, had suggested itself vaguely to more than one of
us in Strelsau. We did not indeed coolly face and plan it, as the little
servant had, nor seize on it at once with an eagerness to be convinced
of its necessity, like the Constable of Zenda; but it was there in my
mind, sometimes figuring as a dread, sometimes as a hope, now seeming
the one thing to be avoided, again the only resource against a more
disastrous issue. I knew that it was in Bernenstein's thoughts no less
than in my own; for neither of us had been able to form any reasonable
scheme by which the living king, whom half Strelsau now knew to be in
the city, could be spirited away, and the dead king set in his place.
The change could take place, as it seemed, only in one way and at one
cost: the truth, or the better part of it, must be told, and every
tongue set wagging with gossip and guesses concerning Rudolf Rassendyll
and his relations with the queen. Who that knows what men and women are
would not have shrunk from that alternative? To adopt it was to expose
the queen to all or nearly all the peril she had run by the loss of
the letter. We indeed assumed, influenced by Rudolf's unhesitating
self-confidence, that the letter would be won back, and the mouth of
Rupert of Hentzau shut; but enough would remain to furnish material
for eager talk and for conjectures unrestrained by respect or charity.
Therefore, alive as we were to its difficulties and its unending risks,
we yet conceived of the thing as possible, had it in our hearts, and
hinted it to one another--my wife to me, I to Bernenstein, and he
to me--in quick glances and half uttered sentences that declared its
presence while shunning the open confession of it. For the queen herself
I cannot speak. Her thoughts, as I judged them, were bounded by the
longing to see Mr. Rassendyll again, and dwelt on the visit that he
promised as the horizon of hope. To Rudolf we had dared to disclose
nothing of the part our imaginations set him to play: if he were to
accept it, the acceptance would be of his own act, because the fate that
old Sapt talked of drove him, and on no persuasion of ours. As he
had said, he left the rest, and had centered all his efforts on the
immediate task which fell to his hand to perform, the task that was
to be accomplished at the dingy old house in the Konigstrasse. We were
indeed awake to the fact that even Rupert's death would not make
the secret safe. Rischenheim, although for the moment