The Kingmakers

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

There was a plot, it seemed, to get the old king back on the throne. But that was nothing new. There had always been such a plot, ever since the day when the king and his family and a few adherents had been forced to flee the country. A plot was taken so much for granted, and seemed so certain to prove futile, that nobody gave it a second thought. Hitherto it had gathered to a head whenever the king was in extraordinary need of funds, and had faded away again as soon as the funds were secured from some too-credulous speculator.

But this time it seemed to be unusually serious, and involved, so the baron had hinted, not only the restoration of the king, but the financing of the country. Heaven knows it needed financing, and no doubt the baron was right—the king would be welcomed back with open arms, if only he brought some money with him. There was no doubt that he had won an immense personal popularity during his half century of power. Most of his subjects had never known any other ruler, and probably desired no other. He had mixed with them as a father with his children—an old-world father, to be sure, whose word was law. He had become a court of last resort to which his subjects were forever appealing to settle their disputes, especially their domestic disputes—a court the more highly esteemed because no fees were exacted, though the gift of a lamb, or a dozen chickens, or a crock of butter, was always appreciated.

He had lived in a state of patriarchal simplicity, carefully contrived and adroitly advertised, so that the peasant woman baked her bread with the pleasant consciousness that the queen baked hers also, and when some shopkeeper or petty farmer compared the time with the king in the public square of the capital, he saw that the king’s watch was of brass like his own. When he went to the bank to make a little deposit, he was as likely as not to encounter the king there, also putting aside a portion of his savings.

Moreover this far-seeing monarch had not relied on popular prestige alone, but had further strengthened his position by marrying his ten children into most of the courts of Europe. For his eldest son he had chosen a Hohenzollern princess; his eldest daughter was now queen of a dominion far larger than her father’s; two other daughters had captured Russian Grand Dukes; and a strange turn of fortune, combined with a bloody tragedy, had brought a grandson to a throne.

So, if any king could be safe, he had seemed to be—and yet all these safeguards had been swept away by the World War. The passion for democracy which emerged from it had decreed that kings must go, and Pietro had found himself cast aside with all the others. But a revulsion had already begun; the feeling was growing that an ordered government, however despotic, was better than a disordered one, however ideal in theory; and kings and princes, exiled in Switzerland or Holland or along the Riviera, were beginning to pick up heart of hope and gather their partisans about them.

Yet, Selden told himself, sitting there and turning all this over in his mind, despite the fact that this revulsion was being sedulously fostered by financiers and aristocrats and every one else who had been despoiled of money or power by the new order, there was not the slightest hope for any of them, except perhaps for this one canny old patriarch. Certainly there was no hope for the pompous coward at Doorn or the perjured neurasthenic at Lucerne. But for this old autocrat—well, perhaps, if he could get hold of enough money to organize an opposition and carry on a campaign. No doubt many of his mountaineers thought he was still ruling over them!

The train creaked to a stop under the great glass-roofed shed at Nice, and Selden clambered down to the platform and made his way through the exit to the street. He saw that it was only a minute or two past eight, so he drew his coat about him and started to walk.

For the first time since the outbreak of the war Nice was experiencing a really prosperous season, and it had gone to the head of that mercurial city. The newly-named Avenue des Victoires hummed with traffic, the side-walks were crowded with chattering people, happy again in having a host of strangers to despoil. The gorgeous shops on either side were a blaze of light, with their choicest wares displayed in their windows. They were devoted almost entirely to articles de luxe, and they seemed to Selden, as he glanced into them, more luxurious and far more expensive than ever.

Where the money came from no one knew, but vaster sums than ever before were being frittered away on articles of vanity and personal adornment. The wealth of the world seemed to have passed suddenly into the hands of women, who were flinging it recklessly to right and left. The season at Deauville had been marked by an extravagance wild beyond parallel, by such gambling as the world had never seen. Now it was here, along the Riviera, that the orgy was continued. And not here only, as he well knew, but in Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin—yes, even in Vienna and Budapest and Warsaw, before the eyes of starving spectators—the dance whirled on. Thoughtful men looked on aghast, but no one was wise enough to foretell how or when it would end. That the end would be disaster Selden did not for a moment doubt. He even looked forward to it with a certain pleasure!

The crowds in the street had delayed him a little, so at the Place Masséna he called a cab and gave the driver the address. In a moment they were clattering along the Promenade des Anglais, before a row of stately white villas and great hotels, looking out across the wide cement promenade upon the magic sea which stretched away to the horizon.