the cold,
and likely to stay there, aren't they, Caesar? Oh, you're very wise. You
take what I give you; nobody need know of that. But you give nothing,
because that would make talk and gossip. The Prince has taught you well.
Yes, you're very prudent." She paused, and stood looking at me with a
contemptuous smile on her lips; then she broke into a pitying little
laugh. "Poor boy!" said she. "It's a shame to scold you. You can't help
it."

It is easy enough now to say that all this was cunningly thought of and
cunningly phrased. Yet it was not all cunning; or rather it was the
primitive, unmeditated cunning that nature gives to us, the instinctive
weapon to which the woman flew in her need, a cunning of heart, not of
brain. However inspired, however shaped, it did its work.

"What do you ask?" said I. In my agitation I was brief and blunt.

"Ask? Must I ask? Well, I ask that you should show somehow, how you
will, that you trust us, that we are not outcasts, riff-raff, as
Princess Heinrich calls us, lepers. Do it how you like, choose anybody
you like from among us--I don't ask for any special person. Show that
some one of us has your confidence. Why shouldn't you? The King should
be above prejudice, and we're honest, some of us."

I tried to speak lightly, and smiled at her.

"You are all I love in the world, some of you," I said.

She sat down again in the little chair, and turned her face upward
toward me.

"Then do it, Caesar," she said very softly.

It had been announced a few days before that our ambassador at Paris had
asked to be relieved of his post; there was already talk about his
successor. Remembering this, I said, more in jest than seriousness:

"The Paris Embassy? Would that satisfy you?"

Her face became suddenly radiant, merry, and triumphant; she clapped her
hands, and then held them clasped toward me.

"You suggested it yourself!" she cried.

"In joke!"

"Joke? I won't be joked with. I choose that you should be serious. You
said the Paris Embassy! Are you afraid it'll make Hammerfeldt too angry?
Fancy the Princess and your sister! How I shall love to see them!" She
dropped her voice as she added, "Do it for me, Caesar."

"Who should have it?"

"I don't care. Anybody, so long as he's one of us. Choose somebody
good, and then you can defy them all."

She saw the seriousness that had now fallen on me; what I had idly
suggested, and she caught up with so fervent a welcome, was no small