"MORIBUNDUS AMOR."
"What is thy name, faire maid? quoth he.
Penelophon, O king, quoth she."
Count Kora's rout did little to restore Mlle de Tricotrin's peace of
mind. To be sure Kophetua was there. He was fond of society, and went
freely amongst his rout-giving subjects. Kophetua talked with Mlle de
Tricotrin, but somehow he did not seem so animated as usual. It is true
they spoke in the same familiar tone as before, but for the first time
the spice of growing intimacy was wanting.
It is the most intoxicating flavour that conversation can have, and
nothing is more banal than the sense of staleness when it ceases.
To-night was one of these occasions for these two. Their words seemed
dead, and every effort which Mlle de Tricotrin made to restore their
life was unavailing. In vain did she pose in her privileged _rôle_ as
his gentle philosopher. In vain did she tempt him to further
confessions, and raise the deep questions which before had always made
him speak so low and earnestly.
A damp and chilly pall seemed to overhang them, and she felt the
familiar path which was once so gay and sweet with flowers was now worn
bare, and had no longer any power to charm. All her noble sentiments and
pretty fancies, for which he had been so greedy, were now like empty
husks she was offering him. The grain was gone.
She knew that the King felt it too, and was not amused or even
interested. She knew he was loyally making efforts not to fall back from
the point they had reached together, but soon he changed the
conversation to the lightest banter. He even began to pay her
compliments. Then the bitter truth against which she was struggling
seemed to gain a sudden strength. It framed itself in words upon her
lips, and she said to herself, "He is getting tired of me."
Her sad conviction was only strengthened when at last, as with a forlorn
hope of keeping up the tone of their talk to the pitch of confidential
friendliness which it had previously attained, Kophetua broached a
subject which was peculiar to themselves. Their secret, as he fondly
thought it, was his last resource to recall the delight which he had
been accustomed to find in her society. For in spite of all his
certainty that she was playing a deep game with him, and using against
his heart a whole battery of carefully prepared weapons, yet he was
obliged to confess that her society had been irresistibly delightful,
and he was resolved not to let the sweet cup pass away from him without
at least another draught.
"How is our Penelophon, mademoiselle?" he asked.
"In the best of health, sire," she answered, perhaps a little coldly.
"I can never thank you enough," he went on, "for being so kind to her."
"I do nothing for her, sire," she replied, with that little laugh that
means everything but enjoyment. "At least, nothing that a mistress will
not do for a faithful maid, and one whom she has so much reason to make
a favourite."
"Oh, but you do," he answered; "I have seen, for instance, how you try
to please the poor child with those gowns in which she looks so pretty."
"Had I known your majesty observed her so closely," she said, "I should
hardly have dared to show my interest in her so plainly; but I ought to
have guessed that you would feel a more than passing interest in a girl
whom you had rescued so romantically."
"Then she has told you the whole story?" asked the King, with a shade of
annoyance in his voice.
"Yes."
"Then you can understand the interest I must feel in her future."
"Perfectly," answered Mlle de Tricotrin. "It must have such a charming
flavour of the old ballad for you."
"I am not very fond of ballads," said the King, a little distantly.
"I am sorry, sire," she answered simply, "because they have for me such
a delicious savour of nature. I was going to ask you to tell me the name
of the beggar in the story. I had a fancy for calling my maid by it."
"Do you not know?" asked the King, looking at her fixedly.
"No," she answered, meeting his look with perfect frankness, for she was
speaking the truth; "I have never heard or seen the ballad."
"She was called Penelophon," said the King, with an embarrassed laugh.
Mlle de Tricotrin gave a genuine start of surprise. "Is your majesty
serious?" she said.
"Perfectly."
"What a strange coincidence!"
Their conversation had been getting colder and colder. By some evil
influence Kophetua seemed to be choosing the worst things he could say,
and Mlle de Tricotrin replying with everything that was best calculated
to annoy the King. It had reached at last to a painful iciness, and the
embarrassment which now fell upon them both froze it altogether. They
sat in silence, each knowing perfectly that the other was thinking
something it would be a wide breach of manners to say, and that is
almost worse than saying it.
