“Allow me to remind you, Count,” said the Premier severely, “that you have not now his late Majesty to deal with. Wit and humour—even the most brilliant jokes—are wasted upon me.”
“But not in this case, when the jokes are your own?” was the prompt reply. “Surely you can’t imagine that I should venture to joke with you?”
M. Drakovics gave up the attempt at concealment. “I will not deny,” he said slowly, “that my mind has been much exercised of late by certain remarks which fell from Prince Soudaroff when he paid me his farewell visit.”
“Ah, now we are coming to it!” said Cyril to himself. A good deal of comment had been excited in the political world by the fact that the Emperor of Scythia had selected as his representative at the funeral of King Otto Georg a diplomatist of such European celebrity as Prince Soudaroff, and the opinion had been freely expressed that some change of policy was in the air. “Were the Prince’s remarks of a reassuring character?” he asked aloud.
“Very much so, on one condition. Prince Soudaroff emphasised the goodwill by which his master was actuated towards Thracia, and mentioned, casually, that that goodwill might be testified in a substantial form if only an Orthodox prince sat on the Thracian throne.”
“So that’s it, is it? Very pretty, of course; but it can’t be done.”
“That is your opinion, then?”
“Most certainly it is, if you mean to ask me whether the Queen will ever consent to King Michael’s conversion to the Orthodox faith.”
“And yet,” pursued M. Drakovics, “why should it be impossible? A change which would be humiliating or even disgraceful in the case of a grown-up man, such as our late King, or—or your brother, would be quite simple and natural in the case of a child. He knows nothing as yet of religion, and it means merely that he would be brought up in one form of faith instead of another. Popa instead of pastor, that is all.”
“And Bellaviste vaut bien une messe?” said Cyril. “When do you intend to lay your views before the Queen?”