"This is no question of bravery or cowardice. It is merely a matter of tactics. The very keystone of this inner plot of theirs is that you shall be missing when the cry is raised for you to ascend the throne. To secure that these people will stick at nothing—they would even take your life. Now, for the success of my counter-scheme, I must be able to have you at hand just when I want you. That is all-important. You will have to go to Munich in apparent compliance with their wishes for you to be ready for the final coup, and we shall show no sign of suspicion, but you will have trusty guards to protect you against attack. My scheme is to let them carry off some one in your place, and for that purpose I shall endeavor to get wind of their plan of abduction. What I wish to do is to shut out suspicion that we have fooled them until it is too late for them to change their plans. Is there any one among your maids whom you could trust to personate you, who is sufficiently like you in height and color and so on to be mistaken for you by a stranger, knowing you only by description or having only seen you once? She would of course be dressed to represent you, and she must be sufficiently devoted to you to take a risk and hold her tongue."
"Yes, my dressing-maid, Marie, might pass for me under such circumstances, and I would answer for her stanchness."
"Tell her nothing until the time is close at hand. Then let her know what has to be done. She will wear your dress and will be carried off; you will slip away; and I shall go in a fine rage to von Nauheim to frighten him from getting to see his captive, and thus discover the trick. Your present task, then, will be to get ready for that part of the scheme, and also to think of some safe place to which you can go."
"I will willingly do more, if it will help you," she said.
The completeness of her trust in me was apparent in every word she spoke.
"There will be plenty of exciting work to follow," I replied, with a smile, for I was pleased by her eagerness to help. "Your Majesty may depend upon it that a throne is not to be gained without a struggle."
"I should make a poor Queen," she answered.
"You will make a beautiful one; and if the Bavarians once get sight of you, they will not readily let you go."
She looked at me earnestly and, with half a sigh, said:
"You should not pay me empty compliments, cousin Hans. You should not say things you do not mean."