Subsequent events have also demonstrated that her woman’s intuitions were indeed trustworthy. Perhaps you will remember the revelations that were made at the time of M. Tsargradev’s downfall; fairly full reports of them appeared in the London papers. Murder, peculation, and revolting secret debaucheries were all, surely enough, proved against him. It was proved that he was the paid agent of Berlin; it was proved that he had had recourse to torture in dealing with certain refractory witnesses in his famous prosecution of Count Osaréki. And then, there was the case of Colonel Alexandrevitch. He and Tsargradev, at sunset, were strolling arm-in-arm in the Dunayskiy Prospekt, when the Colonel was shot by some person concealed in the shrubberies, who was never captured. Tsargradev and his friends broached the theory, which gained pretty general acceptance, that the shot had been intended for the Prime Minister himself, and that the death of Colonel Alexandrevitch was an accident due to bad aiming. It is now perfectly well established that the death of the Colonel was due to very good aiming indeed; that the assassin was M. Tsargradev’s own hireling; and that perhaps the best reason why the police could never lay hands on him had some connection with the circumstance that the poor wretch, that very night, was strangled and cast into the Danube.
Oh, they manage these things in a highly unlikely and theatrical manner, in the far south-east of Europe!
But the particular circumstances of M. Tsargradev’s downfall were amusingly illustrative of the character of the Queen. Ce que femme veult, Dieu le veult. And though her husband talked of the Constitution, and pleaded the necessity of evidence, Anéli was unconvinced. To get rid of Tsargradev, by one method or another, was her fixed idea, her determined purpose; she bided her time, and in the end she accomplished it.
It befell, during the seventh month of my stay in the Palace, that a certain great royal wedding was appointed to be celebrated at Dresden: a festivity to which were bidden all the crowned heads and most of the royal and semi-royal personages of Christendom, and amongst them the Krol and Kroleva of Monte-rosso.
“It will cost us a pretty sum of money,” Theodore grumbled, when the summons first reached him. “We’ll have to travel in state, with a full suite; and the whole shot must be paid from our private purse. There’s no expecting a penny for such a purpose from the Soviete.”
“I hope,” exclaimed the Queen, looking up from a letter she was writing, “I hope you don’t for a moment intend to go?”
“We must go,” answered the King. “There’s no getting out of it.”
“Nonsense!” said she. “We’ll send a representative.”
“I only wish we could,” sighed the King. “But unfortunately this is an occasion when etiquette requires that we should attend in person.”
“Oh, bother etiquette,” said she. “Etiquette was made for slaves. We’ll send your Cousin Peter. One must find some use for one’s Cousin Peters.”