“Ah, your majesty, I am well pleased that I need not do it, for Deesen is very passionate, and if he learns that I have betrayed his secret he is capable of giving me a box on the ear.”
“Which would, perhaps, be very wholesome for you,” said the king, as he turned toward his library.
A quarter of an hour later, Deesen entered the library with a heated, anxious face.
The king, who was reading his beloved Lucretius while he paced the floor, turned his great, piercing eyes with a questioning expression on the anxious face of his attendant. “I called for you, and you did not come,” said the king.
“I beg your majesty to pardon me,” stammered Deesen.
“Where were you?”
“I was in my room writing a letter, sire.”
“Ah, a letter. You were no doubt writing to that beautiful barmaid at the hotel of the Black Raven at Amsterdam, who declined the attentions of the servant of the brothers Zoller.”
This reference to the journey to Amsterdam showed Deesen that the king was not very angry. He dared, therefore, to raise his eyes to those of the king, and to look pleadingly at him.
“Sit down.” said the king, pointing to the writing-table. “I called you because I wished to dictate a letter for you to write. Sit down and take a pen.”