Yet they need not have been so embarrassed, for, as it happened, it was
no coincidence at all. The old tradition still grew green within the
Liberties of St. Lazarus, and there were few families in which one of
the women was not named Penelophon. Still the beggars kept so much to
themselves that this very natural custom was not generally known, and
certainly it had never come to the ears of the King or Mlle de
Tricotrin. Hence their embarrassment was as great as if it had been
well-founded, and was most happily relieved by the Count desiring to
know if his majesty would take a dish of tea.
It was perhaps more than a coincidence which later in the evening caused
Kophetua to ask M. de Tricotrin what he thought of the new American
Republic. His interview with Mlle de Tricotrin seemed to put matrimony
further from him than ever, and his abdication was staring him in the
face. He began to see it was unavoidable, and his innate moral courage
and conscientiousness made him cast about for a light in which the
inevitable should appear a duty that he chose for himself to perform.
More than ever he began to wonder whether his position were not a crime,
and whether plain morality did not bid him resign and form a republic.
The Marquis, with his revolutionary ideas, was naturally the man to
help him along the road by which alone his moral escape could be made.
He determined to lose no time in getting the help he expected, seeing
that M. de Tricotrin, like all Frenchmen of fashion, was ready to
express a passionate admiration of the American Constitution.
"As a republic," said the Marquis, in answer to the King, "if I may so
far express myself in your majesty's presence,--as a republic, I look
upon it as one of the sublimest emanations of the human brain."
"Pray do not apologise for your opinions," replied the King; "they are
entirely in accord with my own. I myself regard a republic as an
institution so divine that I am tempted to look upon a king as amongst
the worst of criminals."
"There," said the Marquis, with deferential positiveness, "your majesty,
and I differ entirely. I look upon a king as the greatest of human
benefactors."
"But, my dear Marquis," said the King, "your two positions are flatly
contradictory."
"With submission," answered the Marquis, "it seems to me that one is the
corollary of the other. It is because I so admire a republic that I also
venerate the institution of hereditary monarchy."
"I must positively congratulate you, Marquis," said the King, "on your
inimitable genius for paradox. It is most wittily conceived; but,
seriously, I want your opinion."
"And seriously I give it you, sire," said the Marquis, in whose
political programme the resignation of Kophetua found no place.
"Then permit me to say," answered the King, "that I entirely fail to
understand your opinion."
"And yet," said the Marquis, "it is not so obscure. Your majesty will
admit that the most perfect republic is that in which the greatest
amount of power remains actually in the hands of the sovereign people in
their corporate capacity."
"Certainly," answered the King. "The less a constitution necessitates
the delegation of authority to officers, and especially to a chief
officer, the more perfectly republican it is."
"Very well," pursued the Frenchman. "Then as a chief officer of some
kind is necessary, the first question to solve is the manner of his
appointment. Now if you elect him, it is certain that some real power
will slip into his hands. It is even necessary that it should, in order
to give dignity to the office. For since he is unadorned with the
panoply of heredity, a lack of dignity will always be a difficulty about
your elected chief officer. For the same reason the elective machinery
must be such as to ensure, as far as is humanly possible, that the
cleverest man in the state shall be chosen; otherwise your majesty sees
that the government of which he is head will not receive the respect
that is necessary to stability."
"So far I perceive your meaning," answered the King. "It is that there
is no instinctive reverence felt by the vulgar for an elected president.
He is, as it were, a mere chip carved by the elective machine from the
mass of the community. Therefore for sentimental reasons--that is, in
order that he may be endowed with that weight of authority which is the
mainspring of cheerful obedience to the law--it is necessary that he
should be an extraordinary man, with extraordinary powers."
"Exactly," said the Marquis; "and it is precisely there that you find
the weak point of the non-monarchical republic, if your majesty will
allow me the expression. It is a form of government which involves an
almost fatal inconsistency. It gives you as a leading idea the election
of one man in whom the ultimate legislative and administrative powers
must be vested to a greater or less extent, and this very man is also,
by the fundamental theory of the system, the most dangerous person to
whom those powers can be committed, seeing that, as he is the citizen of
the highest political ability, he is also the man best able to abuse
them to his own advantage. I would submit then, sire, that this paradox,
which is inherent in all constitutions like the American--although
theoretically that is the best that was ever devised--is beyond
expression more remarkable than that of which your majesty accuses me.
