I will let you know what has happened, for the matter of form merely—an official communication, my dear Prince, an official communication. Things must be done in order.’
Prince Petros rose.
‘Pray let me ask you,’ he said, ‘to throw over your other engagements to-night, and dine with me alone. You shall tell me then how the House received the proposal.’
‘I am infinitely honoured,’ said Malakopf, bowing again; and the Prince took his departure.
Left alone, Malakopf lit a cigarette, but instead of attending to business, seemed lost in evil meditation. At length he drew some papers towards him, and gave one ghost of a laugh.
‘There is a depth of shallowness,’ he said, to himself, ‘about that man, which to my frail mind is unplumbable.’
Malakopf dined with the Prince that evening, and before they went in to dinner made the most favourable report on the way that his proposition had been received in the House.
‘I first read out the Princess Sophia’s communication,’ he said. ‘It was known that Her Royal Highness had left for Monte——had left for a few visits to her relations, and the House requested me to record to you their sympathy with the Princess’s reason for taking a holiday, and hoped that a few weeks’ relaxation would recuperate her.’
‘I will convey the sympathy of the House to her,’ murmured Prince Petros.
Malakopf bowed.
‘I next brought forward the proposal that you should be entitled to a seat in the House in the Princess’s absence. It was carried, of course, unanimously—I may say with acclamation. Indeed, I have never,’ said he, drawing his hand over his chin—‘I have never seen so great an enthusiasm in our House.’
‘I will do my best to merit the honour you have conferred on me,’ said the Prince, checking his exultation.
The two dined alone, but with great state and magnificence. Both men wore their orders; on the sideboard was displayed the gold plate belonging to the Sovereign, and during dinner the royal band played a selection of ravishing airs from the gallery. The Prime Minister, Petros knew, liked magnificence, but what he did not know was that on this occasion he saw through it. Malakopf was something of agourmandand much of agourmet. He ate somewhat largely and very intelligently. The turtle soup was excellent, thechaudfroidof quails a marvel of art (he would have liked to congratulate the chef), and he nearly wept with joy over the haunch of roe-deer braisedà la Savarin. Finally the bottle of Château Vryssi (1832) which he drank with his dessert was almost an awe to him. He was near to feeling a sense of unworthiness, but so far overcame it as to be able to drink a second bottle.
Petros knew well the Prime Minister’s weakness for fine food, and thought that if a good dinner would not earn the man’s gratitude, and so indirectly his help, nothing would. In this he was right. Had it been possible for Malakopf to feel himself under an obligation to anybody, he would have been disposed to fall in with the wishes of a man who had fed him well. But the ore of his nature, if milled, would have been found to contain not the smallest assay of gratitude. Not only had Nature not compounded him with a grain of it, but in the mixing she had used a clean spoon, one which had never had gratitude measured in it; he was wholly incapable of such a feeling. All he knew was that he would certainly dine with the Prince as often as he was invited—even indicate, ever so lightly, that he was ready to come again.
Dinner over, the two sat in the south veranda, where they drank coffee and smoked. Malakopf, habitually cautious, was perhaps moved to an unwonted boldness by that noble grape of which he had drunk so freely; but after he had unloosed his tongue to speak the first words on the subject which was in the minds of both of them, he knew he had done right, and that the Prince would be a tool in his hands.
‘It is a thousand pities,’ he said, ‘that the Princess is so delicate. With all my loyalty, all my unwavering devotion to our royal line, of which I need not remind you, I have sometimes nearly caught myself wishing that Prince Demetrius had had a son, a man of iron like himself, who was equal to the strain and stress of State affairs. The Princess—God bless her!—has often reminded me of that fable of the sword which was worn out by use—she will not abide in the scabbard. Indeed, how you persuaded her to take this little holiday, mydear Prince Petros, I cannot conceive—a miracle of successful diplomacy.’
‘We must encourage her to be put in the scabbard sometimes,’ said the Prince; ‘and, indeed, she felt herself tired out; it required but little persuasion on my part to make her go. Her weakness, not my strength, was the giver of my little victory.’
Malakopf shook his head.
