Kophetua the Thirteenth

by Julian Stafford Corbett

"To-morrow," said Turbo, "I propose to submit unconditionally to the King's terms, and I shall be free. It will be unpleasant, but under the new aspect of affairs there is no other course open. I must absolutely be at liberty to act at the present crisis."

The Chancellor's evident anxiety to get the beggar-maid back to the capital began once more to arouse M. de Tricotrin's suspicion. His doubts as to the loyalty of his ally began to recur to him. His own idea was that at present Penelophon was much better where she was. He objected to the Chancellor's plan, but it was not his habit to insist on real objections. There was a crudeness about honesty which jarred on the old diplomatist's sense of refinement. He loved always to mask his position with minor obstructions.

"You seem, Chancellor," he began, "to over-estimate the danger we are to apprehend from this beggar. It is impossible to conceive that the King seriously means to marry her."

"I quite agree with you, Marquis," answered Turbo. "He had no such intention. Till this morning the danger was shadowy. But now it is different. In his present state of mind he is capable of any indiscretion. I cannot exaggerate to you the intensity of the shock which he received at the discovery of your daughter's implication in our disgrace."

"What!" cried the Marquis, surprised into an unwonted show of feeling. "The discovery of my daughter's complicity? What do you mean?"

"Did you not know?" said Turbo, with an affectation of tender concern. "Really this is most painful. I imagined you knew all, and envied you your calmness. You see it was that unlucky note. The girl did not deliver it, and so it came into the King's hands through the police."

"Oh, it is that which has alarmed you," said the Marquis, in a tone of great relief. "I am happy, then, to reassure you. Believe me, there was nothing compromising in that. I was careful that the letter should be but a blank sheet of paper."

"Then what is the meaning of this?" said Turbo, handing Mlle de Tricotrin's note to her father. M. de Tricotrin read it through. Then he set his teeth, and hissed out between them, "Sink the little fool!" and many other like exclamations that were only fit for Turbo's ears.

As soon as the ebullition which Turbo's announcement produced in the Marquis had a little subsided, and while his spirits were still hot, the Chancellor proceeded to throw in, in the guise of consolation, the ingredients which he considered necessary to convert the Frenchman's state of mind into a mixture that would minister to his own disease.

"And, after all, Marquis," said Turbo, at last, "perhaps you have lost nothing. I begin to think you had gained nothing, and had nothing to lose. I am inclined to believe the King is a deeper politician than we thought. Some of us are old hands, but I believe he has been laughing at us all along. He amused us with your daughter, and Penelophon, and this Herculean notion of his of cleansing his Augean stables. But my experience of this morning has opened my eyes. He is a man, and not the decrepit boy I took him for. The spirit of his race is alive in him. It has burst into sudden vigour. He begins to itch for power like his fathers, and he means to grip it in spite of the law. He means to have it, and throw us all over,—you and me and Mlle Héloise, who have sinned in his eyes beyond redemption. That is why his calmness and obstinacy are so unassailable. That is what this concentration of the gendarmerie means. I tell you, Marquis, as sure as there is an earth beneath, our little Kophetua contemplates a coup d'état."