Von Sigismark bowed, and retraced his steps till he stood in front of her.
Karl entered, with an air of mingled distress and alarm.
“Well, what is it?”
The man turned his eyes from Hermengarde to the Count von Sigismark, and back again, before answering.
“Madam, his Majesty has left the palace secretly, in company with Herr Mark. He has left a note saying that he may be absent for several days. And no one knows where they have gone.”
CHAPTER XII
HARUN AL RASHID
The throng was at its greatest, the glare of gas was at its fullest, the clamour and the confusion were at their height. Round every dirty stall the scrambling and fighting and quarrelling went on as if life itself were the matter of every bargain. Old, crumpled women, with blinking eyes, thrust themselves forward into the ring made out of the darkness by the rolling smoky flame which swung over the butcher’s barrow, and they groped obscenely with wart-eaten fingers among the shapeless remnants of oozing, dark-red meat. Their lips seemed to twist in and out over their black broken teeth, as they whined and grumbled over every pfennig of the price. Half-naked boys, foul, like young apes, writhed and bit at each other in the bloody gutter below for scraps of offal and rotten fruit and all the wretched refuse of a street market. Men, old and young, came lurching out through the low doorways of dirty taverns, and stood in the mud outside, bewildered, breathing beer into the reeking night; after which they swaggered off, trampling brutally among the women and children, on their way to the dens where they passed the hours of sleep. When the din of sounds permitted any utterance to be heard distinctly, the words were either some oath, or the use-deadened complaint of one of the huckstering women, or else the hideous wail of a neglected infant. Over all rang out continually the coarse confident tones of the stall-keepers, as they shouted out their trade patter; rattling the greasy coins as they received them, and now and again stopping to bite the edge of a thaler before thrusting it into the dirty leather pouch which held their gains.
It was Saturday night in the great slum market of Mannhausen. And into the midst of this squalid scene came two young men, one of whom was the King of Franconia.
His coming to the capital was the result of a decision come to after his last conversation with the Count von Sigismark. Thoroughly wearied by his Ministers’ stubborn attitude, and the hopeless contradictions between them and Johann, he had eagerly welcomed a suggestion from the latter that he should make a secret visit to Mannhausen, and there inquire for himself into the condition of the people, and learn from their own lips what were the burdens under which they suffered.
Fortunately for the success of the scheme, Maximilian had never permitted himself to be photographed since his accession, and had only been in the capital twice during the same period. Even on those two occasions most of his time had been spent in Mannhausen’s famous art gallery, so that the chances of his being recognised were hardly worth taking into account.