I spoke like a bad, spiteful boy, conscious of a power to wound to the quick and thoroughly enjoying my triumph.
Keller Bey did not answer directly to my railings. He felt instinctively that he could not meet me along these lines.
"How did you come here?" he demanded abruptly, "and why in the coat of a Garde Nationale?"
"Because," I said, looking at him with my bandaged head lifted on my hand, "I do not forget old kindnesses. Nor yet new ones—though my house had not been set in order and largely furnished by the kindness of the Deventers. I crossed the river in a boat and was going to find them—to help them if I could, if necessary to fight and die with them, if your people should besiege them as they have done before."
Keller Bey threw out his arms suddenly with the gesture of a tortured man who seeks something to grip in his agony.
"I had not thought youth so cruel," he moaned. "Do you not understand that I am here to prevent all that? I stand between the hotheads and Dennis Deventer. His wife and family are as safe here as mine in your father's garden, of which you are so good as repeatedly to remind me!"
I am afraid that my expression expressed unbelief.
"You must pardon me," I said suavely and still provocatively, "but I have been among the chimneys of the Château Schneider when the mitrailleuses were talking. You intend to rule justly and love mercy, but what of the men about you? I have seen them streaming across the open court wrecking and destroying."
"Exactly," said Keller Bey, with suddenly recovered dignity, "but then I was not at the direction of affairs. If any man now disobeys he shall be made to feel the vengeance of the Internationale! We shall sow fear among them as corn is sown on a windy day."
At this moment Keller was summoned outside, and I could hear his voice dominating and allaying a quarrel between functionaries, as I lay back listening and determined to find out what he intended to do with myself as soon as he came back. But one thing and another was referred to him for judgment, and it was the better part of an hour before he came in holding a sheaf of telegrams in his hand. A secretary accompanied him, and I had perforce to put off my demand.