The Count of Nullepart resumed his place at the council board with an assumption of composure.
Sir Richard Pendragon took up the thread of the discourse.
“By my hand,” said he, “this is very like a providence, to use a favourite idiom of Ferdinando the Ninth, a friend of my youth and hereditary sovereign of the Russ. If, madam, your nephew France—and craving your forgiveness, my dear soul, Richard Pendragon, honest fellow, had not guessed that, like himself, your ladyship’s grace had all these well placed relations—if, madam, as you say, your nephew France—how pleasantly, to be sure, the name trips off the tongue of one who hath the blood of kings under his doublet!—in fact, madam, in the circumstances might I not say our nephew France?—if, madam, as I say, our nephew France has a crow to pluck with the Castilian, is not this the very season in which to begin the pulling of feathers?”
“I offer you no contradiction, Sirrah Red Dragon,” said the Countess Sylvia with her bearing of beautiful disdain, and with I know not how many generations of statecraft in her glance.
The English giant caused the board to groan with a blow from his great hand.
“By this hand!” he said, “your mind is a good one, madam. You are young and a female and you live in Spain, but you have a good mind. It is I suppose that even in Spain the blood of kings confers an especial nobility. Richard Pendragon, knight of Great Britain, of the Welsh Marches and the Island of Manx, is in accordance with you. The hour strikes; your nephew France must pluck his crow with the Castilian.”
“Sir Richard Pendragon,” said the Count of Nullepart, “your speaking is choice, yet what if by a strange mischance the good France hath not heard the striking of the hour?”
Madam silenced the Count of Nullepart with her imperious glance.
“We will send an embassy,” said she. “This very day we will send an embassy to Paris.”
This high resolution of madam’s was received with instant favour by her councillors. Sir Richard Pendragon acclaimed it as the flower of wisdom; the Count of Nullepart gave it the accomplished and mature sanction of one who had moved much in the world; while I, who in years and merit was not the peer of these gentlemen, yet gave it the approbation of blood as honourable as any to be found in Spain.