The Princess Sophia

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:

CHAPTER IX.

THE PRINCESS RETURNS.

But there was yet another party—the ‘Extreme Loyalists,’ as they were ironically termed—who were faithful to Sophia. They were few in number, but fanatically sure of their own orthodoxy. There must be, they said, another explanation; it was not within the bounds of possibility that Sophia had originated this scheme, or was in any way responsible for its execution. These, when asked for any explanation that could hold water, would not commit themselves; some silently held Malakopf responsible, some Prince Petros; others, who had seen the wife of the Mayor of Amandos lose a hundred francs with a very bad grace at the tables, were ready to affirm that she, being born from princely blood, had secret schemes on the throne of Rhodopé. This last explanation was considered to be in indifferent taste; men did not just now desire jokes about the future of the monarchy.

But no crisis of feverish excitement could stay the passage of hours. Christmas Day, with its sequence of festas, was a mockery of merriment, and still there came no sign from those in authority, no word that could in any way allay the rising fever of the people. More than once crowds collected outside the Palace, and shouted for Prince Petros to speak to them. Once he appeared at the window and bowed to them, but shook his head, and those who saw him said he was pale and haggard and unshaved, and the mob dispersed in silence, feeling that perhaps there was a deeper tragedy than they knew. How unlike his gay and gallant figure was that mournful, dishevelled apparition! They would have been even more puzzled if they had been able to see him a moment after turn to Malakopf, who was sitting with him, and ask with a sprightly air, ‘Didn’t I do that well?’

Up till the 28th the serenity of the weather corresponded but ill with the tempest of the political outlook, but on that morning it seemed that even the elements were drawn into the vortex of the storm. A morning of sultry and unseasonable heat, thick like a blanket, ushered in a wailing wind from the east, but in some higher current of the air a rack of thunder-clouds, black and ominous, stole up from behind Corfu, and before evening had spread slowly and impenetrably over the sky. The heat of the morning had given place to a bitter and freezing cold, a cold which pierced the marrow and congealed the vital forces. But the east wind had dropped, and, a portent to behold, flash after flash of remote lightning lit up the gathering darkness of an Arctic night. About midnight the storm burst in a blinding hurricane of sleet and snow, and all the artillery of heaven thundered above it. At Amandos snow was as much a foreigner as thunder; often in summer the great hilltops round were cloaked in thunder-clouds or smouldered with lightning, yet no cloud obscured the brightness of the heaven from the valley. Again, in winter these same hilltops wore white mantles for four months, yet a genial sun, bright and invigorating, shone ever on the town. To lie beneath this double portent was an ominous thing, and the people, tuned to superstition by their new education at the tables, shook their heads, and prophesied a revolution of elements more intimate to them than snow or thunder.

An even livelier disquietude possessed Lady Blanche. The morning of the 29th it were an abuse of language to call a morning at all. The darkness, peopled by nothing but snowflakes and the maddened scream of the wind, seemed more palpable by the faint, sick glimmer of the day than it had been at night. All the forenoon the hurricane waxed ever fiercer, and, like drums, it was possible to hear, amid the shrill clamour of the wind, the booming of the great surges driven on the Cape of Mavromáti, a dozen miles away. Lady Blanche determined to telegraph to the Princess that should leave Corfu at once, even anticipating her arrival by a day rather than risk the danger of arriving an hour too late; but her fears were irremediable, the telegraph-wires to Mavromáti were down, Amandos was cut off from all the world.

Then she would have sent a messenger to Mavromáti with her message, but that too was impossible. Who could hope to pass alive through the forest in which the road lay, where the pines were falling like ninepins and snapping under the snow like matches? Noon came, unmarked except by the clock, and her anxiety grew irrepressible. Outside the Legation windows lay the square of the town, which had been so gay for Sophia’s wedding; to-day it might have been a rural scene in Spitzbergen, so completely had the snow denuded it of its evidences of civilization. A desert of white drifts was all her view; one could scarce believe that a row of houses ran north and south from their door, that a hundred yards away rose the cathedral, or that fifty paces to the left were the steps of the Assembly, which in two days would meet—for what? Yet it was necessary, no less, that Princess Sophia should be here in forty-eight hours, and it was this problem of how it was possible that she should get here that Blanche, crushing her temples in her hands, set herself to solve.

