“Take my advice,” he said, “who have so often taken yours, and found it excellent. Do not hurry on a crisis. Wait!—and let me think out some effective, easy method of relieving the tension of affairs.”
His tone was mellifluous as that of a dentist who thinks that the toothache may be eased without extraction—the doubtful molar saved. She thanked him in silvery tones, made her deep reverence, and glided from the apartment where Monseigneur had received her; the private cabinet upon the ground-floor of the Élysée, where the Prince-President saw his intimate associates, interviewed his official spies and agents, and carried out experiments in musketry with the inventor, Major Minié.
You are to understand that he had lunched early that winter day, and was taking his cigar and coffee and Benedictine at a little table by the fireside. He smoked and sipped, with his dainty little feet upon a velvet footstool, and his big head lolling back against the padded velvet back of his easy-chair.
The question of how to dispose of Henriette’s inconvenient lover occupied this hour of leisure. The young man had had a good deal of money, a considerable amount of which had found its way to his own bottomless pockets. He was the only son of a wealthy father, and might be well worth plucking again by-and-by. Even the abandoned claim of the Widinitz Succession might prove a profitable investment—a veritable gold-mine, to one who possessed the art of making stubborn natures malleable. A German Serene Highness who should be devoted to one’s interests would be a useful tool, it occurred to Monseigneur....
He had, to do him justice, an exquisite discrimination in the selection of human instruments suitable for his hand; a knack of getting the best from them by stimulating their jealousies; he displayed an extraordinary cleverness in getting rid of them when blunted.... He never kept them long enough to be worn out.
It was his pride that at first sight he invariably detected in a man the qualities that would best serve him. In this handsome ex-Adjutant of the 999th, for whom Madame de Roux had had such a violent fancy—who had paid through the nose to obtain the transference of her husband to a post in Northern Africa, and who had forked out again for his own appointment as aide-de-camp upon the Staff of the Presidency—Monseigneur had never seen anything out of the way.
True, the man’s career at the Training Institute for Staff Officers had been brilliant. But a reputation for brilliancy is easily gained. As a Chasseur d’Afrique he had served with distinction in the wars of Algeria—when transferred to the Line he had excellently discharged his regimental duties. Of hundreds of other men the same might be said....
The subject of his reflections was on duty that morning.... Monseigneur stretched out the neat, small hand that held his cigar, and touched a little golden chiming-bell. Dunoisse appeared in obedience to the summons, crossed the deep-piled carpet with long, light, noiseless footsteps, and placed, with a respectful hand, clad in the regulation white kid glove, a pile of letters on the little coffee-table, beside the elbow of Monseigneur.
Monseigneur, generally skeptical as regarded things unseen, firmly believed in his guiding genius. That invisible personage, he was subsequently convinced, dictated the question he suddenly put to Dunoisse; an interrogation that broached his own long-cherished purpose, and gave a clue to the deep and dark and secret workings of his strange, cold, snaky mind.
“Monsieur—supposing that France had determined to espouse the interests of the Sultan of Turkey, to the point of becoming his ally in war—waged with Russia in alliance with a certain insular maritime Power, upon the debatable ground of Eastern Europe—how should she proceed so as to insure to her Army the maximum of advantage with the minimum of loss?... Do not answer hastily I beg of you.... Reflect before you reply.”