Said Straz, pushing back his chair, getting up and blowing his nose loudly:
"Then the sooner we exchange these avenues of dusty lime-trees, choked with crowds of bellowing Teutons, for the boulevards of Paris, the better. We shall, of course, be forced to return by a détour via Brussels—the Rhine Valley railways being reserved for the transport of troops. Passports can be had on application to the usual authorities. The only insuperable obstacle to our departure is—the bill!"
Madame came back to consciousness of sordid things as the Roumanian ostentatiously turned out his trouser-pockets.
"You are at an impasse for lack of funds?" she asked him.
"Upon my life, my soul!" Straz smilingly assured her, "I am at present without a radish! A sum of two thalers negotiable currency constitutes my stock of cash. Although, as I have told you, I carry secreted on my person an order for"—he tapped his bosom—"ten thousand francs payable from the Secret Funds of the Imperial Government. This I tried to cash before I left Paris——" He measured off an infinitesimal quantity of finger-nail and displayed it to her. "Do you think I got a franc from anyone? No!—you know better! The Emperor's methods are understood too well. And thus it is that the disinclination of M. de Bismarck to finance our plan for the union of two young and ingenuous lovers has hit me in the midriff. A thousand curses on his niggardliness!"
As though prompted by some recollection of Adelaide's previous display of tragic passion, he scowled portentously, spat at the fireplace, then began to strut about, vaporing and waving his ringed, hairy-backed hands.
"Penniless.... What damnable absurdity! The Emissary of a Potentate! The Bearer of the Bowstring—with Life or Death in my hand. For lack of cash I travel second-class to that accursed South German Principality—I stoop to put up at a third-rate inn. My Mission performed, I yield to the promptings of my ardent nature. In the company of her who reigns sultana of my soul,—who for my sake has shared the discomforts of that abominable caravanserai—I return to the barbarous capital of the Hohenzollerns—I risk my person in the streets of Berlin. Had my brain been cooler—had your image glowed less seductively before my mental vision"—he rolled his black eyes amorously and laid a thick ringed hand upon his breast—"it may be that I should not have accompanied you,—that I might have hurried back express to Paris—presented myself to my Imperial master—and reaped the golden prize!"
"Say rather," responded Madame, in a tone not untinged with acrimony, "that as the result of your unsuccessful endeavor to enlist the interest of M. de Bismarck in that charming plan to unite two ingenuous young people—you are placed in a position that is not without unpleasant possibilities. My beaux yeux are less to blame than your ambition 'to kill,' as the English say, 'two birds with one stone!' You——"
"Say 'we,' not 'you,' my divine Adelaide," corrected Straz, with tender insistence, "for if not in actuality husband and wife, we are thus inscribed upon the bureau-register. 'One in sorrow, one in joy,' to quote a poet of my nation. I wish you were acquainted with the verses of Stepan Mieciwycz. They would afford you exquisite delight."
"Possibly," said Madame, with an ominous hardening of the facial muscles, and a whiteness about the lips. "What does not afford me delight is that these brigands downstairs have threatened to seize our luggage if their claim is not satisfied within an hour."