CHAPTER XXXI.
A HEADACHE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
The governor plenipotentiary was suffering with a splitting headache, which at times made him inclined to believe that all the bullets he had sent through his victims' heads were holding a rendezvous in his own. On such occasions it was dangerous to approach the great man. In the frenzy of his pain he was wont to rage even against those he loved best, and to find fault with all who were under his authority, as if determined to make others feel some small fraction of the discomfort he was forced to endure. To ask a favour of him in such moments, or even to demand simple justice, was worse than useless. Did he find favour with his torturer, he wanted to know, or was there any justice in his undeserved suffering?
This was the sort of man that was set as judge over a vanquished people.
In the midst of one of these attacks the governor sat alone one evening in his room when his servant opened the door. "Some one here to speak with your Excellency," he announced.
"Send him away."
"But it is a lady."
"The devil take all these hysterical women! I don't want any woebegone faces around me now. I can't see the lady."
Many women, most of them in mourning, crossed his threshold in those days.
"It is the Baroness Alfonsine Plankenhorst who asks to see you," the servant ventured to add.