Lady Blanche had no desire to make a mountain out of a molehill, but even when she surveyed her interview with Malakopf with the coolness and sobriety of 9 a.m., she still thought that it was clearly her business to make the matter known to her whom it principally concerned. Accordingly she sent a note to Sophia asking her for an audience on an affair of some importance, and this being granted, poured into the Princess’s amused and interested ear all that Malakopf had said. Blanche was a good narrator, with so admirable a memory that she had no call to draw on her imagination, and her account was both vivid and accurate, the rarest of combinations, and one for which we in vain look in the pages of histories.

Princess Sophia was far too well entertained by the farcical absurdity of the conspiracy to be really angry at present with her husband. Malakopf, however, less simple-witted and much older, was not so lightly dismissed. She knew the man to be cunning, and one whose investments might be considered safe, and she fumed at the idea of a centipede conspiring against her.

‘But there is one point which perplexes me,’ she said to Blanche. ‘Petros and that creature are in league together, that is certain, and Petros, poor dear, I have no doubt whatever, thrones himself prospectively over RhodopÉ. Really, I married a fool after all, and one of my requirements was that my husband should not be that. I shall get quite indignant with him if he does not drop this nonsense. But then where does Malakopf come in? It is quite certain that it is not worth his while to overturn me in order to set up Petros. Without doubt he means to step in himself; but where? He has mounted as high in RhodopÉ as a subject can; he would not take so much trouble if he was to be nothing more.’

‘You must remember you have ever treated him like an insect, Princess,’ said Blanche. ‘Would not it be sufficient reward for him to overturn you?’

‘No, I think not,’ said Sophia. ‘The man loathes me, of course, and no doubt revenge would be an incentive. But I doubt revenge being his goal. Perhaps there are wheels within wheels. Petros is to overturn me, and he is to overturn Petros. The House of Ægina is to be a set of ninepins for a centipede!’

‘The worst of it is that it is almost impossible to find out more,’ said Blanche. ‘It was a lapful of luck that we know at all.’

‘It was clever of you, Blanche,’ said Sophia, ‘and clever people are always lucky. About Petros—I shall give him one chance. I shall let fall a word which should be a warning to him, something very plain, yet meaningless to a good conscience, and then I shall have another talk with you, Blanche.’

Sophia glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, which had just jarred as a warning of its striking.

‘Good gracious! it is nearly twelve,’ she said. ‘I shall take a stroll in the direction—in the direction of the club. Thank you again, Blanche; how earnestly you know. You have been instructive as well as amusing. Really, Petros is very impertinent, now I think it over. I shall ask you to come here again in a day or two—or, stay, I am dining at the Legation on Friday; we will talk then, after dinner.’

The opportunity of giving a word of warning to Petros occurred that very evening. They had dined alone, which was unusual; and after dinner, which was still more unusual, the Prince had proposed a game of bezique. Sophia had intended to go to the club, but she changed her mind, and counter-ordered her carriage; for during dinner her husband had interested her, and this proposal of his was now become remarkable.

Never in his life had the Prince been more desirous to please, but never in his life, had he known all, had his efforts been more wildly misdirected and futile, for during the day Sophia’s amusement had given place to anger. In a conversation he had held with Malakopf that morning, that sagacious Minister, conscious of a slight want of caution the night before, had laid great stress on two points.

‘I need not tell you, my dear Prince,’ he said, ‘how essential it is that the Princess should remain entirely unsuspicious. We have seen a great deal of each other lately, and I reluctantly propose that we do not meet quite so often for the future. Our intimacy might put someone on the look-out, and if you throw a bomb where people are looking, they will run away. That is my first point. The second point contains good news. Already there is a widely-spread discontent in the State at the unedifying conduct of your wife, or so it seems to people, and a large sympathy with your untiring exertion in the Assembly. Also, I know for certain that at present Princess Sophia reposes entire confidence in you. Let it be your business to maintain that unabated—more, to increase it.’

‘Who told you this?’ asked Petros.

‘One who knows her well—Lady Blanche Amesbury.’

‘Lady Blanche said she put entire confidence in me?’

‘I have the honour of telling you so,’ said Malakopf with impatience.

‘You seem to have had an intimate talk with Lady Blanche. She is a clever woman.’

‘And I am not without wits,’ said Malakopf, chuckling, ‘and our talk was more intimate than she knew. Indeed, she gave me all I wanted to know with the charming naÏvetÉ of a child.’

