Driscoll believed now what he had heard, that the Empire fared better when Charlotte was regent and her lord on a journey. Maximilian dreamed, while she realized. The Hapsburg cadet, gazing over the Adriatic from the marble steps of Miramar, had brooded fondly on what Destiny must hold for him. He would be king of a Poland born again among the nations. Then Louis Napoleon whispered of another throne in the building. Whereupon she began the study of Spanish; she decided her half hesitating spouse to accept, 255 however loftily they both scorned the adventurer who helped them to it.
Carlota, for so the natives called her, amiably greeted the Missourian. She was a woman of tact, and though one Din Driscoll was for her as impersonal a thing as some opportune event, yet events must be neatly turned to account.
“His Majesty and I have discussed your presence in our country, sir,” she began in English, “and feeling that he desires to see you again, I requested M. Éloin to bring you to Cuernavaca.”
“Why, thank you, ma’am,” said Driscoll.
She all but reproved the form of address. But, for her at least, common sense was beginning to prevail. The rigid court punctilio, largely of her own enthusiastic designing, had gone hard with her. Her husband had proved no more than consistent to the medieval revival. He was but true to that old chivalry which distinguished between the divinely fair damsel to be won and the mere woman won already. He was the monarch, she his consort. Classifying others, the Empress found herself classified. He was her liege, and she might not even enter his presence unannounced. But how much happier was she in the blithe sailor prince who came a-wooing, who wooed for love, in accordance with that same ancient chivalry!
A princess of the Blood, of the House of Orleans, Charlotte had had that nicest poise of good breeding, the kind that is unconscious. But here among the Mexicans, she had to proclaim a superiority not taken for granted, and the nice poise was gone. In her the generations–Henry IV., the Grand Monarch, and all of that stately line–in her they stooped. And an element of sheerest vulgarity, as plebeian as a Jew’s diamond, crept in perforce. Poor tarnished escutcheon of Orleans! Poor princess of the Blood, become menial with scouring it! She was weary. Over this New World there floated too much of obscuring democratic dust. So she 256allowed “ma’am,” like a homely fleck, to settle unreproved on the ancestral doorplate.
Driven to expediency for her very Empire’s sake, she herself trampled on the Ritual. Waiving all formalities, they would go and seek out His Majesty. He must be somewhere in the gardens, perhaps beside the pond with its fringe of deep shadows from the trees. There they expected to find him, breathing the air of orange blossoms, gazing enraptured into the water, and on the gold fish and the swans and the fountains. He would be teasing Nature for a sonnet’s inspiration.
Driscoll went ahead, since Carlota and Éloin talked earnestly in French, intent on their plot for the persuasion of the Emperor. But as the American parted a clump of oleanders and laden rosebushes that hid the little lake, he stopped, his eyes wide on something just beyond. In the instant he fell back, and confronted the other two with such a look on his face that both started in vague alarm. They saw the sickened look of one who turns from a revolting sight. A wretch stricken suddenly blind may know at once the fact of a terrible grief, yet he cannot quite at first gather to himself the fullness of the horror. He is only aware that, afterward, the meaning will slowly take shape, like a gradually darkening despair.
Driscoll gazed uncertainly at the Empress, as though she had somehow arrested his thoughts. Then, as a strong man rushing from danger, he comprehended that here was a frail woman near the same peril.
“You will not go, ma’am,” he ordered in a kind of terror for her.