But there was one to whom my mind was an open book, who read easily and plainly every thought of it, because it was written in the same characters as was his own. The politician who risked his future, the debtor who every day incurred new expenses, the devotee of principles who sacrificed them for his passion, the deviser of schemes who ruined them at the demand of his desires, here was the man who could understand the heart of his King. Wetter was my sympathizer, and Wetter was my rival. The relations between us in those days were strange. We did not quarrel, we felt a friendliness for one another. Each knew the price the other paid or must pay as well as he knew his own price. But we were rivals. Varvilliers was wrong when he said that Coralie cared nothing about Wetter. She cared, although it was in a peculiar fashion that she cared. Truly he could give her little, but he was to her a sign and a testimony of her power, even as I myself in another way. Mine was the high rank, the great position. In conquering me lay the open and notorious triumph, but she was not insensible to the more private joy and secret exultation that came to her from dominating a ruling mind, and filling with her own image a head capacious enough to hold imperial policies and shape the destinies of kingdoms. Wetter and I, each in our way, broke through the crust of seemingly consistent frivolity that was on her, and down to a deep-seated tendency toward romance and the love of power. She could not rule directly, but she could rule rulers. I am certain that some such idea was in her head, alloying, or at least refining, a grosser self-interest. Therefore Wetter, no less than I, was of value to her. She would not willingly have let him go, even although he could give her nothing and she did not care for him in the only sense of which my friend the Vicomte took account. I came to realize how it was between her and him before very long, and to see how the same ultimate instinct of her nature made her long to gather both him and me into her net. Thus she would have bowing before her the highest and the strongest heads in Forstadt. That she so analyzed and reasoned out her wishes it would be absurd to suppose, but we—he and I—performed the task for her. Each knew that the other was at work on it; each chafed that she would consent to be but half his; each desired to rule alone, not to be one of two that were ruled. All this had been dimly foreshadowed to me when I sat in the theatre, looking now at Coralie as she sang her song, now at Wetter's frowning brows and tight-set lips. I must add that my position was rendered peculiarly difficult by the fact that Wetter not only owed me deference, but was still in my debt for the money I had lent him. He had refused to consider it a gift, but was, and became every day more, incapable of repaying it.
We were at luncheon at her villa one day, we three, and with us, of course, Madame Briande, an exceedingly well-informed and tactful little woman. Coralie had been very silent and (as usual) attentive to her meal. The rest had chattered on many subjects. Suddenly she spoke.
"It has been very amusing," she said, with a little yawn that ended in a rather weary smile. "For my part I can conceive only one thing that could increase the entertainment."
"What's that, Coralie?" asked Madame Briande.
Coralie waved her right hand toward me and her left toward Wetter.
"Why, that we should have for audience and as spectators of our little feast your subjects, sire, and, monsieur, your followers."
Clearly Coralie had been maturing this rather startling speech for some time; she launched it with an evident enjoyment of its malice. A moment of astonished silence followed; madame's tact was strained beyond its uttermost resources; she smiled nervously and said nothing; Wetter turned red. I looked full in Coralie's eyes, drained my glass of cognac, and laughed.
"But why should that be amusing?" I asked. "And, at least, shall we not add to our imaginary audience the crowd of your admirers?"
"As you will," said she with a shrug. "Whomever we add they would see nothing but two gentlemen getting under the table, oh, so quickly!"
Madame Briande became visibly distressed.