Zarka could be very pleasantly insinuating when it suited him to assume that manner. He laid his hand familiarly on the priest’s shoulder.
“Seriously, my good friend,” he continued, “are you not wasted in these wilds? Have I any right to try and keep you when I know you to be fitted for a larger sphere? Are we not both selfish, you because you are comfortable, I because I am loath to part with my only pleasant and cultivated neighbour.”
“If you, Herr Graf, should be good enough to obtain preferment for me,” Hornthal responded, with a greedy smile and twinkle, “I should not hesitate to mortify the present selfishness both of the lord of Rozsnyo and the priest of Lilienthal.”
Zarka laughed appreciatively. “Hardly an equal penance, my good father,” he said, “but that shall not deter me from serving a friend. Seriously, I have greater influence in high quarters than you perhaps suspect, and it is entirely at your service in consideration of many a dull evening you have brightened for me.”
Whether or not Hornthal believed his patron capable of assisting his advancement, there was clearly no harm in allowing him to try. “You are too good and gracious, Count, towards my poor deserts,” he said with a courtier-like demeanour. “Apropos of your most kind promises, I may mention that I hear Canon Lakner of Kulhausen has had a second stroke.”
“You would naturally step into his shoes if you cared for them,” Zarka replied, his casual tone suggesting that it was a matter of course. “They are doubtless a serviceable pair, if a little homely. But I was thinking of something smarter for you than that.”
Hornthal’s eyes glistened. “You are too good, Count. May I be worthy of your gracious opinion.” Then as, perhaps, doubting his own qualifications for still higher preferment or his patron’s ability to obtain it for him, he added: “All the same, Kuhlhausen is a snug, pleasant benefice.”
“Bah, man!” Zarka exclaimed, with an affectation of impatience; “you have no ambition. Abilities and social gifts like yours would be thrown away in a wretched commercial little place like Kulhausen. Pearls before swine, my dear Hornthal. Were I in your position with an influential friend at my elbow, I would never rest till I had exchanged that”—he tapped significantly the priest’s well-worn oak stick with his riding whip—“your parish cudgel for a pastoral staff. Or my patronage is worth nothing. Good men must be picked up when they are found, and not left to rust. You know the world; you have travelled and seen men and cities. You are simply mislaid among these superstitious boors.”
Doubtless the sanguine tone he assumed was infectious, for the priest exclaimed with an expression of genuine delight: “Count, you take my breath away!”
Zarka had produced the effect he had aimed at, and could dismiss the subject for the time with an appreciatory nod. “Come and dine to-night,” he said, as he prepared to mount his horse. “I am quite alone, and we can discuss over a bottle of Imperial Tokay how far my intention of serving you fits in with your ambition. Only, do not let the idea of preferment take away your appetite as well as your breath,” he added, with a half sneer which his smile did not disguise. “You Church dignitaries, my good father, must show us you know how to live, or how shall we believe you when you take upon yourselves to teach us how to die? At seven then, to-night.”