II
THE SEALED INSTRUCTIONS
The word written inside the sealed paper was a name.
The name was Leopold.
Who was this Leopold—and for what cause had his name come to figure so ominously in these surroundings? To-day he is forgotten; the whole of Europe rang then with the name of Leopold IX., the wicked King of Franconia.
A few words as to this personage will serve to throw light on the more recent events with which this story is concerned.
The race from which he sprang has long held an evil renown upon the Continent. For more than a century a dark cloud has overshadowed the royal line of Astolf. A mysterious taint in the blood has broken out time after time in the Franconian princes, betraying itself in wild freaks and excesses, which are rather whispered of than named. A monotonous chronicle of madness and crime makes up the gloomy annals of the House.
Something of this doubtless has been due to the peculiar character of their sovereignty. While smaller kingdoms, with narrower resources, have played an independent part on the European stage, Franconia, hampered by its position in the great Germanic body, has remained a petty State, compelled to be a mere satellite in the train of one of the two great monarchies which have contended for the dominion of Germany. In former ages her kings had received ambassadors, and their alliance had been alternately courted by Austria and France. To-day, closely enswathed in the iron bonds of Prussia’s military empire, the Franconian kingdom has ceased to have an international existence. In the eyes of diplomacy she is no better than a province of the Kaiser’s dominions, and in the council of nations her voice is no longer heard.
Yet within their own borders the kings of Franconia continue to be supreme. Deprived of their authority in the great questions of peace and war, in all matters of local interest they rule their kingdom with an independent sway. It would even seem as though the peculiar relations between them and the Imperial Government had added to the security of their throne. It would require no ordinary degree of misgovernment to provoke a rebellion whose success must mean the extinction of Franconian nationality, and its final subjection to the formidable Prussian yoke.
Their situation resembles that of those satraps who reign with absolute power over the provinces of Oriental empires. The difference is that they are irremovable, and hand on their dominion to their heirs.
To the intoxication of despotism add the intoxication of security. The strongest brain will reel under such pressure. History recalls the line of maniacs who slew and wantoned in Imperial Rome.