"Feel like a fool, eh?" growled the old soldier.
"Pretty mess I've made of the business," lamented Dank surlily. "Putting myself up as a contender against a fellow like Robin, and dreaming that I could win out, even for a minute! Good Lord, what an ass I am! Why we've only made it worse, Count. We've touched him with the spur of rivalry, and what could be more calamitous than that? From being a rather matter-of-fact, indifferent observer, he becomes a bewildering cavalier bent on conquest at any cost. I am swept aside as if I were a parcel of rags. For two days I stood between him and the incomparable Miss Guile. Then he suddenly arouses himself. My cake is dough. I am nobody. My feet get cold, as they say in America,—although I don't know why they say it. What has the temperature of one's feet to do with it? See! There they are. They are constantly together, walking, sitting, standing, eating, drinking, reading—Eh bien! You have seen with your own eyes. The beautiful Miss Guile has bewitched our Prince, and my labour is not only lost but I myself am lost. Mon dieu!"
The Count stared at him in perplexity for a moment. Then a look of surprise came into his eyes,—surprise not unmingled with scorn.
"You don't mean to say, Dank, that you've fallen in love with her? Oh, you absurd fledgelings. Will you—"
"Forgive my insolence, Count, but it is forty years since you were a fledgeling. You don't see things as you saw them forty years ago. Permit me to remind you that you are a grandfather."
"Your point is well taken, my lad," said the Count, with a twinkle in his eye. "You can't help being young any more than I can help being old. Youth is perennial, old age a winding-sheet. I am to take it, then, that you've lost your heart to the fair—"
"Why not?" broke in Dank fiercely. "Why should it appear incredible to you? Is she not the most entrancing creature in all the world? Is she not the most appealing, the most adorable, the most feminine of all her sex? Is it possible that one can be so old that it is impossible for him to feel the charm, the loveliness, the—"
"For heaven's sake, Dank," said the old man in alarm, "don't gesticulate so wildly. People will think we are quarrelling. Calm yourself, my boy."
"You set a task for me and I obey. You urge me to do my duty by Graustark. You tell me I am a handsome dog and irresistible. She will be overwhelmed by my manly beauty, my valour, my soldierly bearing,—so say you! And what is the outcome? I—I, the vain-glorious,—I am wrapped around her little finger so tightly that all the king's horses and all the king's men—"
"Halt!" commanded his general softly. "You are turning tail like the veriest coward. Right about, face! Would you surrender to a slip of a girl whose only weapons are a pair of innocent blue eyes and a roguish smile? Be a man! Stand by your guns. Outwardly you are the equal of R. Schmidt, whose sole—"