“Well, Goldberg, so our friend Mortimer is to marry Queen Ernestine?” said the Emperor, returning to the room after being summoned away by a message from the Empress.
“So I have heard, sir.”
“Well, no one is likely to offer any real objection. The Emperor Sigismund will dislike the idea, no doubt, but he has no means of coercing the Queen, and her son’s past treatment of her debars him from putting in a claim to interfere. But it is a preposterous affair, for Mortimer is little better than a beggar. I thought, Goldberg, that you financiers always made a point of paying your instruments well, that they might do you credit?”
“I have sometimes thought, sir, that your Majesty, and I, and the Syndicate I represent, and various other important people, are only the instruments—the pawns, if you will—of this little Englishman, who plays because it interests him to move the pieces.”
The Emperor smiled. “We shall have to do something for him, I suppose,” he said. “Is there anything that strikes you as particularly suitable?”
“Ah, sir, your Majesty knows that there is one post for which Count Mortimer is supremely fitted. His appointment to it would be welcomed with acclamation by the Jews all over the world.”
“You are sure of that? Well, I will set on foot negotiations. I am uneasy—in common with the whole Catholic world—about those fortified convents which Scythia has for years been so busy erecting on every point of vantage round Jerusalem. At the present moment I think we should be able to make her see reason; but when this famine is over——! But the Jews must be unanimous, Chevalier. That is indispensable.”
“I cannot conceive that any opposition could arise, sir.”
“Tell me, Goldberg, is Mortimer marrying the Queen in order to become Prince of Palestine, or seeking to become Prince of Palestine that he may marry the Queen?”
“I cannot say, sir. I can only surmise that it will be the proudest moment of his life when he can lay his coronet at her Majesty’s feet.”