It is a paradox which shows us how a kingless commonwealth is like an
arch: apparently it is perfectly stable, and yet from the first day of
its erection it is exerting a force which tends to its own destruction."
"Well, I must admit," answered the King, "the existence of this paradox.
You make it quite clear to me that it is a real objection to what you
call a non-monarchical republic; but, at the same time, the vice is
obviously far greater in an hereditary monarchy."
"If your majesty will pardon me," replied the Marquis, who felt his
blood getting up as his hobby pranced beneath him, "I think I can show
you that this is not so."
"If you can," answered the King, with some irritation at the
disappointment he felt in his expected ally, "may I die if you could not
show anything!"
"And yet it is not so difficult," continued the Marquis. "Your majesty
will observe, if I may so far presume in the cause of truth, that the
real merit of hereditary monarchy in the eyes of all enlightened
publicists is this: It involves the assumption that the chief officer of
the state should always be a man of ordinary capacity, and, as far as
possible, without political aspirations or abilities. That is the very
essence of the hereditary principle."
"Really, Marquis," said Kophetua, a little nettled, "it is a charming
doctrine to address to a King."
"Your majesty will pardon me," pursued the Marquis hastily, "in the
cause of truth. We have arrived then at this position: A chief officer
appointed on the hereditary principle is the best, as assuring the
lowest possible intellect which we can reach without bringing the office
into contempt; and thus we see that a limited monarchy, such as England
or your majesty's own state, is the only true form of republic, in that
it distinctly repudiates the idea that the head of the community is in
any way its ruler, or fit to be its ruler."
"In fact," said Kophetua bitterly, "we kings are only perfect in our
imperfection, and useful in so far as we are useless."
"God forbid that your majesty should put such a cynical paradox on me,"
cried the Marquis. "Your usefulness is extreme. The necessity for your
perfection cannot be exaggerated. I have said that you represent the
lowest point of capacity which is consistent with the safety of the
state. It is there that you have the advantage over a president. In you
the minimum of capacity may be extremely low without danger, seeing that
there is a divinity clinging about the kingly office which is entirely
absent from any elective magistrate. You are the visible emblem of law
and order. You are instituted as the personification of loyalty.
Without such a personification the feeling cannot exist amongst the
vulgar. Precisely in the same way and on the same grounds wise men long
ago invented God as a personification of morality. There is no visible
reason why you should be head of the state more than any one else--an
advantage which an elected officer of course cannot enjoy. In default of
a visible reason, the people's instinctive faith in the existing
institution invents for them one that is supernatural and mystic. You
are to politics what the deity is to ethics, with the additional
advantage that you really exist. No position could possibly be more
respectable."
"Or more degrading," Kophetua broke in. "It is a noble and inspiring
conviction for a man that he is an idol to sit and wag his head when
some one pulls the string."
"Your majesty is unjustly severe upon the office," said the Marquis. "To
me it is the most ennobling a man can hold; for it involves the duty of
fostering a love of law and order by attaching the people to your own
person by ties of affection. With action forbidden you, you have to make
yourself popular and respected. It is a task of the utmost difficulty,
and only to be accomplished by the highest nobility of character. It is
a task," continued the Frenchman, with a profound bow, "in which your
majesty has entirely succeeded. In you, at least, to resign would be
criminal."
"Marquis," said Kophetua, after a pause, with that expression of lofty
sentiment which sometimes illumined his handsome face, "you give me the
richest of gifts. You give me a new point of view, and from it I see a
prospect of surpassing beauty."
M. de Tricotrin's conversation with the King made him more eager than
ever to win the assistance of Turbo. He had made another impression, he
was sure. He had found the King quite content not to marry in the
prospect of forming a republic. He had left him with the seed of a
desire for a wife that he might continue to be a king. But Kophetua must
not be left alone. He was a man, and had opinions. It was absolutely
necessary to ensure that Turbo would cultivate instead of rooting out
the good impression. Then, with Penelophon secretly removed out of the
way--and the King need never know how it was done--the course would be
clear for his own daughter.