“I would have laid down my life for my friend: my friend asked of me a harder thing.”
He stood before the prince, his head erect, his hand motionless upon his sword hilt. Joseph, sitting, as quietly, in the chair he had pushed back from the table, regarded him steadily, dispassionately—even, at last, with an odd touch of pity in his expression. The season was early August; the place, a private cabinet in the old imperial palace called the Burg.
“So much I have inferred,” said the young archduke, his voice not cold but even, “from the Duke of Parma’s recent advices to me recommending your recall. I had not known before, Tiretta, that a soldier looked upon the vindication of his honour as so difficult a task.”
He noted, with an observant interest, the spasm that twitched the set features at his words. He was in all things curious and analytical.
“I have deserved this,” was the low answer. “Stab, sir, and turn your creese in the wound.”
“You do me an injustice,” said Joseph calmly. “It is to the scalpel, not the sword, that I would have you reveal yourself. If I probe, I probe for instruction. The soldier’s code, for instance—is it not a strict one? What harder thing did I ask of you than to obey orders? I seek simply for information.”
“No need to. I am a villain.”
“Tut-tut, my friend! That is merely to beg the question. You know my views very well. A man is not to be summed up in that convenient fashion. Is it, for instance, the assertion of a villain that he would sacrifice his life for his friend?”
“Would to God I could do it, and so cut the knot!”
The eyes, watchful, inquisitive, in the pale narrow young face, canvassed the speaker curiously.