V.
But the fine young lord had only answered the truth. Whether it was from that sudden struggle of pride, and his hard-hearted resolution not to remember the Counsellor who had befriended him formerly or whether the labor of many years had caused it, from that evening, from that moment, the memory of the Emperor's great Minister began to decay. The ambitious designs of the shepherd boy of twenty years ago came back to him; but of all that had befallen him since, John Durer remembered nothing. The hour of requital was begun!
VI.
Thanks to his good courser, Baron Durer, the Minister, got home in safety to his château. The first person that he met was the baroness. He turned abruptly away from her.
"Whither are you hurrying so fast, my dear baron?" said she, seeing her husband running away from her, which was not his custom, for he was fond of his wife.
"Baron!" was his reply; "to what baron were you calling? I am no baron, madame—though one day, perhaps, I may be. Let us hope I may."
The tone in which he spoke these words terrified the baroness. Her husband immediately afterward left the château, and began running as fast as his legs could carry him, neither stopping nor slackening his pace. His head was bent down, like the head of a miser who is seeking about everywhere for the treasure which some one has stolen from him. From that day forward his face assumed a gloomy expression, his color became sallow, his eye haggard; and he began bitterly to complain that heaven had thought fit to send him on earth in a shepherd's form and a shepherd's dress.
Some days later, a messenger from the Emperor's court arrived at the château: "May it please my lord Minister," he began—
"I am no Minister," replied Durer, impatiently; "but have patience, sir, have patience; I may be Minister one day." Then he began to walk up and down hastily in the gallery of the château, perpetually saying, "I might have been a Minister by this time, sir, if your great ones did not leave men of strong intellect, and ability, and purpose, in the jaws of a misery which eats away the very brain as rust eats away the steel. Why—why, I ask, debar these men from high offices—these men who have nothing—merely out of a prejudice, which is as fatal to the individual as it is deadly to the state?" Then turning sharply on the Emperor's emissary, "Go, and tell your master, sir," said he, "that yesterday I was—I was—I was"—pressing his hand, as he spoke, above his forehead, as though he was trying to find a coronet which had belonged to it. Then rushing away distractedly—"Minister!" cried he, "I am—I was—No, no—I was not—but I soon will be!—Leave me, sir! leave me! leave me!"
Another day, his wretched family, who watched him with terror, overheard him talking to his gardener: "What a magnificent piece of work you are laying out, my good boy," said Durer; "a garden admirably designed, if there ever was such a thing." Then casting a disturbed glance toward the château, "'Tis a grand place, this," said he; "rich and elegant, and capitally situated—to whom does it belong, Joseph?"