“Without spies, informers, interpreters, and agents of all grades, an Invading Army is blindfold and helpless. Thus, the assistance of pachas, boyards, consuls, attachés, secretaries, postmasters, innkeepers, will be ours, having been secured on liberal terms. Every Commissariat-clerk, commercial traveler and correspondent who could be bought to serve my purpose has found in me a ready purchaser. And every Turk or Tartar has made oath upon the beard of the Prophet—every Jew is sworn upon the Ark of the Tabernacle—every Bulgarian is pledged upon the Blessed Sacrament—not to supply the English with wood for gabions or shelters, with provisions, grain, fodder, horses, wagons or carts. Wherefore, if they need these things, they must draw supplies from Great Britain, or from Italy. And, failing these sources——”
The speaker shrugged again, and said with a sardonic affectation of humility:
“For the unworthy successor of my glorious uncle, it seems to me that I have hit upon a very good idea!”
He smiled upon them, saying it, and between that swelling sense of achievement, and his inward laughter at having thus duped and distanced those who thought they swayed and guided him, he seemed to increase in stature and gain in dignity. Even de Morny was momentarily bankrupt of a gibe to throw at him. De Fleury could only gape and goggle at him. St. Arnaud said, in a voice broken by surprise and admiration:
“My master—my Emperor, you are greater than Napoleon the Great!”
Persigny went over and knelt down upon the carpet before him. He bent over and kissed one of the little diamond-buckled pumps fervently, as a Dervish might have kissed the Holy Stone of Mecca. He said, in a voice that shook and wobbled:
“I say that you are neither my master or my Emperor. From this moment you are my god!”
“Absurd!” said Sire my Friend. But he smiled as Nero might have smiled upon Tigellinus, and said, still smiling:
“Wait—wait! I have not told everything! You have yet to look at the second chart!”
He laid it down upon the first, which it exactly resembled, save that the numbered rounds and squares indicating the depots were missing, and that along the conjectural route of the Army of Invasion certain areas were staked off with green or blue or vermilion dots, and labeled “Malarious,” or “Insalubrious,” or “Salubrious,” as the case might be, and others “Pestilential,” in a tremulous, uncertain handwriting that told its story to at least one pair of eyes there. Looking up with a vexatious expression of cynical intelligence on his well-bred, rakish countenance, said de Morny: