"It was. He took out his watch, and told me: 'I can hear you for three minutes longer! Has the Prince Imperial—with the disinterested assistance of those about him, altered that possibility into a certainty?' I explained to him then that nothing further had come of the rencontre,—though measures had been taken to preserve Monseigneur's interest from dying for lack of excitement, bouquets of violets being sent to him at regular intervals, with a slip of paper attached to the stems, upon which had been written in an unformed, girlish hand—'From one who prays for the Hope of France!'
"And then?..."
"Then M. de Bismarck spoke, keeping his thumb all the time on the watch-dial: 'So! The girl plays the part of an ingenue for the present! Will she keep these airs of candor and innocence when she has got her claws on that poor stripling? And do you suggest that the Prussian Secret Service should supply her with funds for the carrying out of her design, whatever it may be? Are we to lay our heads together, like the Brethren in the libretto of Mehul's opera "Joseph," and sing in chorus: This is the heir. Come, let us kill him!'"
"Even Beelzebub," said Straz, "can quote from Scripture when it suits him. I suppose you were annoyed, and showed it—which was an error of judgment on your part!"
"I rose up," said she, and suited the action to the word, "with indignation, assuring M. de Bismarck that his suspicions were unjust. That the young girl mentioned was of ancient family and irreproachable morals, convent-bred and highly educated. And that I, myself, being her nearest living relative of her own sex, was able to vouch for the fact. I added that the interest displayed in her by Monseigneur the Prince—who until that moment had never been known to look at a woman—led me to conceive that by aid of a few deft hints, a little discreet encouragement—another distant glimpse—a meeting accidentally brought about in some retired spot favorable to the revival of first impressions, an influence might be brought to bear upon the Imperial boy which might develop his mind and mold his character. Somehow in my agitation the name of Juliette de Bayard escaped me. 'De Bayard,' exclaimed M. de Bismarck. 'So! You are her mother!' Great Heaven!—the intolerable tone in which he uttered the words! Only the most abandoned of her sex could have supported the insulting irony of the look accompanying them. Choking, I took my leave.... He accompanied me to the staircase, with a false appearance of courtesy. As I turned to descend, he hurled the last insult of all! Nicolas, do not ask me to repeat the sentences!—and yet, I must have them written in another memory.... He twitted me with my nationality before his secretary and servants. He likened me to a mythological character with an unpronounceable name.... He said only a modern mother would be infamous enough to devote her only daughter to Venus Something-Or-Other.... Next to my husband, I detest that man!"
Straz had been pulling at his moist red underlip as she raved out her story in a frenzy of rage and resentment, intensified by the necessity of speaking in a lowered tone. Now he dragged the feature out as though it had been made of india-rubber, let it snap back, and said, shrugging his bull's shoulders and getting up:
"You are a woman and he is—Bismarck! He does not for the moment want the wares you desire to sell him. It is unlike him—the diplomat who could encourage M. Benedetti to lay before him the Emperor's projet de traité in writing—and lock it away for use at a future opportunity—not to be willing to secure an advantage—placed before him with clearness and skill—in the newly awakened fancy of a schoolboy who, if he lives, will be an Emperor—for a charming and innocent young girl!" He pronounced these words as though they were smeared with something sweet and luscious, licking his lips gently, and rolling his dead black eyes in sensual enjoyment. "As regards your husband, he has certainly not replied to the letter of your solicitors, but why do you hate the unlucky man?"
"Do you ask?" Adelaide demanded, with glittering eyes and heaving bosom. "Did he not refuse to divorce me? Should I not have legally borne the title of Baroness von Valverden if his sentimental prejudices had not blocked the way?"
Straz pulled his waved beard, and said, delicately separating a strand of it from the rest, and keeping it between his thick white fingers:
"Sentimental, why sentimental? Do you not even give him credit for sufficient spirit to resent being made ridiculous? The desire to be revenged—you will not even allow him that?"