He hesitated and glanced at his colleague.
“Whatever action you may decide upon, Herr Count, you may rely upon my support,” said the other, eagerly. “I even think it right to let you know that his Majesty has sounded me to ascertain if I should be willing to replace you in the Chancellorship, and that I informed him that I could not listen to any such proposals.”
The old Chancellor clenched his hands with rage.
“God in Heaven! And this is the man whom I have been trying to save all this time! That is how he repays my devotion, is it! Come, it is time to act.”
And he led the way out of the room and towards the royal cabinet.
At this very moment, as it happened, the King was engaged with Johann and Bernal in discussing the revolutionary manifesto.
Johann had come, full of confidence, to enlist the King’s sympathy for the demonstration, but had found his efforts strenuously, and even bitterly, opposed by Auguste, who insisted that the Socialists were not justified in seeking to force Maximilian’s hand, and that it would be a fatal mistake on the King’s part to appear to yield to violence.
Maximilian, whose keenly sensitive nature was still smarting from the taunts to which he had listened at the Socialist meeting, considered himself bound in honour not to offer any official resistance to the revolutionists. He listened to his friend’s remonstrances at first with mildness, but finally became impatient, and closed the discussion by saying, in impatient tones—
“I have passed my word, and I cannot go back from it. If these men think they can help on their cause by such means better than by waiting for me to act, they are entitled to their opinion, and I have no right to withstand them. As Herr Mark told me that day in the gallery, I must either accomplish something myself, or stand aside for those who will. I have not succeeded in doing anything up to the present, and this is the natural result.”
“I am sorry you take such a view,” responded the musician. “I have given you my advice, the advice, not of a politician, but of a personal friend whose only aim is your own good. I hope you will not live to regret having refused to listen to me.”