Prince Petros was silent a moment; he did not feel entirely at ease about this interview, but his habit of obedience to Malakopf’s orders would not let him speak. At length, dismissing the subject, ‘Tell me how to maintain my wife’s confidence,’ he said.

‘A little bezique in the evening would do wonders with her,’ said Malakopf sententiously.

Thus it was that Prince Petros had proposed a game that evening, and Sophia accepted from curiosity. During dinner he had talked charmingly, and had related a number of amusing experiences shortly and with point. At each Sophia’s contempt rose bitter as bile in her throat. Behind her back he planned a revolution; before her face he paid court to the amenities of social life, he behaved with a studied naturalness and kindness. Knowing all she knew, these miserable little attentions seemed to her the very acme of meanness, and it was the desire of studying him further which made her counter-order the carriage that should have taken her to the club. This argued a very strong desire.

They stood by the open window drinking their coffee, while the groom of the chambers put out the table and packs of cards, and when the man had left the room, Petros gently thrust his arm through hers.

‘It seems so long since we have spent an evening quietly together, Sophia,’ he said. ‘To me, at least, it seems long. Sometimes I almost wish you had been a poor girl, not the Princess of RhodopÉ, that we had been able to live quietly together up in some little mountain home.’

Sophia for the moment was struck dumb. Surely there was never so immeasurable a hypocrite as this man! She could not answer, but since she wished him to continue, she gently pressed his arm with hers.

‘You have felt that too, dearest?’ he continued softly. ‘Sometimes, Sophia, I have thought you were a little weary of me. Now your sweet silence makes me know I was wrong; so forgive me, darling. Look at that lovely wash of moonlight over the town. It lies like a benediction over your land. It was just such a night—was it not?—when I first came here. I bless that day—I bless it every hour of my life.’

Sophia turned from him; the man produced in her a sense of physical sickness. She, who with all her faults had never lied—she, to whom falsehood was a dirty thing, as inconceivable as not washing, felt ill at his duplicity. She was angry at herself for letting him speak, and for a moment she was on the point of telling him she knew all. But her anger surged up again, she could not forgive him; he had chosen to act a crooked part, he must reap as he had sown. But she had promised herself to give him a word of warning; that he should have.

‘Come, Petros,’ she said at length, with an assumed lightness of manner, ‘bezique, bezique. Really, I don’t know that a cottage on the mountains would have suited me well, though it is charming of you to suggest it; you would not have loved to find me thumbing a dirty pack of cards when I should have been mending your stockings. There is a great deal to be said for the position of the Princess of RhodopÉ.’

He took her hand with charming courtesy and kissed it.

‘And who can say enough for the position of her husband?’ he asked.

They played a hand or two with the luck fairly divided, and Petros, who seemed to Sophia to have recaptured his skill, was a considerable winner at the end of an hour. But shortly after that he held a hand for which, as Sophia declared, the world was made. He had early in the game declared sequence six times, and then abandoned it; he had three beziques on the table and the fourth knave of diamonds. This card he drew in some eight tricks before the end, and still Sophia had not seen the corresponding queen. But Petros’s heart failed him; he scored the three beziques again with his extra knave, and immediately afterwards drew in the missing queen.

Sophia was aghast.

‘Four thousand five hundred gone to the dogs!’ she exclaimed, with contempt. ‘Really, Petros, you are beside yourself.’

‘It was a fault of generalship, I admit,’ said he.

Sophia looked at him very steadily. This was a good opening for what she had to say.

‘Indeed, Petros, you are no Napoleon,’ she said. ‘You could never, never carve a kingdom for yourself.’

So Petros had his warning, and Sophia hardened her heart against him.

As Malakopf had suggested, the two conspirators saw somewhat less of each other for the next week or two, and more than once Sophia thought—and, to do her justice, hoped—that Petros must have taken her word of warning to heart. But his nauseating little tendernesses and solicitudes for her were not diminished, and she found him infinitely disgusting. He was acting a part, of that she was well assured, for he was not, she knew, a man to whom caresses are habitual, and their day had long since been over between them. What, then, could this recrudescence of an exhibition which had never been natural to him mean but that he wished to keep her ever surrounded with a tinsel counterfeit of love? And for what reason could he coin its tokens in such profusion, except that he wished her to rest assured of his unalterable devotion? The man was putrid.

Two days after this the Princess and her husband dined together at the English Legation. Lord Abbotsworthy, of course, took the Princess in, and on her other side sat Malakopf. As usual, he, figuratively speaking, licked the ground she trod on, and, as usual, she walked with her tip-tilted nose in the air, as if he had been a disagreeable smell. But during the course of dinner she let fall a few words which interested him, though she spoke to the Minister, and not to him, but she intended the words for his ear, and he sucked them greedily in.

