“I’ll just finish my cigar and follow you,” I said. The Emperadore was too good to throw away for the sake of hurrying back to an entertainment of which, to tell the truth, the petty splendour rather bored me.
Nevertheless, we all turned back together. Suddenly Szalay halted, and pointed into the wood. “What is that?”
We all looked. A light was glimmering from the depth of the blackness; a light suggested rather than seen.
“That is Duke Johann’s old chapel there, now used as a summer-house,” Von Lindheim said.
“Yes; but what can any one be doing there at this time of night.”
“We ought to investigate,” the third man, D’Urban, said with official zeal.
“Come, then. We can get round this way again to the terrace, and perhaps——”
They had plunged into the wood, making for the light. I followed them a step or two, then stopped and regained the path, not seeing how the question of the irregular illumination could interest me. Enjoying my cigar I strolled on. The night was pleasant enough. A slight warm breeze drove the clouds slowly across a gibbous moon, giving a pretty play of light and shade. So I sauntered on in a frame of mind attuned to my present surroundings. I had become so far acclimatized as to take an interest in the Court intrigues which flourished in the air of that Chancellor-ruled kingdom. I had an idea of seeking a temporary commission in the State cavalry, that dazzling regiment with its picture-book cattle and its theatrical accoutrements. I was only awaiting to see whether there was any grit inside all that fur and brass and steel and bullion, not caring to ear-mark myself with a regiment of costumiers’ dummies. This doubt made me take a peculiar interest in that magnificent spectacular warrior, the Rittmeister von Orsova. Granted he was a fool, he might be a plucky fool. That the pretty Princess Casilde (and she was lovely) was in love with him, or something near it, was common gossip in the inner circle of Court officialdom. But the despotic Chancellor held other views and plans. Having made himself the foremost man in the State (for the King, with all his parade of authority, was notoriously under his thumb), he now nursed the one idea of the State’s aggrandizement as the only way left of increasing his own power. And it was evident that that aggrandizement could best be attained by allying his master’s house with the richer and more important state of which Prince Theodor was heir-apparent. Hence the projected marriage between that Prince and the Princess Casilde. Such was the state of affairs when I found myself in Buyda.