Part 59 (1/2)
”The girl was certainly beautiful,” he proceeded meditatively; ”And her adopted father,--Rene Ronsard,--was not that his name?--was a quaint old fellow. A republican, too!--fiery as a new Danton! Well! The King's curiosity is apparently satisfied on that score,--but”--here he began to laugh--”I shall never forget your face, Von Glauben, when he caught you on The Islands that day!--never! Like an overgrown boy, discovered with his fingers in a jam-pot!”
”Thank you!” said the Professor imperturbably; ”I can a.s.sure you that the jam was excellent--and that I still remember its flavour!”
Sir Roger laughed again, but with great good-humour,--then he became suddenly serious.
”The King goes out alone very often now?” he said.
”Very often,” a.s.sented the Professor.
”Are we right in allowing him to do so?”
”Allowing him! Who is to forbid him?”
”Is he safe, do you think?”
”Safer, it would seem, my friend, than when laying a foundation-stone, with ourselves and all his suite around him!” responded the Professor.
”Besides, it is too late now to count the possible risks of the adventure he has entered upon. He knows the position, and estimates the cost at its correct value. He has made himself the ruler of his own destiny; we are only his servants. Personally, I have no fear,--save of one fatality.”
”And that?”
”Is what kills many strong men off in their middle-age,” said Von Glauben; ”A disease for which there is no possible cure at that special time of life,--Love! The love of boys is like a taste for green gooseberries,--it soon pa.s.ses, leaving a disordered stomach and a general disrelish for acid fruit ever afterwards;--the love of the man-about-town between the twenties and thirties is the love of self;--but the love of a Man, after the Self-and-Clothes Period has pa.s.sed, is the love of the full-grown human creature clamouring for its mate,--its mate in Soul even more than in Body. There is no gainsaying it--no checking it--no pacifying it; it is a most disastrous business, provocative of all manner of evils,--and to a king who has always been accustomed to have his own way, it means Victory or Death!”
Sir Roger gazed at him perplexedly,--his tone was so solemn and full of earnest meaning.
”You, for example,” continued the Professor dictatorially, fixing his keen piercing eyes full upon him; ”You are a curious subject,--a very curious subject! You live on a Dream; it is a good life--an excellent life! It has the advantage, your Dream, of never becoming a reality,--therefore you will always love,--and while you always love, you will always keep young. Your lot is an exceedingly enviable one, my friend! You need not frown,--I am old enough--and let us hope wise enough--to guess your secret--to admire it from a purely philosophic point of view--and to respect it!”
Sir Roger held his peace.
”But,” continued the Professor, ”His Majesty is not the manner of man who would consent to subsist, like you, on an idle phantasy. If he loves--he must possess; it is the regal way!”
”He will never succeed in the direction _you_ mean!” said Sir Roger emphatically.
”Never!” agreed Von Glauben with a profound shake of his head; ”Strange as it may seem, his case is quite as hopeless as yours!”
The door opened and closed abruptly,--and there followed silence. Von Glauben looked up to find himself alone. He smiled tolerantly.
”Poor Roger!” he murmured; ”He lives the life of a martyr by choice!
Some men do--and like it! They need not do it;--there is not the least necessity in the world for their deliberately sticking a knife into their hearts and walking about with it in a kind of idiot rapture. It must hurt;--but they seem to enjoy it! Just as some women become nuns, and flagellate themselves,--and then when they are writhing from their own self-inflicted stripes, they dream they are the 'brides of Christ,'
entirely forgetting the extremely irreligious fact that to have so many 'brides' the good Christ Himself might possibly be troubled, and would surely occupy an inconvenient position, even in Heaven! Each man,--each woman,--makes for himself or herself a little groove or pet sorrow, in which to trot round and round and bemoan life; the secret of the whole bemoaning being that he or she cannot have precisely the thing he or she wants. That is all! Such a trifle! Church, State, Prayer and Power--it can all be summed up in one line--'I have not the thing I want--give it to me!'”
He resumed his writing, and did not interrupt it again till it was time to join the Royal party at the Opera.
That evening was one destined to be long remembered in the annals of the kingdom. The beautiful Opera-house, a marvel of art and architecture, was brilliantly full; all the fairest women and most distinguished men occupying the boxes and stalls, while round and round, in a seemingly never-ending galaxy of faces, and crowded in the tiers of balconies above, a mixed audience had gathered, made up of various sections of the populace which filled the s.p.a.ce well up to the furthest galleries.
The attraction that had drawn so large an audience together was not contained in the magnetic personality of either the King or Queen, for those exalted individuals had only announced their intention of being present just two hours before the curtain rose. Moreover, when their Majesties entered the Royal box, accompanied by their two younger sons, Rupert and Cyprian, and attended by their personal suite, their appearance created very little sensation. The fact that it was the first time the King had showed himself openly in public since his excommunication from the Church, caused perhaps a couple of hundred persons to raise their eyes inquisitively towards him in a kind of half-morbid, half-languid curiosity, but in these days the sentiment of Self is so strong, that it is only a minority of more thoughtful individuals that ever trouble themselves seriously to consider the annoyances or griefs which their fellow-mortals have to endure, often alone and undefended.
The interest of the public on this particular occasion was centred in the new Opera, which had only been given three times before, and in which the little dancer, Pequita, played the part of a child-heroine.
The _libretto_ was the work of Paul Zouche, and the music by one of the greatest violinists in the world, Louis Valdor. The plot was slight enough;--yet, described in exquisite verse, and scattered throughout with the daintiest songs and dances, it merited a considerably higher place in musical records than such works as Meyerbeer's ”Dinorah,” or Verdi's ”Rigoletto.” The thread on which the pearls of poesy and harmony were strung, was the story of a wandering fiddler, who, accompanied by his only child (the part played by Pequita), travels from city to city earning a scant livelihood by his own playing and his daughter's dancing. Chance or fate leads them to throw in their fortunes with a band of enthusiastic adventurers, who, headed by a young hare-brained patriot, elected as their leader, have determined to storm the Vatican, and demand the person of the Pope, that they may convey him to America, there to convene an a.s.semblage of all true Christians (or 'New Christians'), and found a new and more Christ-like Church. Their expedition fails,--as naturally so wild a scheme would be bound to do,--but though they cannot succeed in capturing the Pope, they secure a large following of the Italian populace, who join with them in singing ”The Song of Freedom,” which, with Paul Zouche's words, and Valdor's music was the great _chef d'oevre_ of the Opera, rousing the listeners to a pitch of something like frenzy. In this,--the last great scene,--Pequita, dancing the 'Dagger Dance,' is supposed to infect the people with that fervour which moves them to sing ”The Freedom Chorus,”
and the curtain comes down upon a brilliant stage, crowded with enthusiasts and patriots, ready to fight and die for the glory of their country. A love-interest is given to the piece by the pa.s.sion of the wandering fiddler-hero for a girl whose wealth places her above his reach; and who in the end sacrifices all worldly advantage that she may share his uncertain fortunes for love's sake only.