‘I shall not leave RhodopÉ till October this year,’ so Malakopf heard her say, ‘but when I do go, I shall be away three months at the least. Petros is so admirable, he manages affairs much better than I do, and it really gives him something to do. Moreover, I have the completest confidence in him, and his speeches, I believe, are considered most sensible. I shall spend Christmas in England, I think, with my cousin. England is often delightful at Christmas, and I don’t suppose I shall be back here till half-way through January. The yacht? Oh yes; I love the sea, as you know. I shall go in the yacht. Poor Petros is sea-sick—think how absurd!’

Malakopf found much to interest him in this speech. The Princess’s long absence was ideal to his wishes; even to the most loyal of her subjects a three months’ sojourn abroad would appear protracted, a trial to their belief in her unwavering devotion to their welfare. And never before, in his recollection, had the monarch been absent on the occasion of the great royal fÊte on New Year’s Day, when the Princess always gave an immense dance to all those who had signed their names in her book, and a great banquet in the Guildhall to the humbler citizens of RhodopÉ. There, just before midnight, she went with all her guests, and took her stand in silence under the clock, while the great assemblage waited, finger on lip and glass in hand, for the New Year to strike. As soon as the twelve great shocks had proclaimed another year, she drank prosperity to them all, and broke her glass, so that no one again might drink from it. She herself then mingled with the crowd, and spoke a few words to everyone she came across. Her wonderful memory made it easy for her to recognise hundreds whom she had never consciously seen except on this night, and a word of inquiry after son or daughter made many hearts beat proudly.

Likewise, if the Princess was away for December, the duty of proroguing Parliament would fall on Petros. The Assembly always rose from its autumn Session the week before Christmas, but it was not formally prorogued till the afternoon of the last day of December. On that day all Members attended in Court dress, and from the throne the Princess made a speech, thanking them for their labours in the past year. As representative of her, Petros would speak from her seat, and Malakopf made a mental note that a somewhat telling scene might be planned for this occasion, and that Petros also would see a great opportunity.

They left the dining-room, foreign fashion, all together, each man giving his arm to the woman he had taken in, and as the Princess no longer objected even to the taste of smoke, there was no segregation of men when they reached the drawing-room. But after a few words with one and another of the guests, she beckoned to Lady Blanche, and the two sat down in a corner of the drawing-room somewhat apart from the others.

Malakopf had an uneasy moment when he saw this, but already in his own mind he had advanced matters so far that it did not matter much what the Princess did, and running rapidly over his conversation with Lady Blanche, he found no tangible cause for disquietude.

‘Blanche,’ said Sophia, speaking in English, ‘I have made my plans. You have to help me, so please be very intelligent.’

‘What has happened?’ asked Blanche.

‘I have given Petros his warning, and that is over. His silence made me sure that he knew what I meant. I told him he was no Napoleon, to carve himself a kingdom. But his odious little attentions to me, which I imagine are performed at Malakopf’s bidding, continue, and I think he has made up his mind not to take warning. Tant pis, for I do not give him another chance. You will hardly believe it, but the other night, only, he made crawly little sentimental speeches to me, though we have done with that sort of thing long ago. He said he wished we had been a poor couple in a cottage, and he kissed my hand. The flesh of me crept.’

‘That looks like Malakopf,’ said Blanche.

‘Well, enough of Petros,’ went on Sophia. ‘To-night I talked rather loud to your father, so that Malakopf could hear. I told him I should leave RhodopÉ in October, and not come back till the middle of January.’

‘But the New Year fÊte?’ asked Blanche.

‘Well, I deceived your father. I expect I shall be in Amandos before then; to speak more exactly, I expect to be back on December the thirty-first. However, that shall be seen. Now, before I go, I shall give you the cipher which I use with Petros, and I want to be accurately informed day by day how things are going. I will tell your father that I shall be in correspondence with you, and ask him to send off your telegrams direct from the Legation, for Malakopf is cunning enough to suspect something if he finds you constantly sending despatches to me. Indeed, he looked a little suspicious just now, when he saw me sit down and talk to you.’

‘It is too dangerous,’ said Blanche. ‘Dear Sophia, don’t go away for so long; anything may happen in so long an absence.’

