a mirror to the same. She'll keep her money and nurse
her babe, and not be trying risky adventures to turn him into a reigning
prince. Only this: you'll have to persuade her the thing is impossible.
She'll not take it from any of us. She looks on you as Wisdom in the
uniform of a great commander, and if you say a thing can be done it 's
done.'

'The reverse too, I hope,' said Mr. Mattock, nodding and passing on his
way.

'That I am not so sure of,' Con remarked to himself. 'There's a change
in a man through a change in his position! Six months or so back, Phil,
that man came from Vienna, the devoted slave of the Princess Nikolas.
He'd been there on his father's business about one of the Danube
railways, and he was ready to fill the place of the prince at the head
of his phantom body of horse and foot and elsewhere. We talked of his
selling her estates for the purchase of arms and the enemy--as many
as she had money for. We discussed it as a matter of business. She
had bewitched him: and would again, I don't doubt, if she were here to
repeat the dose. But in the interim his father dies, he inherits; and
he enters Parliament, and now, mind you, the man who solemnly calculated
her chances and speculates on the transmission of rifled arms of the
best manufacture and latest invention by his yacht and with his loads
of rails, under the noses of the authorities, like a master rebel, and a
chivalrous gentleman to boot, pooh poohs the whole affair. You saw him.
Grave as an owl, the dead contrary of his former self!'

'I thought I heard you approve him,' said Philip.

'And I do. But the poor girl has ordered her estates to be sold to
cast the die, and I 'm taking the view of her disappointment, for she
believes he can do anything; and if I know the witch, her sole comfort
lying in the straw is the prospect of a bloody venture for a throne.
The truth is, to my thinking, it's the only thing she has to help her to
stomach her husband.'

'But it's rank idiocy to suppose she can smuggle cannon!' cried Philip.

'But that man Mattock's not an idiot and he thought she could. And it 's
proof he was under a spell. She can work one.'

'The country hasn't a port.'

'Round the Euxine and up the Danube, with the British flag at the stern.
I could rather enjoy the adventure. And her prince is called for. He's
promised a good reception when he drops down the river, they say. A bit
of a scrimmage on the landing-pier may be, and the first