The baron stopped him with a gesture.
“No, no, no,” he protested. “We wish it to be yours only; we shall be very happy if you can win some glory out of it. It will make certain chancelleries sit up, hein? this news? Shall I call a car for you?”
“No, thank you,” said Selden; “I prefer to walk,” and left him chuckling on the steps.
The great gates were clanged open for him and he passed through into the Promenade des Anglais. The night was soft and warm, with the rising moon painting a path of silver across the sea, and all the world was out to drink its beauty. He would have to go to the main postoffice to get his wire off promptly, and he walked on as rapidly as the crowd permitted.
Yes, the baron was right; this news would upset some of the chancelleries, especially those of other little republics, delicately balanced, not yet sure of existence. How would Jeneski take it? Time had not been able to dim the impression left upon him by that vivid enthusiast—a dreamer, if there ever was one, with a haunted look, as of a man with something gnawing at his heart; yet not entirely a dreamer—capable, at least, of turning into a man of action when some desperate crisis demanded it, and of giving and taking hard knocks. That hasty meeting at the frontier, that declaration of a republic—he had been a man of action then, and might be again!
Yet, even as he talked with him, Jeneski had seemed too much of another world, and that impression was deepened now. Jeneski’s visions were all of toil and conflict, of scaling the heights in search of human brotherhood; but very few people cared to scale heights. By far the most of them preferred to sit quietly at home, before a good fire, with hands folded complacently over a full belly. And that was precisely what the king would offer.
Should he, Selden, help or hinder?
It was too much, perhaps, to say that he could stop it; but the king was right in thinking that no dynasty could now endure unless the public opinion of the world approved. It would be easy to win that approval, there was so much to be said on the king’s side. It was only necessary to take him seriously.
And yet he was also singularly open to satire and to irony, as the Viennese had perceived when they built their comic operas about him. He could be painted—and perhaps with equal justice!—either as the patriotic and devoted father of his people, or as a senile survival of the Middle Ages, with a degenerate grandson for his heir.
There was the weak spot in his armour—his Achilles’ heel; Danilo, with his amours—with Madame Ghita....