第18章

BEHIND THE PUPPET BOOTH

While the absent-minded hunter strode down toward the lower town, and Maurice sipped his cognac, the king lay in his bed in the palace and aimlessly fingered the counterpane.There was now no beauty in his face.It was furrowed and pale, and an endless fever burned in the sunken eyes--eyes like coals, which suddenly flare before they turn to ash.

The archbishop nor the chancellor could see anything in the dim corners of the royal bed chamber, but he could.It was the mocking finger of death, and it was leveled at him.Spring had come, and summer and autumn and winter, and spring again, but he had not wandered through the green fields, except in dreams, and the byways he loved knew him no more.Ah, to sit still like a spectator and to see the world pass by! To be a part of it, and yet not of it! To see the glory of strength and vigor just beyond one's grasp, the staffs to lean on crumble to the touch, and the stars of hope fade away one by one from the firmament of one's dreams! Here was weariness for which there was no remedy.

Day by day time pressed him on toward the inevitable.No human hand could stay him.He could think, but he could not act.He could move, but he could not stand nor walk.And that philosophy which had in other days sustained him was shattered and threadbare.He was dead, yet he lived.Fate has so many delicate ironies.

He had tried to make his people love him, only to acquire their hate.He had reduced taxation, only to be scorned.He had made the city beautiful, only to be cursed.A paralytic, the theme of ribald verse, the butt of wineroom wits, the object of contumely to his people, his beneficiaries!

The ingratitude of kings bites not half so deep as the ingratitude of the people.Tears filled his eyes, and he fumbled his lips.There were only two bright spots in his futile life.

The first was his daughter, who read to him, who was the first in the morning to greet him and last at night to leave him.The second was the evening hour when the archbishop and the chancellor came in to discuss the affairs of state.

"And Prince Frederick has not yet been heard from?" was his first inquiry.

"No, Sire," answered the chancellor."The matter is altogether mysterious.The police can find no trace of him.He left Carnavia for Bleiberg; he stopped at Ehrenstein, directed his suite to proceed; there, all ends.The ambassador from Carnavia approached me to-day.He scouts the idea of a peasant girl, and hinted at other things.""Yes," said the king, "there is something behind all this.

Frederick is not a youth of peccadilloes.Something has happened to him.But God send him safe and sound to us, so much depends on him.And Alexia?""Says nothing," the archbishop answered, "a way with her when troubled.""And my old friend, Lord Fitzgerald?"

The prelate shook his head sadly."We have just been made acquainted with his death.God rest his kindly soul."The king sank deeper into his pillows.

"But we shall hear from his son within a few days," continued the prelate, taking the king's hand in his own."My son, cease to worry.Alexia's future is in good hands.I have confidence that the public debt will be liquidated on the twentieth.""Or renewed," said the chancellor."Your Majesty must not forget that Prince Frederick sacrifices his own private fortune to adjust our indebtedness.That is the wedding gift which he offers to her Highness.One way or the other, we have nothing to fear.""O!" cried the king, "I had forgotten that magnanimity.His disappearance is no longer a mystery.He is dead."His auditors could not repress the start which this declaration caused them to make.

"Sire," said the chancellor, quietly, "princes are not assassinated these days.Our worry is perhaps all needless.The prince is young, and sometimes youth flings off the bridle and runs away.But he loves her Highness, and the Carnavians are not fickle."The prelate and the statesman had different ideas in regard to the peasant girl.To the prelate a woman was an unknown quantity, and he frowned.The statesman, who had once been young, knew a deal about woman, and he smiled.