Allard made a movement of protest.
"Surely not so bad, surely not nowadays," he objected incredulously.
"Our country is still medieval," Stanief retorted. "I tell you not one-half the fact. But, I make no pose of virtue and perhaps I am merely obstinately resolved not to do what is expected of me, but I will carry this through and crown my cousin on his seventeenth birthday, if I live."
His voice hardened into steel, his velvet eyes flashed through their curtaining lashes. Allard rose impulsively and held out his hand.
"'Soit que soit,' we said last night," he cried. "Let me aid; stand or fall."
"A desperate cause," warned Stanief, keeping the hand in his firm clasp. "For day and night my enemies will pour their poison into Adrian's ears; Adrian, whose father must already have taught him distrust and dread of me. It may very well be that when I resign the absolute power to the young Emperor, he himself will first use it to crush me."
"Impossible! And if it be so, at least we shall have fought the good fight."
"Then open the lists to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. We will live our own way for these three years, and abide the decision."
There was no question of etiquette between the two who stood together, with laughter glancing across the surface of an earnestness too deep for speech. Allard had no way of divining that the Stanief he knew did not exist for any one else; that the reserve of a lifetime was broken in their friendship.
They sat down again, presently.