She must get here, so much was certain; that, at any rate, was a fixed point in this awful vagueness. The Adriatic boomed its shipwrecking denial; twelve miles of tree-strewn, snow-drifted forest lay between Mavromáti and Amandos. How, how, and yet again, how?

Of the Princess’s courage to face, if need be, the final storm, the trumpet of the Archangel, Blanche had no doubt. Yet what sane skipper would put to sea in such a madness of the heavens? A telegram must be sent to tell Sophia that all the powers of hell must not hinder her return. The telegram had to be sent. Who could be trusted to go to Mavromáti, and not turn back, saying that the mission was beyond all possibility? Instantly the solution struck her—she would go herself. Lord Abbotsworthy dozing after lunch; she broke in on his slumbers.

‘Oh, father,’ she said, ‘there is not time to explain, but take my word for it. Unless Sophia—unless the Princess—is here before that forged Bill of hers comes before the House on the thirty-first, she is no more Princess of Rhodopé. She, her line, her country, are at stake. She is at Corfu—ah! do not ask me how I know, but I know she is—with the Empress, ready to return. Come she must.’

Lord Abbotsworthy held up a listening hand.

‘Boom! boom!’ he said; ‘that is the Adriatic. But you are so unexpected, Blanche. Dear me, how sleepy I am! Princess Sophia may be at Corfu, or the Falkland Islands; it is all one. Why should she come? In any case, she cannot.’

The Minister was still struggling with the drowsiness that snow brings, and regarded Blanche’s voice more as the imaginings of a political nightmare than the tones of his child.

‘Oh, you don’t understand!’ she cried. ‘But I know all about this wicked Bill. It is an invention of Malakopf and that husband of Sophia’s. I am in communication with the Princess. Well, the wires are down between here and Mavromáti, and I am going there to tell her to come back at once.’

Lord Abbotsworthy was by this time sufficiently awake to understand that Blanche was in earnest.

‘My dear child, you can’t go,’ he said. ‘But a man might get through. Shall I telegraph to the Foreign Office? Oh, I forget, the wires are down.’

He rose and went to the window.

‘It is impossible,’ he said; ‘the drifts will be deeper than a man’s height through the forests.’

‘I know,’ said Blanche, ‘but one could follow the river till one came out on to the lower plain. There will probably be less snow there. And I must go myself. I must see Sophia before she comes to Amandos; it is her crown to her.’

Lord Abbotsworthy looked at Blanche approvingly. His diplomatic calm never left him.

‘You are not the first woman of your race who has shown a man’s pluck,’ he said. ‘Well, you shall have your way. There is a bridle-path by the river, is there not? Take two men with you—Yanni, and the English groom, who will see to the horses. Yanni can find his way anywhere, even at Waterloo Junction. Meantime, Blanche, if this is likely to be a question of an hour or two losing or winning everything, I will send out some men to clear the path for the Princess’s return. I take your word for the whole matter, and I will not delay you by asking questions. I assume that I can do nothing, or else you would have told me what I could do.’

‘Oh, father, that is good of you!’ she cried. ‘Let them do all they can to make the carriage-road passable by Wednesday morning; one can go quicker that way. I will send for Yanni.’

In half an hour they were off. Lord Abbotsworthy’s head-keeper, a shrewd greyhound of an Albanian, who knew the forests as a man knows his house, had said that it would be possible to make a way along the bridle-path by the river, thus avoiding the delay and danger of falling or fallen trees, and the groom took the order with the bland imperturbability of an English servant. They had each a horse, or rather a sturdy mountain cob, animals more surefooted than a cat, wise, strong, and steady. They left the Legation by the stable-gate, so as to avoid the possibility of being seen by anyone from the houses in the square, and in a moment the white tumult of the driven snow had swallowed them up.

