Loud cheers answered him, and Zouche rising from his place advanced a little.
“Majesty!” he cried, “You are right! I hand your Majesty’s intended Premier over to you with the greatest, pleasure in the world! Apart from the fact of your being the King, I am compelled to admit that you have common sense!”
Laughter and cheers resounded through the room again, and the King quietly turning round, extinguished the red lamp on the table. The thirteenth light was quenched; the Day of Fate was ended. As the ominous crimson flare sank out, a sudden silence prevailed, and the King fixed his eyes on Lotys.
“From you, Madame, must come my final exoneration! If you still condemn me as a King, I shall be indeed unfortunate! If you still think well of me as a man, I shall be proud! I have to thank you, not only for my life, but for having helped me to make that life valuable! As Pasquin Leroy, I have sought to serve you,—as King, I seek to serve you still!”
The silence continued. Every man present watched the visible emotion which swept every vestige of colour from the face of Lotys, and made her eyes so feverishly bright. Every man gazed at her as she rose from her chair and came forward a little to the front of the platform. It was with a strong effort that she raised her eyes to those of the King, and in that one glance between them, the lightning flash of a resistless love tore the veil of secrecy from their souls. But she spoke out bravely.
“I thank your Majesty!” she said; “I thank you for all you have done for us as our comrade and associate,—for all you will yet do for us as our comrade and associate still! It is better to be a brave man than a weak King—but it is best to be a strong man and a strong king both together! You have disproved the thoughts I had of you as King! You have ratified—” here she paused, while the colour suddenly sprang to her cheeks, and her breath came pantingly and quick,—“and strengthened the thoughts I had of you as our Pasquin!” Her eyes softened with tears, though she smiled. “We have believed in you; we believe in you still! All is as it was,—save in the one thing new,—that where we were banded together against the King, we are now united for, and with the King!”
These words were all that were needed to reawaken and confirm the enthusiasm of the Revolutionists, whose ‘revolutionary’ measures were now accepted and sworn to by the Crowned Head of the Realm. Thereupon, they gave themselves up to the wildest cheering.
“Comrades!” cried Paul Zouche, in the midst of the uproar; “There is one point you seem to have missed! The King,—God bless him!—doesn’t see it,—Thord, glowering like an owl in his ivy-bush of hair, doesn’t see it! It is only left to me to perceive the chief result of this evening’s disclosures!”
All the men laughed.
“What is it, Zouche?” demanded Louis Valdor.