“Auguste,” said the King, speaking solemnly and mournfully, “you remember what I told you of the night I passed in prison in Mannhausen. The conspirators have gone on with their work. My aunt has joined them, and I have just learnt from Ernest that they are openly declaring me”—it required an effort to bring out the word—“mad. I adjure you,” he added, beseechingly, “in the name of our sacred friendship, to tell me whether you had any inkling of this?”
The man thus addressed shifted his position uneasily, and cast down his eyes.
“I have had certain fears,” he said, in low, indistinct tones, “that if you drove the Ministers too far, they would succeed in convincing the public that you ought not to be entrusted with the royal power. No doubt your refusal to proclaim these wretched meetings has been the last straw. Maximilian!—perhaps it is not yet too late—give up this Socialist and his wild ideas; you have not been the same man since he came—”
The King interrupted him with a gesture so imperious and so scornful, that the musician fairly cowered beneath it.
“And you—you whom I have loved as a brother, you to whom I have shown my inmost heart—you have deserted me! Sir, never dare to address me again in the name you have used. Henceforth to you I am the King of Franconia—and a stranger. You will leave my palace to-morrow, and you may take with you the thirty pieces of silver you have earned.”
Without attempting a reply, Bernal turned and went out of the King’s presence.
Maximilian turned to Karl.
“And you, Karl, why should you be faithful to me? All my friends have betrayed me; why do not you go and join them? Doubtless you will be rewarded well.”
Stricken to the heart, the wretched attendant fell on his knees before his master, and began to sob.
“See,” said Maximilian, speaking aloud as if to some witness of the scene, “this poor youth, on whom I have bestowed neither titles nor honours, whom I simply fed from day to day, and treated as some creature of a lower nature, he clings to me when all my friends and my Ministers, and my very kinsmen, have cast me off. What have I done to deserve this poor fellow’s faithfulness? Karl, if I survive this day as King of Franconia, you shall be made a Count; and I will bestow upon you the motto, ‘Only true.’”