“Somehow,” said Madame, “we must have the money. If that girl, that miss, who is more imbecile than all other jeunes filles—if she obtains that rope of pearls from Goldsturmer, those pearls which ought to be mine, I shall go mad and take poison, very terrible poison, and die in front of your eyes, Konrad.”
With a view to showing how mad she could go if she tried, she threw her brandy glass on the floor and hacked at it with the heel of her shoe. The carpets in Beaufort’s hotel have the softest and deepest pile of any carpets in Europe. Madame’s first two or three hacks did no more than snap the stem of the glass. To complete its destruction she stood up and stamped on it.
Gorman may have feared that she would trample on him next. He told me that she really was a very alarming sight. Stimulated by terror, his mind worked quickly.
“Look here,” he said to the King, “I’ve got a suggestion to make. Get Madame to sit down and keep quiet for a few minutes.”
The King had an experience, gathered during six years of intimacy, of Madame’s ways. He knew what to do with her. He got another glass of brandy and a box of cigarettes. He set them on a table beside a deep armchair. Madame suffered herself to be led to the chair.
“Now, my friend Gorman,” said the King, “if you have a key which will open the dead lock, make it trot out.”
“What Donovan wants,” said Gorman, “is a kingdom for his daughter. Not Megalia in particular, but some kind of right to wear a crown. Any other kingdom would do as well.”
“But there is no other,” said the King. “In all the courts of Europe there is no other king in such a damned hole as I am, no other king who would sell even if he could.”
“I don’t know Megalia well,” said Gorman, “but there must surely be some outlying corner of that interesting country—an island, for instance—which you could make over, sporting, mineral and royal rights, to Donovan; just as England gave Heligoland to the Germans and somebody or other, probably the Turks, gave Cyprus to the English. The thing is constantly done.”
“But the Emperor,” said the King. “Again and always the Emperor. All roads lead to Rome. All Real Politik brings us in the end back to the Emperor.”