“And the Queen?” interrupted Ronsard suddenly;—“She, at any rate, as a woman, wife and mother, will be gentle?”
“Gentle, she certainly is,” said Von Glauben, with a slight sigh; “But only because she does not consider it worth while to be otherwise! God has put a stone in the place where her heart should be! However,—she will have little to say, and still less to do with to-day’s business. You tell me you will trust me; I promise you, you shall not repent your trust! But I must see Gloria herself. Where is she?”
Ronsard pointed towards the cottage.
“She is in there, studying,” he said; “Books of the old time;—books that few read. She gets them all from Sergius Thord. How would it be, think you, if he knew?”
The pleasantly rubicund countenance of the Professor grew a shade paler.
“Sergius Thord—Sergius Thord?—H’m—h’m—let me see!—who is he? Ah! I remember,—he is the Socialist lion, for ever roaring through the streets and seeking whom he may devour! I daresay he is not without cleverness!”
“Cleverness!” echoed Ronsard; “That is a tame word! He has genius, and the people swear by him. Since the proposed new taxation, and other injustices of the Government, he has gained adherents by many thousands. You,—whom I once took to be a mere German schoolmaster, a friend of the young ‘sailor’ whom my child so innocently wedded,—you whom I now know to be the King’s physician—surely you cannot live on the mainland, and in the metropolis, without knowing of the power of Sergius Thord?”
“I know something—not much;” replied the Professor guardedly; “But come, my friend, I have not deceived you! I was in very truth a poor ‘German schoolmaster,’ once,—before I became a student of medicine and surgery. And that I am the King’s physician, is merely one of those accidental circumstances which occur in a world of chance. But schoolmaster as I have been, I doubt if I would set our ‘Glory-of-the-Sea’ to study books recommended to her by Sergius Thord. The poetry of Heine is more suitable to her age and sex. Let us break in upon her meditations.” And he walked across the grass with one arm thrust through that of Ronsard; “For she must prepare herself. We ought to be gone within an hour.”
They passed under the low, rose-covered porch into a wide square room, with raftered ceiling and deep carved oak ingle nook,—and here at the table, with a quarto volume opened out before her, sat Gloria, resting her head on one fair hand, her rich hair falling about her in loose shining tresses, and her whole attitude expressive of the deepest absorption in study. As they entered, she looked up and smiled,—then rose, her hand still resting on the open book.
“At last you have come again, dear Professor!” she said; “I began to think you had grown weary in well-doing!”