The confusion of the elements was incredible; the snow, driven almost horizontally by the wind, was more like a solid sheet than an infinity of flakes. Beneath the shelter of houses, they made their way quickly out of the town, though not without danger, for the tiles on the windward side of the roofs, where the snow could not lie, were starting up like disturbed game, and would be shot with a rattle half-way across the street, burying themselves with a silent plunge in the snow, and once half a chimney fell not three yards in front of Blanche.

It was not till they left the last houses behind that they realized the full uproar of the heavens, and in ten minutes, for all that could be seen, they might have been at Amandos or Mavromáti. They could discern nothing, except a few yards of white ground on each side; they passed lumps and hummocks of snow to the right hand and the left, which might have been houses, or buried flocks of sheep, or hedgerows. But Yanni, with the aid of a compass and a long pole, which from time to time he thrust forward beyond his pony to guard against slipping into a drift, led them cannily on. In an hour or so they could tell he was on the right track, for the ground began rapidly to decline, and on their left they passed from time to time a fallen tree, or a group of wind-tormented pines, which must be the outliers of the forest. Soon the screaming of the wind was overscored by a hoarser note, and in ten minutes more they came down to the river, yellow and swollen beyond recognition, a furlong breadth of maddened foam, peopled with trees, house-beams, débris of huts and now and then some dead animal—sheep, pig, or goat—all twisting and whirling down with a ghastly sort of gaiety in a veritable dance of death.

A steep bank of snow led to the river-side, on which lay the bridle-path they must now find and follow, and Yanni dismounted to probe about for it. Once he slipped up to the neck in a drift, and when Blanche and the groom dragged him out, he shook his head in grave self-reproof.

‘I doubt my mother bore a fool,’ he said.

But before long they found it, and once found, it was easily possible to follow the path, for it lay notably level on that hillside of snow.

About four of the afternoon, when the faint glimmer of day was turning into a more palpable darkness, a change, at first hardly perceptible, began to come over the tumult of the weather. The wind blew only in sudden squalls and sonorous gusts, with intervals of quiet; the falling snow grew thinner and finer, and though they were rapidly descending, the cold grew more exquisite and piercing. The ponies’ feet, instead of plunging noiselessly into the fallen stuff, made each step through a crisp upper crust of frozen snow. By five the sky was clear and the wind dead, and an innumerable host of large and frosty stars began to glimmer like half-lit lamps in a vault of velvet. As the intenser darkness of night came on they burned ever more luminously, and every foot of the country, lying white polished and shining, caught and reflected their brightness. Eastwards the sky was gray with the approach of moonrise, and even before the full circle topped the hills to the east, it was as if day but now succeeded to night rather than night to day.

Before seven they had joined the main-road from Mavromáti below and beyond the intervening forest. The air was of an exceeding clearness, and crisp with frost, and not five miles away twinkled the lights of the port, and the various fingers of the lighthouse. Behind them, a black blot in the moonlight, rose the forest, shoulder over shoulder; to their right brawled the swollen stream, but all was as still and as frozen as an Arctic day.

Not till then, when, morally speaking, their journey was over, did Lady Blanche realize how acute her anxiety had been.

‘Oh, William!’ she exclaimed to the groom, with a sudden, half-hysterical laugh, ‘we shall soon be there.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ replied that iron-faced functionary, and he brushed a little frill of icicles from his hair and eyebrows.

The night was windless and deadly cold, but the beauty of it was beyond compare. On all sides stretched acre on acre of frozen snow, rounded and billowy, but every outline was etched with the crispness of the frost. The sound of their ponies’ going was like a biting of toast; other noise there was none, except the crashing thunder of the broken surges on the shore. As they drew nearer, these ever became the more stupendous, till the ear was filled with their booming, as with the roar of a train in a tunnel. Soon it was possible to detect above the increasing riot the scream of the pebbly beach continually dragged down to the jaws of one wave, only to be vomited up afresh by the next, and her anxieties again began to lie heavy on Lady Blanche. Her part was done; in another hour the telegraph would twitch her message across to Corfu; but how would it be possible for any yacht to win through those mountainous billows? Down on the sea-board the snowfall had been less deep, and before eight they had entered the streets, all dumb and silent, and the telegram summoning Sophia at once had been despatched.

