No shadow of a smile came over the Prime Minister’s face.
‘Indeed, it must be so,’ he answered. ‘Never a moment’s relaxation or amusement! An iron will!’
But Prince Petros was satisfied; he was sure Malakopf had completely understood him.
‘I came to talk to you on an important matter,’ said the Prince, taking a seat. ‘Naturally, my wife and I could not both be absent during the sitting of the House, and she gave me to understand that she was sending you a document, which she wished to be communicated to the Assembly, conferring on me—so I took her meaning to be—powers which amount—which really amount—to a Regency during her absence.’
Malakopf, though he was not naturally slow, appeared to take some moments before he grasped what the Prince had said. He fixed his eye on the window so long, without stirring a muscle, that the Prince spoke again.
‘No doubt you have seen the document,’ he said, with a little nervousness. ‘From the few words the Princess let fall to me on the subject, I gathered—wrongly perhaps—that such was the purport of it.’ At last the Prime Minister turned briskly in his chair.
‘That, I think, we may consider to be the purport of it,’ he said. ‘And I don’t suppose that the Princess Sophia has ever taken a more prudent and far-sighted determination. Indeed, it might be even more far-sighted than she supposes.’
The Prince knew that he was, so to speak, skating on ice which might prove to be thin. Malakopf knew it equally well, and he applauded inwardly and derisively the other’s caution.
‘You flatter me,’ said the Prince; and Malakopf silently but sincerely agreed with him. But he let no palpable pause precede his answer.
‘Flattery,’ he said, ‘is the unwilling tribute of a wise man to his inferior, or a fool to his superior. Dear Prince, how can I flatter you? For you are our beloved Princess’s husband, and indeed I have glimmerings of sense. But let us approach the point with more particularity. We must consider—must we not?—what will be your proper place in the Assembly. You represent the Princess Sophia, and as her representative you take the chair whenever you are present. But here the legal point comes in: you have no seat—an anomaly as I have always felt—in the Assembly at all. How would it be, then, if you absented yourself to-day, and that I, after reading the Princess’s message, proposed a resolution that during her absence you should be, ex officio, a Member of the House? Then you would have a seat there, and your position after that, as her representative, would make you President.’ He paused a moment, and with a look amazingly frank, ‘We understand each other, do we not?’ he almost whispered, and he approached as near to a chuckle as his prudence allowed.