The Countess von Rosen spoke the truth. The great Prime Minister of
Grünewald was already closeted with Seraphina. The toilet was over; and
the Princess, tastefully arrayed, sat face to face with a tall mirror.
Sir John’s description was unkindly true, true in terms and yet a libel,
a misogynistic masterpiece. Her forehead was perhaps too high, but it
became her; her figure somewhat stooped, but every detail was formed and
finished like a gem; her hand, her foot, her ear, the set of her comely
head, were all dainty and accordant; if she was not beautiful, she was
vivid, changeful, coloured, and pretty with a thousand various
prettinesses; and her eyes, if they indeed rolled too consciously, yet
rolled to purpose. They were her most attractive feature, yet they
continually bore eloquent false witness to her thoughts; for while she
herself, in the depths of her immature, unsoftened heart, was given
altogether to manlike ambition and the desire of power, the eyes were by
turns bold, inviting, fiery, melting, and artful, like the eyes of a
rapacious siren. And artful, in a sense, she was. Chafing that she was
not a man, and could not shine by action, she had conceived a woman’s
part, of answerable domination; she sought to subjugate for by-ends, to
rain influence and be fancy free; and, while she loved not man, loved to
see man obey her. It is a common girl’s ambition. Such was perhaps that
lady of the glove, who sent her lover to the lions. But the snare is
laid alike for male and female, and the world most artfully contrived.
Near her, in a low chair, Gondremark had arranged his limbs into a
cat-like attitude, high-shouldered, stooping, and submiss. The
formidable blue jowl of the man, and the dull bilious eye, set perhaps a
higher value on his evident desire to please. His face was marked by
capacity, temper, and a kind of bold, piratical dishonesty which it would
be calumnious to call deceit. His manners, as he smiled upon the
Princess, were over-fine, yet hardly elegant.
‘Possibly,’ said the Baron, ‘I should now proceed to take my leave. I
must not keep my sovereign in the ante-room. Let us come at once to a
decision.’
‘It cannot, cannot be put off?’ she asked.
‘It is impossible,’ answered Gondremark. ‘Your Highness sees it for
herself. In the earlier stages, we might imitate the serpent; but for
the ultimatum, there is no choice but to be bold like lions. Had the
Prince chosen to remain away, it had been better; but we have gone too
far forward to delay.’
‘What can have brought him?’ she cried. ‘To-day of all days?’
‘The marplot, madam, has the instinct of his nature,’ returned
Gondremark. ‘But you exaggerate the peril. Think, madam, how far we
have prospered, and against what odds! Shall a Featherhead?—but no!’
And he blew upon his fingers lightly with a laugh.
‘Featherhead,’ she replied, ‘is still the Prince of Grünewald.’
‘On your sufferance only, and so long as you shall please to be
indulgent,’ said the Baron. ‘There are rights of nature; power to the
powerful is the law. If he shall think to cross your destiny—well, you
have heard of the brazen and the earthen pot.’
‘Do you call me pot? You are ungallant, Baron,’ laughed the Princess.
‘Before we are done with your glory, I shall have called you by many
different titles,’ he replied.
The girl flushed with pleasure. ‘But Frédéric is still the Prince,
_monsieur le flatteur_,’ she said. ‘You do not propose a revolution?—you
of all men?’
‘Dear madam, when it is already made!’ he cried. ‘The Prince reigns
indeed in the almanac; but my Princess reigns and rules.’ And he looked
at her with a fond admiration that made the heart of Seraphina swell.
Looking on her huge slave, she drank the intoxicating joys of power.
Meanwhile he continued, with that sort of massive archness that so ill
became him, ‘She has but one fault; there is but one danger in the great
career that I foresee for her. May I name it? may I be so irreverent?
It is in herself—her heart is soft.’
‘Her courage is faint, Baron,’ said the Princess. ‘Suppose we have
judged ill, suppose we were defeated?’
‘Defeated, madam?’ returned the Baron, with a touch of ill-humour. ‘Is
the dog defeated by the hare? Our troops are all cantoned along the
frontier; in five hours the vanguard of five thousand bayonets shall be
hammering on the gates of Brandenau; and in all Gerolstein there are not
fifteen hundred men who can manœuvre. It is as simple as a sum. There
can be no resistance.’
‘It is no great exploit,’ she said. ‘Is that what you call glory? It is
like beating a child.’
‘The courage, madam, is diplomatic,’ he replied. ‘We take a grave step;
we fix the eyes of Europe, for the first time, on Grünewald; and in the
negotiations of the next three months, mark me, we stand or fall. It is
there, madam, that I shall have to depend upon your counsels,’ he added,
almost gloomily. ‘If I had not seen you at work, if I did not know the
fertility of your mind, I own I should tremble for the consequence. But
it is in this field that men must recognise their inability. All the
great negotiators, when they have not been women, have had women at their
elbows. Madame de Pompadour was ill served; she had not found her
Gondremark; but what a mighty politician! Catherine de’ Medici, too,
what justice of sight, what readiness of means, what elasticity against
defeat! But alas! madam, her Featherheads were her own children; and she
had that one touch of vulgarity, that one trait of the good-wife, that
she suffered family ties and affections to confine her liberty.’
These singular views of history, strictly _ad usum Seraphinæ_, did not
weave their usual soothing spell over the Princess. It was plain that
she had taken a momentary distaste to her own resolutions; for she
continued to oppose her counsellor, looking upon him out of half-closed
eyes and with the shadow of a sneer upon her lips. ‘What boys men are!’
she said; ‘what lovers of big words! Courage, indeed! If you had to
scour pans, Herr Von Gondremark, you would call it, I suppose, Domestic
Courage?’