‘It will be your business to warn me,’ said the Princess. ‘I have laid my plan carefully. You must learn as much as you can about the Prince’s and Malakopf’s little schemes, and I will return at a word from you. I shall not go to England for Christmas, as I told your father, but be much nearer home. By Christmas, indeed, I think I shall be at Corfu, so that I can get back here in a few hours. Conveniently enough, the Empress has asked me to stay with her there, and she will be incognito, and so, of course, shall I. The sailors of the Felatrune alone will know I am here, and I can rely on absolute silence. Oh, it will be as exciting as a run of luck!’ she cried.

‘Ah, I see,’ said Blanche, ‘you mean that you expect Malakopf will make the scene on the day the Assembly is prorogued?’

‘That seems to me a Heaven-sent opportunity for him,’ remarked Sophia. ‘Yet perhaps Satan were the more appropriate derivative.’

Blanche burst out laughing—every now and then Sophia, in spite of her great knowledge of English, would use a sentence of a style hopelessly pompous, thinking to utter a crowning colloquialism—and her laugh closed the conversation. Sophia rose, and, with mock resentment in her voice, ‘I had more to say to you,’ she remarked, ‘but I will not be laughed at. But I have told you all that is really important, and with you it is not necessary to say things twice. Dear Blanche, is it true that Lord Abbotsworthy has hired Pierre and a roulette-board for this evening? How touching an attention! A mark of true hospitality.’

‘Pierre is waiting for your Highness,’ said Blanche, seeing that Malakopf had drawn near them. ‘Will you go to the card-room?’

Thus it came about that Sophia was not unaware of the conspiracy which was on foot against her. She had given her husband fair warning, and since he persisted in his childish policy of surrounding her with a hundred lover-like attentions, she thought it excusable and wise to have a policy too. Sometimes she was almost stirred to pity at the futility of his efforts to blind her, while her own seeming security was so illegible to him. She accentuated, if possible, her distaste of State affairs. Half of the twenty-four hours she spent at the tables of club; she yawned behind her hand at the most important and confidential communications of her Ministers; she was even less civil than usual (and her civility to Malakopf was never remarkable) to her Prime Minister. It is true that she had the easier part to play, for while Petros fished up little attentions and an affectionate demeanour to her, as a man draws water from a deep well, with an effort, she had but to let her natural inclinations, her distaste of Malakopf, her taste for play, her ennui at infinitesimal State concerns go unreined.

The effect of all this was that the conferences between her husband and the Prime Minister lapsed into their former frequency, and not a day passed but they were closeted together. Even the astuter Malakopf, lulled into security by the Princess’s negligence of State matters, no longer went through the formality of asking for her when he wished to confer with the Crown. Yet the situation was more critical than she knew. Already there was a party in the House almost hostile to her, for the sedulity with which she kept her seat in the club, when should have been in the Council Chamber, though successful in its object, namely, that of giving increased confidence to the two main actors in the conspiracy, had had a certain effect in alienating from her many of her more sober-minded deputies. They saw with pain her unreasonable passion for the cards and her total neglect of the duties of a reigning monarch. They saw with silent sympathy the heroic efforts of the Prince to cover the deficiencies of his wife. Himself well equipped as a debater, he was primed and loaded by Malakopf, and his contributions to the debates were an edification. Yet the Princess played her part with consummate skill, and she trusted to the loyalty of the people to back her up when the great scene came. Her yawns were the picture of realistic art, her intolerance of Malakopf a triumph of sincerity. Thereby the caution of the Prime Minister was slowly and insidiously relaxed, and the four years he had originally given to the dynasty were much abbreviated in his mind; for in its sinister depths he was revolving a new and startling idea, suggested to him by the Princess’s absence. In itself it was so simple that he almost distrusted it; but as the days went on it grew more and more seductive.

August cooled into September, and the day of the Princess’s departure for her necessary holiday was fixed for October 7. It was tacitly understood between her and Petros that the Prince would not accompany her, and such had been the success of his Regency the year before that now Sophia begged him never to send her anything referring, however remotely, to State matters.

‘I am sick of the sceptre!’ she said to him the day before she left; ‘and you, Petros, are still rather fond of it. Oh, you remind me so much of a child dressing up in Court finery; when it comes to put the finery on in earnest, how bored it is! And you, Petros, if ever you held the sceptre in your own name, you would find it a bad companion of your days and nights. Sometimes I am almost tempted to abdicate this throne of RhodopÉ, yet what sort of private person should I make? I am a Princess of royal blood; I cannot help it; and the burden will be with me always.’

‘How can you say such things, dearest!’ said Petros, with well-simulated warmth. ‘It is an idle modesty that makes you seem to be ignorant of the adoration with which your subjects—I the humblest—regard you. Which of them, think you, would not willingly die for you? True, you could never be a private person, any more than a farmer’s wife could be a queen, though she thinks she could.’

