The Duke looked unhappy. "I dare not do it, sir," he said at last, after a pause.
"Dare not do it? When I authorise it? Why not?"
"No, sir. Because if I were impeached by the Commons----"
The King shrugged his shoulders.
"Ah, these safeguards!" he muttered. "These town councils, and provincial councils, and States-General! And now these Commons and Lords! Shall I ever be quit of them? Well, there is but one way then. I must do it. If they impeach me, I go back to Loo; and they may stew in their own juice!"
He rose with that, and moving stiffly to the table at which Lord Portland had been writing when we entered, he sought for and found a pen. Then sitting in the chair which the Groom of the Stole had left vacant, he tore a slip of paper from a folio before him and, writing some lines on it--about six, as far as I could judge--handed the paper to the Duke, who had remained standing at a formal distance.
"Voilà, Monsieur," he said. "Will that suit your lordship?"
The Duke took it respectfully and looked at it. "But, sir, it is in my name!" he cried, aghast. "And bears my signature."
"Eh, bien, why not?" his Majesty answered lightly. "The name is the name of Jacob, but the hand is the hand of Esau. Take it and send it by a trusty messenger. Perhaps the man who came with you, and who--pheugh, my lord! I had forgotten that this person was here! We have spoken too freely."
The oath which the Duke let fall as he turned, and the face of dismay and anger with which he gazed on me, were proof enough that he shared the King's opinion, as he had shared his mistake. For a moment, the two glaring at me with equal disgust and vexation, I thought I should sink into the floor. Then the King beckoned me to come forward, and I obeyed him.