‘I would, madam,’ said the Baron stoutly, ‘if I scoured them well. I
would put a good name upon a virtue; you will not overdo it: they are not
so enchanting in themselves.’
‘Well, but let me see,’ she said. ‘I wish to understand your courage.
Why we asked leave, like children! Our grannie in Berlin, our uncle in
Vienna, the whole family, have patted us on the head and sent us forward.
Courage? I wonder when I hear you!’
‘My Princess is unlike herself,’ returned the Baron. ‘She has forgotten
where the peril lies. True, we have received encouragement on every
hand; but my Princess knows too well on what untenable conditions; and
she knows besides how, in the publicity of the diet, these whispered
conferences are forgotten and disowned. The danger is very real’—he
raged inwardly at having to blow the very coal he had been
quenching—‘none the less real in that it is not precisely military, but
for that reason the easier to be faced. Had we to count upon your
troops, although I share your Highness’s expectations of the conduct of
Alvenau, we cannot forget that he has not been proved in chief command.
But where negotiation is concerned, the conduct lies with us; and with
your help, I laugh at danger.’
‘It may be so,’ said Seraphina, sighing. ‘It is elsewhere that I see
danger. The people, these abominable people—suppose they should
instantly rebel? What a figure we should make in the eyes of Europe to
have undertaken an invasion while my own throne was tottering to its
fall!’
‘Nay, madam,’ said Gondremark, smiling, ‘here you are beneath yourself.
What is it that feeds their discontent? What but the taxes? Once we
have seized Gerolstein, the taxes are remitted, the sons return covered
with renown, the houses are adorned with pillage, each tastes his little
share of military glory, and behold us once again a happy family! “Ay,”
they will say, in each other’s long ears, “the Princess knew what she was
about; she was in the right of it; she has a head upon her shoulders; and
here we are, you see, better off than before.” But why should I say all
this? It is what my Princess pointed out to me herself; it was by these
reasons that she converted me to this adventure.’
‘I think, Herr von Gondremark,’ said Seraphina, somewhat tartly, ‘you
often attribute your own sagacity to your Princess.’
For a second Gondremark staggered under the shrewdness of the attack; the
next, he had perfectly recovered. ‘Do I?’ he said. ‘It is very
possible. I have observed a similar tendency in your Highness.’
It was so openly spoken, and appeared so just, that Seraphina breathed
again. Her vanity had been alarmed, and the greatness of the relief
improved her spirits. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘all this is little to the
purpose. We are keeping Frédéric without, and I am still ignorant of our
line of battle. Come, co-admiral, let us consult. . . . How am I to
receive him now? And what are we to do if he should appear at the
council?’
‘Now,’ he answered. ‘I shall leave him to my Princess for just now! I
have seen her at work. Send him off to his theatricals! But in all
gentleness,’ he added. ‘Would it, for instance, would it displease my
sovereign to affect a headache?’
‘Never!’ said she. ‘The woman who can manage, like the man who can
fight, must never shrink from an encounter. The knight must not disgrace
his weapons.’
‘Then let me pray my _belle dame sans merci_,’ he returned, ‘to affect
the only virtue that she lacks. Be pitiful to the poor young man; affect
an interest in his hunting; be weary of politics; find in his society, as
it were, a grateful repose from dry considerations. Does my Princess
authorise the line of battle?’
‘Well, that is a trifle,’ answered Seraphina. ‘The council—there is the
point.’
‘The council?’ cried Gondremark. ‘Permit me, madam.’ And he rose and
proceeded to flutter about the room, counterfeiting Otto both in voice
and gesture not unhappily. ‘What is there to-day, Herr von Gondremark?
Ah, Herr Cancellarius, a new wig! You cannot deceive me; I know every
wig in Grünewald; I have the sovereign’s eye. What are these papers
about? O, I see. O, certainly. Surely, surely. I wager none of you
remarked that wig. By all means. I know nothing about that. Dear me,
are there as many as all that? Well, you can sign them; you have the
procuration. You see, Herr Cancellarius, I knew your wig. And so,’
concluded Gondremark, resuming his own voice, ‘our sovereign, by the
particular grace of God, enlightens and supports his privy councillors.’
But when the Baron turned to Seraphina for approval, he found her frozen.
‘You are pleased to be witty, Herr von Gondremark,’ she said, ‘and have
perhaps forgotten where you are. But these rehearsals are apt to be
misleading. Your master, the Prince of Grünewald, is sometimes more
exacting.’
Gondremark cursed her in his soul. Of all injured vanities, that of the
reproved buffoon is the most savage; and when grave issues are involved,
these petty stabs become unbearable. But Gondremark was a man of iron;
he showed nothing; he did not even, like the common trickster, retreat
because he had presumed, but held to his point bravely. ‘Madam,’ he
said, ‘if, as you say, he prove exacting, we must take the bull by the
horns.’
‘We shall see,’ she said, and she arranged her skirt like one about to
rise. Temper, scorn, disgust, all the more acrid feelings, became her
like jewels; and she now looked her best.
‘Pray God they quarrel,’ thought Gondremark. ‘The damned minx may fail
me yet, unless they quarrel. It is time to let him in. Zz—fight, dogs!’
Consequent on these reflections, he bent a stiff knee and chivalrously
kissed the Princess’s hand. ‘My Princess,’ he said, ‘must now dismiss
her servant. I have much to arrange against the hour of council.’
‘Go,’ she said, and rose.
And as Gondremark tripped out of a private door, she touched a bell, and
gave the order to admit the Prince.