‘Well, therein I am better than the farmer’s wife,’ sighed Sophia. ‘She thinks she could be me; I know I could not be her. But let me have a good holiday, Petros; don’t send me anything to sign or to consider. Consider everything yourself, and sign what you please; and get through all the business you possibly can, so that there will not be so much next Session.’

‘You must give me more explicit instructions, dear,’ said the Prince. ‘It is not likely that any measure of great importance will come before the House, but what am I to do about proroguing it? You will hardly wish me to deliver the Speech from the Throne?’

‘And why not, dear Petros?’ said she.

She was sitting in a deep armchair in shadow, fanning herself slowly, he under the full light of a lamp, and as she spoke she leaned back and watched his face intently. She saw his eye brighten, a flush steal over his face, and his right hand clenched, as if it already held the sceptre.

‘Why not, Petros?’ she repeated.

‘Because that is so essentially the prerogative of the Crown,’ he said. ‘How am I to thank your Ministers for their labours? In whose name?’

‘In your own name,’ she said; ‘for, indeed’—and she laughed quietly to herself—‘you have had far more to thank them for, or curse them for, this last year than I. It is far more suitable that you should do it. I am sure you will do it admirably.’

Again his hand clenched, and again Sophia observed his face light up. She rose with bitter aversion in her heart.

‘Thus no long explanations are necessary,’ she said. ‘Act as if you were me. I shall be back before the end of January. And now, Petros, you must leave me; I have some little affairs to settle before I dress for dinner. Kindly ring the bell for me.’

He rang, and, advancing to her, bowed and kissed her hand.

‘My Queen,’ he murmured.

Sophia stood silent, and watched his graceful exit; then she took her handkerchief, and rubbed the place where his lips had touched. Next moment the groom of the chamber entered.

‘Go to the English Legation,’ she said, ‘and tell Lady Blanche that I shall come to see her to-night after dinner. Leave the message with her; see her yourself.’

The Princess left MavromÁti next day on the Felatrune. With her went the little Prince Leonard, and Petros saw them off. He went on board with his wife, but parted from her as soon as they gained the ship, for she was to start at once. Once more pity for this treacherous man, for so she certainly regarded him, touched her.

‘I leave you with the fullest confidence,’ she said. ‘I feel sure you will be a faithful steward for me and my child.’

But Petros’s hypocrisy was not finished enough to suggest a reply, and he left her in silence.

That night, while the Felatrune ploughed her moonlit way southwards over the dim waters of the sleeping Adriatic, Malakopf dined at the Palace. Indeed, the two conspirators, to the best of their knowledge, had solid ground for self-congratulation. From their point of view, the Princess’s conduct had been impeccable, and the precision with which she had played into their hands was admirable. The hours of her attendance at the Assembly during the past summer could almost be reckoned on the fingers of a one-armed man; the hours of her presence at the club were more like in number to the stars of heaven. To crown all this, she had now left the kingdom at a time when its affairs were in the full bustle of transaction, and, what would tell against her even more in the eyes of the public, she had decided to be absent on the great festal day of the year. Malakopf had had the wit to see how skilful was the bait she had prepared, how admirable its convenience to their plans; he only failed to grasp the little fact that it was bait.

The club which the Princess had inaugurated with such brilliance in May had thrived in a way that even she could scarce have anticipated. Originally the playing-rooms had been open only from three in the afternoon till three in the morning; but a few months afterwards its session never rose. The gambling instinct in the people, for so many years void of fruition, shot up like the aloe flower; already to tamper with the inalienable right of the people of RhodopÉ to gamble in public rooms would have been more dangerous than to attempt to make penal in England cold baths or the game of golf; and it was the most skilful stroke that the ingenuity of the devil could have devised when Malakopf attempted by this very means to dethrone Sophia from her popularity.

‘It has occurred to you,’ said the Prime Minister that evening, when he and Petros were smoking, ‘that the Princess will be absent from RhodopÉ on the day that the Assembly is prorogued?’

‘I have talked to her about that,’ said Petros. ‘It seemed to me very irregular; but she told me how to act.’

‘Indeed! May I have the benefit of your conversation?’

‘She wished me to take her place absolutely,’ said Petros; ‘to speak from the throne not in her name, but in my own.’

‘Admirable!—nothing could be better,’ said Malakopf. ‘It did not occur to you, I am afraid, to get that in black and white?’

