“Provided the Head has brains in it!” said Zouche. “But otherwise—”
“You cut it off!” laughed the monarch—“and quite right too!”
They now began to separate. The hunchback Sholto explained that it was long after midnight, and that he had already put out all the lights in the basement.
Whereupon the King, turning to Sergius Thord said: “Farewell for the moment, Sergius! Come to me at the Palace with the whole plan of the meeting you are now organising; I shall hold myself ready to fall in with your plans! Gather your thousands, and—leave the rest to me!”
Thord clasped his extended hand,—and was moved by a curious instinct to bend down low over it after the fashion of a courtier, but restrained himself almost by force. The men began to move; one after the other bade good-night to the King—then to Thord, and last to Lotys, who, drawing on her cloak, prepared to leave also.
“I will see you safely down the stairs,” said the King smilingly, to her. “It is not the first time I have done so! How now, Zouche?”
Paul Zouche stood before him, his eyes full of a strange mingled pathos and scorn.
“I have to thank your Majesty,” he said slowly, “for something I do not in the least value,—Fame! It has come too late! Had it been my portion three years ago, the woman I loved would have been proud of me, and I should have been happy! She is dead now—and nothing matters!”
The King was silent. There was something both solemn and pitiful about this wreck of manhood which was still kept alive by the fire of genius.
“With one word you might have saved me—and her!” he went on. “When you came to the Throne,—and all the wretched versifiers in the kingdom were scribbling twaddle in the way of ‘Coronation odes’ and medleys, I wrote ‘The Song of Freedom’ for your glory! All the people of the land know that song now!—but you might have known it then! For now it is too late!—too late to call her back;—too late to give me peace!”