And she hardly once changed her mind again until Sunday night; and even then she only half changed it.
“If it weren’t too late,” she announced, “do you know, I believe I’d decide to go with you, in spite of everything? But of course I never could get ready to start by to-morrow morning. You couldn’t wait till Tuesday?”
The King said he couldn’t.
“And now, my dears” (as Florimond, who loves to tell the story, is wont to begin it), “no sooner was her poor confiding husband’s back a-turned, than what do you suppose this deep, designing, unprincipled, high-handed young woman up and did?”
Almost the last words Theodore spoke to her were, “Do, for heaven’s sake, try to get on pleasantly with Tsargradev. Don’t treat him too much as if he were the dust under your feet. All you’ll have to do is to sign your name at the end of the papers he’ll bring you. Sign and ask no questions, and all will be well.”
And the very first act of Anéli’s Regency was to degrade M. Tsargardev from office and to place him under arrest.
We bade the King good-bye on the deck of the royal yacht Nemisa, which was to bear him to Belgrade, the first stage of his journey. Cannon bellowed from the citadel; the bells of all the churches in the town were clanging in jubilant discord; the river was gay with fluttering bunting, and the King resplendent in a gold-laced uniform, with the stars and crosses of I don’t know how many Orders glittering on his breast. We lingered at the landing-stage, waving our pocket-handkerchiefs, till the Nemisa turned a promontory and disappeared; Anéli silent, with a white face, and set, wistful eyes. And then we got into a great gilt-and-scarlet state-coach, she and Madame Donarowska, Florimond and I, and were driven back to the Palace; and during the drive she never once spoke, but leaned her cheek on Madame Donarowska’s shoulder, and cried as if her heart would break.
The Palace reached, however—as who should say, “We’re not here to amuse ourselves”—she promptly dried her tears.
“Do you know what I’m going to do?” she asked. And, on our admitting that we didn’t, she continued, blithely, “It’s an ill wind that blows no good. Theo’s absence will be very hard to bear, but I must turn it to some profitable account. I must improve the occasion to straighten out his affairs; I must put his house in order. I’m going to give Monsieur Tsargradev a taste of retributive justice. I’m going to do what Theo himself ought to have done long ago. It’s intolerable that a miscreant like Tsargradev should remain at large in a civilised country; it’s a disgrace to humanity that such a man should hold honourable office. I’m going to dismiss him and put him in prison. And I shall keep him there till a thorough investigation has been made of his official acts, and the crimes I’m perfectly certain he’s committed have been proved against him. I’m not going to be Regent for nothing. I’m going to rule.”
We, her auditors, looked at each other in consternation. It was a good minute before either of us could collect himself sufficiently to speak.