The King rested one hand familiarly on his shoulder.
“I would rather take my own life than yours, De Launay!” he said—“No,—whatever difficulties I get myself into, you shall not suffer! But—as I told you a while ago,—there is something in me that must have its way. I am sick to death of conventionalities,—you must help me to break through them! You are right in saying that we live in strange times;—they are strange times!—and they may perchance be all the better for a strange King!”
CHAPTER IV. — SEALED ORDERS
Some hours later on, Sir Roger de Launay, having left his Sovereign’s presence, and being off duty for a time, betook himself to certain apartments in the west wing of the palace, where the next most trusted personage to himself in the confidence of the King, had his domicile,—Professor von Glauben, resident physician to the Royal Household. Heinrich von Glauben was a man of somewhat extraordinary character and individuality. In his youth he had made a sudden meteoric fame for his marvellous skill and success in surgery, as also for his equally surprising quickness and correctness in diagnosing obscure diseases and tracing them to their source. But, after creating a vast amount of discussion and opposition among his confrères, and almost reaching that brilliant point of triumph when his originality and cleverness were proved great enough to win him a host of enemies, he all at once threw up the game as it were, and, resigning the favourable opportunities of increasing distinction offered him in his native Germany, accepted the comparatively retired and private position he now occupied. Some said it was a disappointment in love which had caused his abrupt departure from the Fatherland,—others declared it was irritation at the severe manner in which his surgical successes had been handled by the medical critics,—but whatever the cause, it soon became evident that he had turned his back on the country of his birth for ever, and that he was apparently entirely satisfied with the lot he had chosen. His post was certainly an easy and pleasant one,—the members of the Royal family to which his services were attached were exceptionally healthy, as Royal families go; and he was seldom in more than merely formal attendance, so that he had ample time and opportunity to pursue those deeper forms of physiological study which had excited the wrath and ridicule of his contemporaries, as well as to continue the writing of a book which he intended should make a stir in the world, and which he had entitled “The Moral and Political History of Hunger.”
“For,” said he—“Hunger is the primal civilizer,—the very keystone and foundation of all progress. From the plain, prosy, earthy fact that man is a hungry animal, and must eat, has sprung all the civilization of the world! I shall demonstrate this in my book, beginning with the scriptural legend of Adam’s greed for an apple. Adam was evidently hungry at the moment Eve tempted him. As soon as he had satisfied his inner man, he thought of his outer,—and his next idea was, naturally, tailoring. From this simple conjunction of suggestions, combined with what ‘God’ would have to say to him concerning his food-experiment and fig-leaf apron, man has drawn all his religions, manners, customs and morals. The proposition is self-evident,—but I intend to point it out with somewhat emphasised clearness for the benefit of those persons who are inclined to arrogate to themselves the possession of superior wisdom. Neither brain nor soul has placed man in a position of Supremacy,—merely Hunger and Nakedness!”
The Professor was now about fifty-five, but his exceptionally powerful build and robust constitution gave him the grace in appearance of many years younger, though perhaps the extreme composure of his temperament, and the philosophic manner in which he viewed all circumstances, whether pleasing or disastrous, may have exercised the greatest influence in keeping his eyes clear and clean, and his countenance free of unhandsome wrinkles. He was more like a soldier than a doctor, and was proud of his resemblance to the earlier portraits of Bismarck. To see him in his own particular ‘sanctum’ surrounded by weird-looking diagrams of sundry parts of the human frame, mysterious phials and stoppered flasks containing various liquids and crystals, and all the modern appliances for closely examining the fearful yet beautiful secrets of the living organism, was as if one should look upon a rough and burly giant engaged in some delicate manipulation of mosaics. Yet Von Glauben’s large hand was gentler than a woman’s in its touch and gift of healing,—no surgeon alive could probe a wound more tenderly, or with less pain to the sufferer,—and the skill of that large hand was accompanied by the penetrative quality of the large benevolent brain which guided it,—a brain that could encompass the whole circle of the world in its observant and affectionate compassion.
“Ach!—who is there that can be angry with anyone?—impatient with anyone,—offended with anyone!” he was wont to say—“Everybody suffers so much and so undeservedly, that as far as my short life goes I have only time for pity—not condemnation!”
To this individual, as a kind of human calmative and tonic combined, Sir Roger de Launay was in the habit of going whenever he felt his own customary tranquillity at all disturbed. The two were great friends;—friends in their mutual love and service of the King,—friends in their equally mutual but discreetly silent worship of the Queen,—and friends in their very differences of opinion on men and matters in general. De Launay, being younger, was more hasty of judgment and quick in action; but Von Glauben too had been known to draw his sword with unexpected rapidity on occasion, to the discomfiture of those who deemed him only at home with the scalpel. Just now, however, he was in a particularly non-combative and philosophic mood; he was watching certain animalculae wriggling in a glass tube, the while he sat in a large easy-chair with slippered feet resting on another chair opposite, puffing clouds of smoke from a big meerschaum,—and he did not stir from his indolent attitude when De Launay entered, but merely looked up and smiled placidly.