"What have you to tell me?" he asked again.
"Is it possible that you are not aware that you are the King of Pannonia?" continued Brockford in an awed voice.
Max started back with an exclamation of horror.
"King!" he cried in a choking voice. "My God, man! What do you mean? You don't mean—that—that——"
"I mean that your father is dead, Sire," said Brockford quietly. "He died three months ago, and your mother followed him six weeks later."
This was more than Max could bear. He dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands. For some minutes silence reigned in the room. Then he rose and, with a face white and haggard as a sere cloth, turned to Brockford.
"Tell me everything," he said. "I'm stronger now and can bear it."
Thereupon, Brockford, to whom I had written, in case he should hear of him, gave a complete résumé of all that had occurred during his absence. He informed him of our father's death, just at the time when there was a possibility of Pannonia becoming a Monarchy once more. He told him of our mother's end such a short time afterwards; of the gradual crumbling away of the Republic, and of the war with Mandravia to which it had given rise. He revealed to him the fact that being unable to find Max, search how I would, and seeing that there was no time to lose, I had sprung into the breach, and, supported by the Count von Marquart, now a very old man, but as keen and self-assertive as of yore, and the majority of the nobles, had seized the throne and declared myself Regent in his stead. Max's face, so Brockford has since told me, when he heard the news, was almost transformed.
"I have heard a great deal during my life," said the latter, "of what is called kingly dignity. I never realised what it was, however, until I looked at his. At that moment he was every inch a king."
"Father and mother dead," he said, "and my country in danger. There is no doubt now; no doubt at all."