“Keep a brave heart and that will carry you through. The Russian Minister, of course, will know you are an impostor.”
“The deuce he will!”
“You must bluff him.”
“And four weeks ago I received the freedom of an English town from a successful grocer! Hartzel, my blood races! Here are romance, adventure! I am your debtor for life!”
“That debt may be liquidated at any moment,” he said grimly. For a minute his old face softened, and then it was as hard as ever. I knew that some touch of remorse had stabbed him. The game was nothing to me; he was staking my life for a cause in which I had no concern. Then came the thought of his country. No life mattered then.
That night we lay in a small town, and I was shown secretly to a few of the town’s chief men; and the next night we slept in the General’s house at Tsalburg. The rumor of my coming circulated furiously. At eleven o’clock, when I was preparing to rest, tired with my long journey, a mob assembled in the square outside and sang the national anthem for an hour or so. Hartzel harangued them from the balcony. I was fatigued. I could not be disturbed, but on the morrow their King would meet them. That was the purport of his speech. The national anthem broke out again, and presently, with the poetical inspiration of the nation, they sang a legendary serenade.
Hartzel came to my room and sat on the edge of my bed. I was nearly dead with fatigue, but he was inexorable.
“Tomorrow will see the crucial test of our scheme, so you must listen. There are two factions in Ertaria. In the late King’s reign I kept the Tertourgkis in abeyance.”
“The Tertourgkis!” I cried, memory stirring me. “They had some feud with the reigning family and—and there was a daughter.”
“You remember?” he said. “Prince Tertourgki is an old man. His wealth and his lands go to this daughter, his only child. She is very beautiful.”