"Turbo," answered Kophetua hotly, "what folly is this? You forget yourself."
"Perhaps," cried Turbo, rising from his chair and speaking with ever-increasing vehemence. "But it is better to understand each other now. I say you love her. You and I have talked for years like fools on all this. We thought as one man, and thought we were wise and strong in our unity. But now we have both seen this girl—curse the fate that brought you to her—we have seen her, and we know we have been blind fools that could not tell the gold from the dross. She has come to us, and we both love her. You and I, I say, we both love her, but it is I that will have her! Do you hear? It is I, I that will have our love, though you stole her. Were you twice a king I will have her, though I tear her from your very arms."
His ghastly scars grew more livid in his anger, and his pitted face turned pale with rage. He seemed as one possessed, and sank in helpless fury at the end of his insane outburst, as though exhausted with the prolonged struggle to control himself. Kophetua turned from him and began to pace the room. Turbo had gone too far. He had been insolent, and the King's pride was kindled into anger. Yet Kophetua would not speak till he was cool enough to control his words.
For, strange as it may seem, he loved this man—in the same way, perhaps, as a man will love his cross-grained ugly cur that snarls and snaps at every one but his master. So he paced the long room to cool his anger and try and understand what his old governor's madness meant. Had he known his whole story, the task might have been easier. Had he known how that passionate nature had been chained down in long imprisonment, he might have wondered less to see it burst its bonds. But he knew not what passion could be in a man like Turbo. Its durance had been long and hard, and now the time was at hand when it must die, worn out with age and suffering. Yet even as the death throes were upon it, it had blazed up in one last ungovernable fit, and Kophetua, to his wonder, saw the man of ice burning like a furnace. At the last moment, when the struggle was so near its end, the strong man's strength had failed him. He was overwhelmed, as it were, and swept resistlessly onward by the gathering flood he had so long dammed up.
But Kophetua could understand nothing of this as he paced the dark oak floor, and the more he thought of the Chancellor's threats and insolence, the less able he felt to continue the conversation. It was impossible to forgive his insinuations about Penelophon. So at last all Kophetua could do was to control himself sufficiently to inform the Chancellor in his coldest official tone that he should not require his further attendance that day.
For Kophetua the Chancellor's departure did little to clear the air. The storm within him continued to growl and mutter. He felt himself a martyr, or if he ceased for a moment to think that, it was only to call himself a fool, and that was worse. The other view of the case was preferable. He certainly was a martyr. He had made one honest effort to escape from the banalities that were freezing his soul, and do something worthy of his name. The only result so far was that he had dangerously entangled himself with a siren who had been thrust in his way for that very purpose; he had allowed his name to be connected with a beggar-girl in a way that would have been still more annoying were it not so ridiculous; and, finally, on the eve of a fierce political struggle to which the same siren was sure to give rise, he had managed to quarrel with all three of the party leaders, including his best friend, and the only relation he had in the world. It is hardly to be wondered at under the circumstances that he found himself constantly recurring to thoughts which had often framed themselves before in the course of his reading in political philosophy. They were to the effect that kings were a mistake, and even a crime, and that his plain duty after all was to form a republic and abdicate.
CHAPTER XI. OPENING THE CAMPAIGN.
"And, as he musing thus did lye,