"Sapristi!" commented the Roumanian. "A beautiful imbroglio! And—as I have no luggage—beyond a traveling valise," he added with a gentle snigger, "your trunks, bonnet-boxes, imperials, traveling-bags, and so forth—must become the prey of the management. It grieves me to the soul that you should suffer this denudation at the hands of these coarse Germans. But what I cannot prevent, I can but deplore!"
"And if," she said in a vibrating voice of anger, "these coarse Germans should lay hands upon your person, for the purpose of ascertaining for themselves the state of your purse! ... What then?"
"What then?" Straz's cynical composure broke up. "Istenem!—Istenem! Nothing could be more dangerous! My letter of instructions from M. de Gramont, annotated in the Emperor's own hand! The official letter, of introduction from the Minister to Prince Antony—the copies of those three telegrams His Highness sent from Sigmaringen—the order on the Privy Purse—all concealed in a silk belt I am in the habit of wearing—these Prussians will find the papers should they search me to the skin. Then I, with my wife——" He italicized the sentences.
"One in sorrow as in joy, I think you said!" interpolated Madame, bitterly.
"We should be arrested—dragged before official interrogators!—imprisoned!—Oh! do not imagine I am laying on the colors too thickly. Is it incredible that M. de Bismarck might welcome an opportunity—pending the result of this war—to turn the key on us?"
"Why on us?" demanded Adelaide. "Do I wear a silken belt containing incriminating letters? Orders on the Secret Funds ... copies of Hohenzollern telegrams?"
Straz looked at her, and his black stare hardened suspiciously. The swift Oriental blood that pigmented his eyes and skin, and fed the luxuriant growth of hair upon him, leaped in the dark to the conclusion that he had been betrayed. He said, smiling, and speaking with a lisp, a trick of his that boded ill, had she but known it:
"Not to my knowledge.... I have never searched while you were sleeping,—or spiced the draught that made the sleep profound."
"My thanks," she said, keeping her countenance magnificently, "for the glass of mulled Burgundy I gave you when you returned from the Schloss. You were suffering from chill—you shivered and burned alternately.... Like a woman, I did what I could—and you are ungrateful, like all other men."
"My soul," simpered Straz, "I adore you madly. But like every other man, I am a son of Adam, and you are a daughter of Madame Eve. And a little snake hisses in my ear whenever I am not looking at you: 'She would be truer to her sex if she were false!'"