‘The Princess does not go back on her word,’ said Petros rather stiffly.

‘True; but I should have preferred black and white. Prudence can never be at fault. But we have our hands full.’

He paused, and decided to tell the Prince of the plan that he had been maturing.

‘By the thirty-first of December the fruit must be ripe for the plucking,’ he said. ‘I shall introduce a Bill next month to shut up all gambling-houses in RhodopÉ, and to make even betting an offence. What do you think of that?’

Again he looked at the Prince to see what he would make of this. Petros fairly recoiled.

‘It is impossible,’ he said; ‘there will be a revolution.’

‘True, there will be a revolution; but I thought we were working to bring that about.’

‘But it is insane, this idea of yours,’ said Petros. ‘What line am I to take, for instance? Am I to oppose you? for if I do not, my chances are gone. Unless I speak against your Bill, the people will have none of me; and if I speak for it, where is our combination?’

Malakopf smiled grimly.

‘I thought you did not see how valuable was the Princess’s command to you to act absolutely in her name, or why I should have preferred it in black and white. That command is simply the coping-stone of my structure. You will vote for the Bill, of course; but you will speak against it. Heaven! is it possible you are so slow? Oh, do you not see? Reluctantly, regretfully, but with unimpeachable loyalty, you will find yourself obliged to act in her absence, as she would have you act, as she told you to act. She could not face the situation herself; she has run away, and she has left you behind to face the odium of her deed. All will vote against the Prince, as the representative of his unworthy wife; but what sympathy there will be for Petros! As for your wife, she will at once become the most unpopular woman in RhodopÉ. The people like their gambling, and they will not have that stopped, you may be sure; but they are brave, and they do not like running away. Why, man, it is the very opportunity for the speech you planned so long ago!’

Prince Petros had risen from his seat, and was pacing up and down the room excitedly.

‘I see—I see,’ he cried. ‘Yes, it is a splendid idea; it is of the best. I stand corrected; but would it not be even more telling if I introduced the Bill myself in her name? As you know, any Bill introduced by the Crown is carried.’

‘But we do not want the Bill to be carried,’ said Malakopf. ‘We want it thrown out by an immense majority. The minority, in fact, I expect will consist of yourself.’

But the Prince’s suggestion had more in it than Malakopf perceived at once, and than the Prince perceived at all. Any Bill—such was the autocratic law of RhodopÉ—introduced by the Crown passed into law. The privilege had rarely been used, and this prerogative was practically obsolete; but there could be no doubt, as the Prince said, that the Crown was constitutionally within its rights in so acting. Thus, if Prince Petros introduced the Bill in the Princess’s name, and stuck to it, it could only fail to become law by a reconstitution of the power of the Crown—in other words, by a revolution. In this way Malakopf would be rid not only of the Princess, but also of the Prince, who, despite his speech against it, would have voted for it. This formed part of his original, but at present undetailed, programme, and he was fairly astounded at the fitness of his opportunity. He could kill both with one stone. So, after a moment, he corrected himself.

‘But I am not sure,’ he said, ‘that you are not right after all. Perhaps yours is the simpler plan, for it makes a revolution inevitable. I will think it over. Meanwhile, may I ask for a whisky-and-soda? The night is hot for this time of the year.’

The two were sitting on the great north veranda of the Palace. The air was exquisitely fresh, with an easterly breeze, though still, as Malakopf had said, warm for October. But a divine mellowness is over October in RhodopÉ, the sky is a perfect turquoise from sunrise to sunset, and to sunrise again an inimitable sapphire. The French season at its height, and a band from the Casino gardens close by made the night an echo of the brain of Weber. The moon, swung full south, cast a great square of shadow from the Palace over the garden, and the metallic tinkle of the water from the bronze Triton fountain falling into its basin came from the darkness. Beyond, a balustrade of Pentelic marble bounded the headlong cliff below, and in the hollow beneath the lamps of Amandos twinkled innumerably. On the great range of Balkan peaks to the north the earliest snow of the year had already fallen, and the giants of the range were silver spearheads charging the sky. To the west, twelve miles away, the lights of MavromÁti, low on the horizon and small as a glow-worm, were more like a reflection of stars than an authentic constellation. But from minute to minute a luminous pencil of colour, now scarlet, now red, now yellow, shot with penetrating clearness across the land, and even dyed the white Palace walls for a moment in its passage, marking the rotation of the harbour lights. The murmur of busy folk buzzed like the swarming of bees from the town, and now and again a sudden shriller note betokened some infinitesimal excitement of the street.

