London was looking at its best just then, and his spirits stirred in grateful response to the sunlight. How dismal everything would have seemed, he was thinking, if the streets had been soaking under a leaden sky, if the trees had been dripping dismally, if his glance directed to the street below had rested only upon distended umbrellas glistening like the backs of gigantic crabs! Now everything was bright, and London looked as it can look sometimes, positively beautiful. Paulo's Hotel stands, as everybody knows, in the pleasantest part of Knightsbridge, facing Kensington Gardens. The sky was brilliantly blue, the trees were deliciously green; Knightsbridge below him lay steeped in a pure gold of sunlight. The animation of the scene cheered him sensibly. May is seldom summery in England, but this might have been a royal day of June.
Opposite to him he could see the green-grey roofs of Kensington Palace. At his left he could see a public-house which bore the name and stood upon the site of the hostelry where the Pretender's friends gathered on the morning when they expected to see Queen Anne succeeded by the heir to the House of Stuart. Looking from the one place to the other, he reflected upon the events of that morning when those gentlemen waited in vain for the expected tidings, when Bolingbroke, seated in the council chamber at yonder palace, was so harshly interrupted. It pleased the stranger for a moment to trace a resemblance between the fallen fortunes of the Stuart Prince and his own fallen fortunes, as dethroned Dictator of the South American Republic of Gloria. 'London is my St. Germain's,' he said to himself with a laugh, and he drummed the national hymn of Gloria upon the balcony-rail with his fingers.
His gaze, wandering over the green bravery of the Park, lost itself in the blue sky. He had forgotten London; his thoughts were with another place under a sky of stronger blue, in the White House of a white square in a white town. He seemed to hear the rattle of rifle shots, shrill trumpet calls, angry party cries, the clatter of desperate charges across the open space, the angry despair of repulses, the piteous pageant of civil war. Knightsbridge knew nothing of all that. Danes may have fought there, the chivalry of the White Rose or the Red Rose ridden there, gallant Cavaliers have spurred along it to fight for their king. All that was past; no troops moved there now in hostility to brethren of their blood. But to that one Englishman standing there, moody in spite of the sunlight, the scene which his eyes saw was not the tranquil London street, but the Plaza Nacional of Gloria, red with blood, and 'cut up,' in the painter's sense, with corpses.
'Shall I ever get back? Shall I ever get back?' that was the burden to which his thoughts were dancing. His spirit began to rage within him to think that he was here, in London, helpless, almost alone, when he ought to be out there, sword in hand, dictating terms to rebels repentant or impotent. He gave a groan at the contrast, and then he laughed a little bitterly and called himself a fool. 'Things might be worse,' he said. 'They might have shot me. Better for them if they had, and worse for Gloria. Yes, I am sure of it—worse for Gloria!'
His mind was back in London now, back in the leafy Park, back in Knightsbridge. He looked down into the street, and noted that a man was loitering on the opposite side. The man in the street saw that the Dictator noted him. He looked up at the Dictator, looked up above the Dictator, and, raising his hat, pointed as if towards the sky. The Dictator, following the direction of the gesture, turned slightly and looked upwards, and received a sudden thrill of pleasure, for just above him, high in the air, he could see the flutter of a mass of green and yellow, the colours of the national flag of Gloria. Mr. Paulo, mindful of what was due even to exiled sovereignty, had flown the Gloria flag in honour of the illustrious guest beneath his roof. When that guest looked down again the man in the street had disappeared.
'That is a good omen. I accept it,' said the Dictator. 'I wonder who my friend was?' He turned to go back into his room, and in doing so noticed the laurel.
'Another good omen,' he said. 'My fortunes feel more summerlike already. The old flag still flying over me, an unknown friend to cheer me, and a laurel to prophesy victory—what more could an exile wish? His breakfast, I think,' and on this reflection he went back into his bedroom, and, opening the door through which Hamilton had talked to him, entered the sitting-room.