Early on the morning of the 30th came the Princess’s reply. ‘I am just going on board. We start at once. It will be rather rough,’ it said, and no more; and all that day Blanche watched in a fever of impatience for a sight of the newly-christened Revenge. In fair weather it was a crossing of not more than six hours, but who could say how many in such a sea? She consulted with Yanni as to the possible means of return to Amandos, for this frost would render the road impassable to carriages, however zealous had been the work of the men Lord Abbotsworthy had sent out, and he said that riding was the only mode of passage. Lady Blanche was seated at her window in the sitting-room of the Hôtel Royal while the old keeper talked to her, and looking out idly into the street, she saw two children playing together on the frozen and compacted snow. One had a board, to which he had tied a string; the other sat on it, and was easily pulled along. Suddenly she applied the suggestion, and with dismay at her own stupidity.

‘Oh, Yanni!’ she cried, ‘I am a fool, and you another! A sledge!’

But a sledge was an unknown conveyance in Rhodopé, and Blanche hired a light cart. She had the wheels taken off, and two wooden runners, shod with steel, fitted on to its springs. The superintendence of this carpentering served to fill in the hours of that awful day of waiting; but when night fell there was still no signal of a ship. The wind had again risen to hurricane force, maddening still more the maddened sea, and a threat of a further fall of snow was abroad. The stars in their courses seemed to fight against Sophia.

The meeting of the Assembly was fixed for half-past three the next afternoon. Allowing for a long speech from Prince Petros, and the possibility of opposition contrary to the Constitution of Rhodopé, by six o’clock to-morrow afternoon at latest Sophia must be at Amandos. How she would choose to act Blanche could not guess, but that she was content to leave to the Princess. Her part was to get Sophia there. Outside the note of the gale would rise and fall again octave over octave, like the hootings of some infernal siren, but as yet there was neither more snow nor thaw. But the crash of the breakers grew ever hungrier and more splitting, and still the Revenge came not.

She could not bring herself to go to bed, but sat listening in a horrible dread for she scarcely knew what. But when across the mingled bellowings of the storm she heard a gun fired out at sea, she sprang up with a palpitating heart and a gasp for breath, knowing that it was this which she had feared. Running to the window, she saw a rocket shoot up in a line of flame, like a match struck in the dark, and a minute afterwards the report of it followed. She rang the bell hastily and told Yanni to come with her along the pier out to the lighthouse at the end.

It was now only a little before midnight, and the moon plunged and sped through a rack of flying clouds, like a woman distraught, now naked, now clad in blowing vapours. The wind came straight off the sea, piercingly cold, and full of spray and blown sand, while over the frozen carpet of snow in the street wisps of brown seaweed and pebbles from the beach scudded and bowled along like little people in a panic. On the pier itself the force of the wind was more tremendous, and they had to make a slanting tack as they walked, zigzagging to and fro, and leaning against the gale as against a wall. Once and again the signal of distress came from the sea, and round the house where the lifeboat was kept they could see a throng of men growing and increasing, and the light of lanterns tossed up and down in the stinging air. Then from the sea shot up another rocket, and a cold blue light burned steadily for some seconds or so, and in that glare Blanche made out the three masts of a sailing-ship, and a flood of relief welled in her heart.

‘Oh, thank God!’ she cried, ‘it is not she!’ And next moment ‘Oh, poor folk! poor folk!’ she said; and Yanni crossed himself and muttered a prayer for their safety.

There was a coastguard station at the end of the pier, and she asked for the officer in command, giving her name, and saying that a steamer called the Revenge was expected, which had on board some friends of Lord Abbotsworthy. It had started from Corfu early that morning. Then, remembering that no communication with Amandos was possible, and that though the men would, in case of the necessity for rescue, do their best, though there were only a crew of the hated Turks on board—yet the knowledge that Sophia was there could not but be an incentive to heroisms—she told all.

