Still Driscoll failed to notice the proffered hand. He might have, had he seen his suppliant’s face, and the tense anguish there.
“Those innocent non-combatants, then,” Maximilian went on, “so they counted more than a prince with you?”
“Of course, there were a thousand of ’em.”
The other’s haggard look gave way to a smile, half sad, half amused, and taking the American by the shoulder in a grip almost affectionate, he said, “Colonel, did you ever happen to know of one Don Quixote of La Mancha? Well, lately I’ve begun to think that he was the truest of gentlemen, though now I believe I could name another who––”
“And,” interrupted Driscoll, “did you ever try to locate the 471most dignified animal that walks, bipeds not excepted? Well, sir, it’s the donkey. Take him impartially, and you’ll say so too.”
The strain was over. Maximilian laughed. “If Don Quixote had only had your sanity!” he began; “or rather,” he added, charmed with the conceit, “if knighthood had had it, then the poor don would never have been needed to be born at all.”
Ignoring the sincerity of the Hapsburg’s new philosophy, and how tragically it was grounded, Driscoll only smiled in a very peculiar way. Knighthood? The word was supercilious cant, and irritated him. During that very moment, while listening to Chivalry’s devotee, the young trooper thought of a little ivory cross in his pocket, a cross which was stained with a girl’s blood. Murguía had given it to him, to give to Maximilian on the eve of execution. But Driscoll had not promised, and yet Murguía had implored him to take it, even without promising. The old man held faith in vengeance as a spring to drive all souls alike, and if Maximilian’s last earthly moment could be embittered with sight of a cross, then, he firmly believed, the American needed only to be tempted with the means to do it. Moreover, in a sudden impulse, Driscoll had taken the holy symbol, “to do with as he chose.” There was no message, Murguía had explained. The Señor Emperador would read the graven name, “Maria de la Luz,” and that would suffice.
Looking now on the cultured gentleman caressing his beard, Driscoll thought again how hellishly distorted was the sign of salvation then in his pocket. But he left it there. He, too, had a king’s pride, incapable of low spite. Charity alone, though, would have held him, if he had but known that Maximilian was ignorant of the dead girl’s fate.
The archduke for his part had been amiable and conciliatory, because there was a certain delicate question he wished to ask.
“Oh by the way, mi coronel,” he said abruptly, “I must 472extend my excuses for keeping you waiting in the corridor just now. But there was another visitor here. And as we happened to be talking of–well, of a rather personal matter, not intended for outside ears––”