An uneasy flush stained the Elector’s distressed face; he did not look up.
“Was it because you foresaw this emergency?” added the Countess.
M. Pfingsten was startled to hear her express the same question as had Karl.
He knew that General Patkul had been arrested, on some flimsy pretext of having exceeded his duties, immediately after the Czar’s departure for Astrakan, and that he had been kept in easy and honorable captivity at Sonnenstein, but not even when Karl had flung his sneer had he thought for a moment that there was any connection between the arrest of the Livonian and the position of Augustus before the conqueror.
Now, as he heard the sharp words of the Countess and looked at the stricken figure of Augustus, it occurred to him as at least strange that the very man, on the surrender of whom depended the peace, should be so completely in the Elector’s power—so that no warnings by his friends, no protection from the Czar, his master, could save him from being delivered to Sweden.
“If you had not had Patkul at Sonnenstein,” said Aurora, “you could not have surrendered him to Karl, and there would have been no pacifying this victor. You are fortunate.”
Goaded, Augustus turned on her with a flash of impotent anger.
“You talk so much of General Patkul, Madame—you do not seem to attach any importance to the fact that I shall have to surrender Poland!”
It was M. Pfingsten who replied—with great earnestness.
“Sire, your Majesty, by the fortunes of war, may easily regain the crown of Poland, but you can never regain what you lose if you surrender General Patkul.”