“Yes; honest and neutral.”
“But a man, a lonely man like myself, can not always master the impulses of the heart; and I have surrendered to mine.”
The listener turned to some documents which lay beside the cup, and idly fingered them. “I am glad; I am very glad. I have always secretly admired you; and to tell the truth, I have feared you most of all—because you are honest.”
The Marshal shifted his saber around and drew his knees together. “I return the compliment,” frankly. “I have never feared you; I have distrusted you.”
“And why distrusted?”
“Because Leopold of Osia would never have forsaken his birthright, nor looked toward a throne, had you not pointed the way and coveted the archbishopric.”
“I wished only to make him great;” but the prelate lowered his eyes.
“And share his greatness,” was the shrewd rejoinder. “I am an old man, and frankness in old age is pardonable. There are numbers of disinterested men in the world, but unfortunately they happen to be dead. O, I do not blame you; there is human nature in most of us. But the days of Richelieus and Mazarins are past. The Church is simply the church, and is no longer the power behind the throne. I have served the house of Auersperg for fifty years, that is to say, since I was sixteen; I had hoped to die in the service. Perhaps my own reason for distrusting you has not been disinterested.”
“Perhaps not.”
“And as I now stand I shall die neither in the service of the house of Auersperg nor of Osia. It is not the princess; it is the lonely girl.”