But the perfection of the Southern night roused no echo in the heart of Petros; his thoughts were intent on himself. Little he recked of the ebony shadows, the white fields of moonshine, the beauty of the muffled sounds of the night, and in so far as they reached him, they reached him only by the sense of lordship. Soon, he thought, would the polychrome light from MavromÁti be his; his, too, would be the cicala that sang in the bushes; his the luminous evidence of mankind that shone from the lights of Amandos. For his outlook was but puny; nothing was great if it was not his, nothing was beautiful unless it owned his supremacy. Nor was Malakopf more poetically-minded: the spearheads of the Balkan were only interesting because the map of Europe traced across that untracked whiteness the boundaries of RhodopÉ; the strains of Weber that came from the club gardens were only beautiful because he had invested a large sum of money in the Casino, and music was an attraction to the visitors. Once President of this Republic of RhodopÉ, he would have willingly driven the snow-plough across the Balkans to mark the limits of his Presidency, if thereby he could add an acre to its mileage, and painted the country magenta to correspond with the latest map.

But though the glory of the Southern night gave him no food for admiration, the last suggestion of the Prince was worth the expenditure of brain tissue, and the more he considered it, the more suitable did the Prince’s unwitting scheme appear. It would be necessary, it is true, to alter the proposed chronology of events, and reserve for the last meeting of the Assembly before the Christmas holiday the introduction of the new Bill. The House should not be asked to vote on that day; the Bill alone should be read, and notice given that the voting would take place immediately before the prorogation on December 31.

The thought of the scene which would take place on that day almost dazzled him. The Assembly at RhodopÉ had never been, since he had known it first, a House of melodrama. But on December 31 the scene would surely beggar the Adelphi Theatre, London. From the throne the Prince would make a regretful, and no doubt a very foolish, speech on this Bill for abolishing all gambling within the principality, and since he, as Sophia’s representative, introduced the Bill, the Assembly would, on precedent and constitution, record indeed their votes, but, however the voting went, would be compelled to accept it. But he knew them very little if such was the event. In his speech the Prince would, as Malakopf had planned the scene, be forced to support the wishes and the commands of his wife. She, so he would say, had intended to introduce the Bill herself, but had been unable to face the situation, and had left the doing of it to him. All her subjects knew that she had opened the club herself, knew also the assiduity with which she attended its sessions. With what face now was she to order its abolition, when the institution had taken such deep hold on her people? But her purpose was irrevocably fixed. Abolished it should be, and she claimed (through her husband) the ancient right of the Crown. For a week past there would have been but one subject for talk in the principality; indignation would have flared like a bonfire since the Bill had been introduced. Half RhodopÉ spent rapturous evenings in the Casino; they would not lightly give them up. But the Prince, as primed by Malakopf, would speak with strength and conviction. He would commit himself hopelessly to a policy of loyalty to his wife. His position (he would say) was most trying, but he was bound by every code of honour to support without reservation her whom he represented. Such were her commands. The Bill was introduced by the Crown; let them vote if they pleased; the measure became law.

Malakopf’s eye glowed. He saw himself rise before the assembled House, and to the Prince’s dumb and infinite dismay, oppose the Bill. Such a course, he knew, was without shadow of precedent. He would adopt it without attempt at excuse. He would denounce the Princess. As they all knew, she spent her holidays at Monte Carlo—much needed holidays, indeed! She was worn out, was she not, with the prosecution of State affairs! His brother ministers knew how wide and numerous were the yawns with which she honoured their audiences. The Bill could not become law; simply it was one of the things that did not happen. Yet it must become law unless they took a line of their own. On his part, he begged to move that the question of the Bill before the House be postponed a moment, for he had another proposal to make. The House (so he told himself in these imaginings) would vote on the postponement of the Bill for the abolition of gambling; the House would carry it. Then he would propose nothing short of a revolution, the dethronement of the line of Ægina, who, in the person of the Princess, sought to curtail the inalienable right of gambling inaugurated by herself. In this, and in no other way, could liberty be secured them.

But it was far better that the Bill, if such was to be his policy, should be introduced just before the Christmas vacation, and that no voting should take place till the last day of December, to give a whole week for the fermentation of righteous wrath to come to a head. And it would not be a bad thing to let a hint of what was coming be in the air, to let the free spirit of the citizens chafe at the thought of so grievous a curtailment of their liberties, to let Distrust flap its obscene wings about the streets. Again his own investment in the club itself had turned out most profitable, for the half-year’s dividend had been declared at 20 per cent. This, too, he had no mind to lose.