‘Captain Hatsopoulo,’ she said, ‘the Revenge is none other than the Felatrune. Princess Sophia is on board, and little Prince Leonard; the whole hopes of the House of Ægina are there. There is a foul plot against her—this Bill, in fact, which you may have heard of. I can tell you no more. But she must be in Amandos to-morrow—she must! she must! Ah, it is already to-morrow—she must be there this afternoon.’

The ship which had made signals of distress had by now come close into shore, and already the lifeboat was out. They had quickly got a rope out to her, for she was already breaking up, and the work of rescue was going on. Blanche had gone into the house of the coastguard station, for an inward necessity for being near prevented her from going back to the hotel, and she sat by the fire in a room they prepared for her, waiting. In another hour came news that the crew of the vessel had all been saved, but the ship lost. Not long after this she fell into an uneasy doze, and dreamed that the kingdom of Rhodopé was a bright little round thing, like a roulette-marble. She and Sophia had gone out for a walk together, and Sophia had dropped it, and now she and the Princess were hunting for it in the snow. Others were hunting for it, too. Gray, uncanny shapes like wolves trotted incessantly about; some were like Malakopf, some reminded her of Prince Petros, others had terrible whiskers and green eyes; others, again, were more in the semblance of fiends unimaginably horrible, and they all scratched and nosed in the snow for the little bright marble. Then she slept more deeply, and a dreamless slumber succeeded to these uneasy visions.

It was already day when she awoke; the faithful Yanni was stretched out on the floor beside her chair asleep, and it was Captain Hatsopoulo’s entrance that had roused her. She started at once into the full possession of her faculties, and sprang up.

‘Ah! I no longer hear the wind,’ she cried. ‘Well, captain, what is it?’

‘The Revenge has been sighted,’ he said. ‘You can see her out of this window.’

Far out over the waste of tossing water there heaved up and sank again the masts and bulwarks of a steamer. Captain Hatsopoulo took Blanche to where the great telescope stood.

‘Watch her as she rises to a wave,’ he said. ‘There! that is none other than the Felatrune. You can see her colours. The Princess is flying her own flag! God save the Princess!’ he cried.

‘God save her!’ echoed Blanche; ‘and confound the tricks of her enemies!’

The Revenge was steering an easterly course from Corfu, and about ten of the morning she came opposite Mavromáti, still some miles out to sea. They saw her swing this way and that, now labouring low in the trough of the waves, now poised on the top, and for the next hour watched her still nearing them, her masts striking wildly right and left across a space of some ninety degrees, so that it made Blanche feel qualms of nausea only to see her. On shore, opposite the landing stage where she would put in, was drawn up the sledge, ready to start at a moment’s notice; and opposite, on the other side of the harbour, the lifeboat was launched with its crew, in case she could not make the harbour mouth, and was driven ashore. The port of Mavromáti faced almost north, and the gale from the north-west had raised a terrific cross-sea. As she drew nearer, they could see that she had changed her course a point or two northwards, to allow space enough so that she should not be carried against the south pier by the huge billows that swept across the entrance. Already she had slackened steam, and made almost imperceptible way towards them. Then came a minute of awful suspense as she moved close up to the harbour mouth, so perilously near to the wall of broken water which dashed over the end of the south pier that the spray of it hid her for a moment; the next she was beyond the breakers, and safe.

Blanche was already half-way across the harbour to meet her, and before the yacht had come to anchor she was over the side and in Sophia’s arms.

‘Ah, you are not much too soon, dearest Sophia!’ she cried, ‘I have waited here all night. Quick! come ashore; and the sledge is ready.’

‘Is there room in it for a box?’ she asked. ‘I do not want to appear before the Assembly in travelling clothes.’

‘Yes, yes, there is room,’ cried the other. ‘You shall dress at the Legation. Come—only come!’

‘Petros will be surprised to see me,’ remarked the Princess. ‘As we go, you shall tell me everything.’

CHAPTER X.

THE PRINCESS IS VERY MUCH THERE.