‘You underrate your powers, Prince Petros,’ he said. ‘It was always the same with the Princess; she is all zeal for whatever she has in hand. I have even seen her once or twice here in the palace playing some trivial game at the cards with the ardour—all the ardour, so I thought—with which she follows our debates. And with what act! You would have thought she really cared for the romances of the little pasteboard pieces in which her guests of less sterling fibre found their amusement. She plays still, I believe?’
Prince Petros had not the patience to continue this elaborate farce. Malakopf had fully intended that the first step of importance should be taken by the other, and the wraith of a smile hovered round his mouth as Petros spoke again.
‘She plays still, as you say,’ he replied; ‘and, as you know, she has gone to Monte Carlo, and her royal relations are the tables. The affairs of the State, as you also know, are nothing to her. I fully believe, though, that if she had stopped here she would have suffered in health through pure boredom. But that which is so insignificant to her isvery dear to me. I want to see Rhodopé a great power, and no buffer State. I want——’
He stopped abruptly, got out of his seat, and began walking up and down.
‘Your Highness wants——?’ suggested Malakopf, insinuatingly, and as softly as a thought.
‘I want Rhodopé to be a nation,’ broke out the Prince. ‘Look at our material!’ (‘Already he says “our,”’thought Malakopf.) ‘Did you ever see finer men than these troops? Look at our coast, and show me the fleet that could effect a landing. Have you seen Gibraltar? You have seen Búlteck, and that is two Gibraltars! Look at our boundaries! Whose is the army that could invade Rhodopé? England herself is not more definitely marked out by Nature to be a great power than we. We are of one race with the Albanian, the flower of the Greek as well as the Turkish troops—completely careless of death, and with no thought but their country. Once set me in a great position here, and you shall see what I will make of Rhodopé’. If I were the humblest Member of the Chamber I could act, but now I am bound with chains of lead. My hands are tied; I can do nothing; and my wife spends her money and her time and her thoughts at Monte Carlo. I am no more than the lacquey who stands in her ante-chamber—less even, for he is useful in his way; I alone am a cipher. Oh, Malakopf, it is pitiable, man—it is pitiable!’
The Prince stood before him, his hands opened out by his side, his handsome mobile face suffusedwith excitement. Malakopf put one leg over the other, and suppressed a sigh of content. He had not dared to hope for speaking so plain as this. There was no need for any more diplomatic dancing.
‘Yet you have obtained one step to-day,’ he said; ‘you have a seat in the House. That may well be considered—how do you say it?—the thin end of the wedge.’
‘Yes, and when my wife returns out comes the wedge,’ replied the Prince. ‘And out come I. Oh, Lord!’
‘Not necessarily,’ said the Prime Minister.
The Prince sat down.
‘Explain yourself; I do not understand,’ he said. Malakopf flicked the ash off his cigar. He was so completely master of the situation, that he did not intend to be hurried.
‘It is true that your seat is only temporary at present,’ he said; ‘but one way and another, dear Prince Petros, I have managed to become a somewhat influential person in the State——’
‘So I always tell my wife,’ said the Prince with extraordinary unwisdom, thinking to please the centipede.
‘I am infinitely grateful for your good word,’ replied the other. ‘But I did not mean that I had any influence in the eyes of the Princess—and, to speak to you with a frankness that will nearly equal your own, I do not care to have. But with my considerable wealth, and the extent of my estate, not to mention a certain personal influence I havewith a large party in the Assembly—an influence which it would be false modesty in me to underrate, I could, I think, manage to secure you a permanent seat.’
‘Take another cigar,’ said the Prince. ‘Will you do this for me?’
Malakopf smiled. The juxtaposition of the offer of a cigar and this request suggested, fantastically enough, a bribe.
‘I do not say it would be easy to manage,’ he replied. ‘It might be a troublesome affair, and, to speak plainly’—here he laid his hand on the Prince’s knee, and looked him suddenly in the face—‘what am I to get by it?’
‘Yet you said this afternoon that my not having a seat in the Senate was an anomaly.’
‘I endorse what I said. But is it expedient for me personally to attempt to do away with that anomaly?’
‘I will make it worth your while,’ said the Prince in a low voice.
‘That is enough, my dear Prince,’ he said.
‘Here is a light for you,’ said Prince Petros; and his hand shook as he held the match in the windless air.