Count von Ritter cleared his throat and then for a moment he sat in silence, his lids half-closed, his mouth tight-drawn. When he spoke it was very seriously, with a changed demeanour.
“Budavia has still more for which to thank you, Mr. Van Tuyl,” he said, rising.
The New York banker and the Irish lieutenant also stood up. It was evident to both that a blunder had been made.
“I don’t just see for what,” said the older man, a little nervously. “I haven’t told you anything you didn’t know. I didn’t come here to tell you anything. I came to have you tell me something.”
“I think,” replied the Count, with an urbanity that was the acme of trained diplomacy, “that you said just now you came here to confirm a rumour, or words to that effect. You have, my dear sir, confirmed it. And now I must ask you to excuse me. You are at the Königin Anna, I suppose? I shall have the pleasure of calling upon you tomorrow.”
The Chancellor bowed, smiling, and before Van Tuyl could remonstrate had disappeared into the Hall of Council. And then it was that O’Hara for the first time found words.
“Well, I’m damned!” he said. And he said it with emphasis.
Meanwhile the Colonial Secretary had finished his wearying oration and the Prince Regent had suggested the advisability of adjournment. But the return of the Chancellor, craving the privilege of the floor, awakened a new interest. His usually immobile face was portentous in its marked gravity, and when he spoke every ear was alert.
“Your Highness,” he began, addressing the Prince Regent, “I am come to cry ‘Pause!’ I have listened to and taken part in a debate this evening the sole purpose of which, as I regard it now, has been to accomplish our own convincing. We constructed a theory upon a basis as unstable as the sands of the sea, and then marshalled arguments of straw to effect its establishment. In the whole history of Budavia I know of no incident of parallel puerility. We call ourselves statesmen, and we have acted with the confiding innocence of children. We gambolled like foolhardy lads blindfold upon the brink of a precipice, over which, had not a miracle intervened, we must have fallen into the slough of ignominious dishonour. Even as it is the smirch of its miasma is upon us, and we cannot escape the ridicule that is entailed.
“Our supposed mad Prince Maximilian of Kronfeld, now so carefully guarded in the Flag Tower, your Highness, is, I make bold to announce, a perfectly sane American gentleman and nothing more.”