“Ah! So they should,” responded Valdor promptly; “Only it happens that they are not! They treat me merely as a laquais de place,—just as they would treat Zouche, had he accepted his Sovereign’s offer. But this I will admit,—that mediocre musicians always get on very well with Royal persons! I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a common little American woman’s abominable singing, as though she were a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur pianist, whose fingers rattled on the keyboard like bones on a tom-tom. But then the common little American woman invited his Majesty’s ‘chères amies’ to her house; and the amateur pianist was content to lose money to him at cards! Wheels within wheels, my friend! In a lesser degree the stock-jobber who sets a little extra cash rolling on the Exchange is called an ‘Empire Builder.’ It is a curious world! But kings were never known to be ‘proud’ of any really ‘great’ men in either art or literature; on the contrary, they were always afraid of them, and always will be! Among musicians, the only one who ever got decently honoured by a monarch was Richard Wagner,—and the world swears that his Royal patron was mad!”
Paul Zouche opened his eyes, filled his glass afresh, and tossed down the liquor it contained at a gulp.
“Before we have any more music,” he said, “and before the little Pequita gives us the dance which she has promised,—not to us, but to Lotys—we ought to have prayers!”
A loud laugh answered this strange proposition.
“I say we ought to have prayers!” repeated Zouche with semi-solemn earnestness,—“You talk of news,—news in telegram,—news in brief,—official scratchings for the day and hour,—and do you take no thought for the fact that his Holiness the Pope is ill—perhaps dying?”
He stared wildly round upon them all; and a tolerant smile passed over the face of the company.
“Well, if that be so, Paul,” said a man next to him, “it is not to be wondered at. The Pope has arrived at a great age!”
“No age at all!—no age at all!” declared Zouche. “A saint of God should live longer than a pauper! What of the good old lady admitted to hospital the other day whose birth certificate proved her beyond doubt to be one hundred and twenty-one years old? The dear creature had not married;—nor has his Holiness the Pope,—the real cause of death is in neither of them! Why should he not live as long as his aged sister, possessing, as he does the keys of Heaven? He need not unlock the little golden door, even for himself, unless he likes. That is true orthodoxy! Pasquin Leroy, you bold imitation of a king, more wine!”
Leroy filled the glass he held out to him. The glances of the company told him Zouche was ‘on,’ and that it was no good trying to stem the flow of his ideas, or check the inconsequential nature of his speech. Lotys had moved her chair a little back from the table, and with both arms encircling the child, Pequita, was talking to her in low and tender tones.
“Brethren, let us pray!” cried Zouche; “For all we know, while we sit here carousing and drinking to the health of our incomparable Lotys, the soul of St. Peter’s successor may be careering through Sphere-Forests, and over Planet-Oceans, up to its own specially built and particularly furnished Heaven! There is only one Heaven, as we all know,—and the space is limited, as it only holds the followers of St. Peter, the good disciple who denied Christ!”