Part 2 (2/2)
I understand he is a very brilliant and leading member of his Order,--likely to be the next Vicar-General. I know his errand,--the papers concerning his business are there--,” and he waved his hand towards the leather case Sir Roger had just fastened--”Bring them with you!”
Sir Roger obeyed, and the King, stepping forth from the pavilion, walked slowly along the terrace, watching the sparkling sea, the flowering orange-trees lifting their slender tufts of exquisitely scented bloom against the clear blue of the sky, the birds skimming lightly from point to point of foliage, and the white-sailed yachts dipping gracefully as the ocean rose and fell with every wild sweet breath of the scented wind. Pausing a moment, he presently took out a field-gla.s.s and looked through it at one of the finest and fairest of these pleasure-vessels, which, as he surveyed it, suddenly swung round, and began to scud away westward.
”The Prince is on board?” he asked.
”Yes, Sir,” replied De Launay--”His Royal Highness intends sailing as far as The Islands, and remaining there till sunset.”
”Alone, as usual?”
”As usual, Sir, alone, save for his captain and crew.”
The King walked on in silence for a minute. Then he paused abruptly.
”I do not like it, De Launay!”--he said decisively--”I do not like his abnormal love of solitude. Books are all very well--poetry is in its way excellent,--music, as we are told 'hath charms'--but the boy broods too much, and stays away too much from Court. What woman attracts him?”
Sir Roger's eyes opened wide as the King turned suddenly round upon him with this question.
”Woman, Sir? I know of none. The Prince is but twenty----”
”At twenty,” said the King,--”boys love--the wrong girl. At thirty they marry--the wrong woman. At forty they meet the only true and fitting soul's companion,--and cry for the moon till the end! My son is in the first stage, or I am much mistaken,--he loves--the wrong girl!”
He walked on,--and De Launay followed, with a vague sense of amus.e.m.e.nt and disquietude in his mind. What had come to his Royal master, he wondered? His ordinary manner had changed somewhat,--he spoke with less than the customary formality, and there was an expression of freedom and authority, combined with a touch of defiance in his face, that was altogether new to the observation of the faithful equerry.
Arrived at the palace, and pa.s.sing through one of the long and s.p.a.cious painted corridors, lit by richly coloured mullioned windows from end to end, the King came face to face with a lady-in-waiting carrying a large cl.u.s.ter of Madonna lilies. She drew aside, with a deep reverence, to allow him to pa.s.s; but he stopped a moment, looking at the great gorgeous white flowers faint with fragrance, and at the slight retiring figure of the woman who held them.
”Are these for the chapel, Madame?” he asked.
”No, Sir! For the Queen.”
'For the Queen!' A quick sigh escaped him. He still stood, caught by a sudden abstraction, looking at the dazzling whiteness of the snowy blooms, and thinking how fittingly they would companion his beautiful, cold, pure Queen Consort, who had never from her marriage day uttered a word of love to him, or given him a glance of tenderness. Their rich odours crept into his warm blood, and the bitter old sense of unfulfilled longing, longing for affection, for comprehension, for all that he had not possessed in his otherwise brilliant life, vexed and sickened him. He turned away abruptly, and the lady-in-waiting, having curtsied once more profoundly, pa.s.sed on with her glistening sheaf of bloom and disappeared vision-like in a gleam of azure light falling through one of the further and higher cas.e.m.e.nts. The King watched her disappear, the meditative line of sadness still puckering his brow, then, followed by his equerry, he entered a small private audience chamber, where Sir Roger de Launay notified an attendant gentleman usher that his Majesty was ready to receive Monsignor Del Fortis.
During the brief interval occupied in waiting for his visitor's approach, the King selected certain papers from those which Sir Roger had brought from the garden pavilion and placed them in order on the table.
”For the past six months,” he said ”I have had this Jesuit's name before me, and have been in twenty minds a month about granting or refusing what his Society demands. The matter has been discussed in the Press, too, with the usual pros and cons of hesitation, but it is the People I am thinking of, the People! and I am just now in the humour to satisfy a Nation rather than a Church!”
De Launay said nothing. His opinion was not asked.
”It is a case in which the temporal overbalances the spiritual,”
continued the King--”Which plainly proves that the spiritual must be lacking in some essential point somewhere. For if the spiritual were always truly of G.o.d, then would it always be the strongest. The question which brings Monsignor Del Fortis here as special emissary of the Vicar-General of the Society of Jesus, is simply this: Whether or no a certain site in a particularly fertile tract of land belonging chiefly to the Crown, shall be granted to the Jesuits for the purpose of building thereon a church and monastery with schools attached. It seems a reasonable request, set forth with an apparently religious intention.
Yet more than forty pet.i.tions have been sent in to me from the inhabitants of the towns and villages adjacent to the lands, imploring me to refuse the concession. By my faith, they plead as eloquently as though asking deliverance from the plague! It is a curious dilemma. If I grant the people's request I anger the priests; if I satisfy the priests I anger the people.”
”You mentioned a discussion in the Press, Sir--” hinted Sir Roger.
”Oh, the Press is like a weatherc.o.c.k--it turns whichever way the wind of speculation blows. One day it is 'for,' another 'against.' In this particular case it is diplomatically indifferent, except in one or two cases where papal money has found its way into the newspaper offices.”
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