He did not trouble to argue that with me. He knew that his was not the voice to which I should listen.
"If your Majesty comes to that conclusion, my friends and I will be disappointed," he said, "but we must accept your decision."
There was much to like in Wetter. Men are not insincere merely because they are ambitious, dishonest merely because they are given to intrigue, selfish merely because they ask places for themselves. There is a grossness of moral fibre not in itself a good thing, but very different from rottenness. Wetter was a keen and convinced partisan, and an ardent believer in himself. His cause ought to win, and, if his hand could take the helm, would win; this was his attitude, and it excused some want of scruple both in promoting the cause and in insuring to it his own effective support. But he was a big man, of a well-developed nature, hearty, sympathetic, and free from cant, full of force, of wit, of unblunted emotion. He would not, however, have made at all a good ambassador; and he would not have wanted to be one had he not run into debt.
Max von Sempach, on the other hand, would fill the place respectably, although not brilliantly. Wetter knew this, and the fact gave to the mention of the Count's name a decent appearance without depriving it of its harmlessness. He named a suitable but an impossible person—a person to me impossible.
Soon after the meal I left him, telling him that I should come in again later, and had ordered my carriage to call for me at his house at five o'clock. Turning down the quiet lane that led to the Countess's, I soon reached my destination. I was now in less agitation than on the day before. My mind was made up; I came to give what she asked. Wetter should have his Embassy. More than this, I came no longer in trepidation, no longer fearing her ridicule even while I sought her love, no more oppressed with the sense that in truth she might be laughing while she seemed to encourage. There was the dawning of triumph in my heart, an assurance of victory, and the fierce delight in a determination come to at great cost and to be held, it may be, at greater still. In all these feelings, mighty always, there were for me the freshness, the rush of youth, and the venturous joy of new experience.
On her also a crisis of feeling had come; she was not her old self, nor I to her what I had been. There was a strained, almost frightened look in her eyes; a low-voiced "Augustin" replacing her bantering "Cæsar." Save for my name she did not speak as I led her to a couch and sat down by her side. She looked slight, girlish, and pathetic in a simple gown of black; timidity renewed her youth. Well might I forget that she was not a maiden of meet age for me, and she herself for an instant cheat time's reckoning. She made of me a man, of herself a girl, and prayed love's advocacy to prove the delusion true.
"I have been with Wetter," said I. "He wants the Embassy."
I fancy that she knew his desire; her hand pressed mine, but she did not speak.
"But he recommended Max," I went on.
"Max!" For a moment her face was full of terror as she turned to me; then she broke into a smile. Wetter's advice was plain to her also.