The Parliament House at Amandos, standing next the cathedral in the square, is but a small building, for its full attendance is only sixty; but for beauty of proportion and exquisiteness of finish it would be difficult to name its fellow. Over the main entrance is a carved wooden gallery, where the friends of Members can attend a debate; at the other a raised platform, on which are the seats for the six Ministers of the Crown, and the throne itself. These are near the wall, and close behind the throne is the small door which communicates with the Princess’s private way into the Palace. Three steps lead up from the floor of the House on to the platform, which is faced by a low bronze balustrade of dolphins, and foliage, and mermaids. It is the custom for any Minister who wishes to address the House on the debate to take his place not on the platform, but on the Ministerial front bench. Similarly the monarch, if contributing to the debate, sits as the first of his own Ministers. The custom is an ancient one, and certainly signifies that while appealing to the House, and arguing for or against a question, all are equal as Members of that House, and carry no official rank.

The seats of the Members are arranged in two rows on each side of the gangway of the House, which is paved in variously coloured marbles from Búlteck. The most exquisite patterns in red, green, and yellow adorn it, and in the centre, in lapis lazuli, jasper, and white marble, are wrought the crown and royal arms of Rhodopé. Behind the Members’ seats on each side stand the busts of the Princes of Rhodopé, an unbroken line dating from the time of Constantine, first Prince of the House of Ægina. This is one of the finest of the series, and is by Desiderio da Settignano, one of Donatello’s few pupils. The seats of the Members are great oak armchairs in scarlet brocade, and the walls are covered with old oak woodwork of the fifteenth century.

But the marvel of the place is the throne; it is made throughout of ivory, a panel of gold brocade is let into the back, and the cushion of the seat is covered with the same. Two gold lions support the arms, and back, arms, and front are thickly incrusted with precious stones, and goldsmith’s work attributed to Benvenuto Cellini. The footstool is likewise of ivory, and gold brocade covers the tread of it. The whole is set on four steps, the first of which is covered with a thick facing of white Arabian agate, the second with jasper, the third with cornelian, and the fourth with chalcedony. Thus, though it stands far back from the House, the whole of it, owing to its elevation, is clearly seen over the low bronze balustrade of the platform.

The morning of December 31 dawned clear and light after the tempest of the two days before, but an ominous stillness, like the hush before a storm, hung over the town. None was bold enough to forecast the probable issue of events—none, indeed, knew exactly what was happening. Those who refused to believe that Sophia was responsible for this crisis were already in the large majority, but as it was thought that she was in England, nothing but a telegram from her—unless, indeed, she was still ignorant of what was taking place—could within the bounds of possibility save the situation. That this preposterous Bill could be carried was not worth consideration; it was not even known whether Prince Petros would vote for it. None knew what manner of communication he would make. It was hinted that he would merely mention that it was introduced by the Sovereign, and thus would become law, others thought he might go so far as to disclaim all share in it, and even express sympathy with the nation. Some, as has been already mentioned, saw in him the first cause of it, and were wildly indignant against him; others, again, affirmed that none were so indignant as himself, and that he regarded the fall of Sophia as inevitable, and not unjust. What line the present Government would take, what form the future Government would assume, none knew. There was, however, certainly a considerable party which would gladly have seen Petros on the throne, if Sophia really intended to commit this wild and obstinate mistake; others, it was supposed, were Republicans in tendency, and pointed silently to Malakopf as the President of the Republic. One thing only, in the midst of this feverish uncertainty, was sure—the Bill could not become law.

The debate was fixed for half-past three, but long before that time the gallery of the House was filled to overflowing with eager eyes, and every Member, chilly and apprehensive, was in his seat. All the Ministers were in the body of the House, indicating that all meant to take part in the debate. This by itself was ominous enough, for it showed that there would be a debate on a Bill introduced by the Crown, a fact in itself unique and unprecedented. Prince Petros had not yet arrived, but the half-hour still tingled in the air from the great bronze chime of the cathedral, when the private door from the Palace opened, and he came quickly in. The Members, all wearing levée dress, remained standing till he had taken his seat on the throne; then, after a moment’s pause, he took up the paper for the day, and again read out the text of the inexplicable Bill. It was noticed that he looked pale, but his voice was steady.