By the beginning of December it was already a matter for street-corner gossip as to whether there was any truth in this extraordinary report that the Princess Sophia would introduce by the mouth of her husband a Bill for the abolition of gambling. To most the thing seemed scarcely credible, and the more loyal of her subjects flatly refused to entertain so preposterous a suggestion. It was inconceivable that the queen of gamblers should attempt to deprive her subjects of the right to indulge in her own favourite pursuit, and it was bitter to contemplate her at Monte Carlo directing from the St. Peter’s of the goddess the closing of this remote little chapel. Others, who pretended to more authentic information, declared that she was acting under the persuasion of the Prince, who, as it was well known, did not frequent the club, and though he had invested in it, rather disapproved of it than otherwise. By degrees this view of the question obtained a following, and as it grew by so much the popularity of the Prince waned and the delight of Malakopf waxed. Petros had never been seen at the club since his wife’s departure, and this alone was sufficient to raise a prejudice against him. The air was full of disquietude, which increased as the days went on.

This disquietude was only not shared by Malakopf; indeed, the Fates seemed to be propitious for him. Sophia away, the odium of the proposed change gradually attaching to the Prince—no combination of circumstances could have been luckier. The exact execution of his great stroke must be largely left for the future to decide, but at present things were working out just as he desired. He was studious to keep the Prince unaware, as far as might be, of the growing feeling against him, for fear he might turn craven at the end, and not give him his full opportunity.

Meantime Lady Blanche kept an eager eye on the development of the situation, and noted every chop and change of popular feeling. She had already telegraphed to Sophia the rumour of the Bill, advising her to leave Monte Carlo instantly, so as to be nearer at hand, in case of any precipitation of events. The Princess had telegraphed back that she was on the point of leaving, and said that her next address would be at the Empress’ Villa in Corfu, where she would be known to the postal authorities as the Countess of Ægina. As there was plenty of time for a letter to reach her before her arrival, Lady Blanche wrote to her at length, describing the exact condition of affairs, and recommending her to keep steam up on her yacht, since there was no knowing when the crisis would come. It seemed probable, however, as it was now definitely announced that the Bill would be introduced on the day before the Christmas vacation, but that no voting would take place then, nor any speech from Prince Petros, that the last day of December was the date determined by the two conspirators for their grand coup.

The Bill was to be read, so Malakopf and Prince Petros had planned it, immediately before the adjournment of the House for the Christmas vacation. After reading it, the Prince would simply give notice that the voting on the Bill would take place on December 31, after which the House would rise. He would then return straight to the Palace, and as far as possible, so Malakopf advised, keep there till the day for the debate came on. There was sure to be a considerable public excitement, and the Prince’s speech, in which he would tell them that his wife had strictly laid on him the communication of this calamitous and regrettable resolution, would come with redoubled force if he had been known to have shut himself up under the painful stress of his feelings.

The day for the reading of the Bill arrived, and the House was packed. The business of the day was transacted with immense indifference and rapidity, and when it was finished a dead dense silence fell on the Assembly. Then Prince Petros rose from the throne, and stepped forward to the edge of the little platform, where sat the monarch and the Ministers.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘Her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia has bid me read to you the text of a Bill she introduces through me. On this Bill I shall myself speak on December the thirty-first, immediately before the rising of the House. To-day I shall simply read the text of it to you, and the House will then, without comment or debate, rise for the Christmas vacation. How much I regret——’ he began, then stopped, and read the following:

Dead silence followed; and the Prince, commanding his voice with difficulty, adjourned the House, bowed to the deputies, and retired through the private door which led to the steps communicating with the Palace gardens.

Copies of the Bill were laid on the table in the House, and each Member took one (these papers now fetch a high price among collectors of curios); one also was brought to the British Legation, and Lady Blanche, coming in from her ride just before dinner, saw and read it. The next moment a frenzied Amazon figure sped up the stairs, and ten minutes afterwards a telegram in cipher was handed to the Secretary, who was writing in the Chancery. It was addressed to the Countess of Ægina, care of the Empress of Austria, Corfu. Blanche had grasped the situation in its completeness. She saw that the grand coup was to be played on December 31, and that till then it was better that Princess Sophia should not be in RhodopÉ. In a talk the two had had together, they had decided that the Princess’s appearance had best be sudden, like a lightning stroke, that in the very moment of the crisis she should again be with them, not to nip the bud, but to cull the flower of full-blown conspiracy.

Consequently her telegram ran:

Late that night a telegram was handed in at the Legation, addressed to Lady Blanche. It contained one word: