ttempt on
the king's life and the king's courage in defending himself. The count,
eager to return (so it ran), had persuaded the king to meet him by
declaring that he held a state-document of great importance and of a
most secret nature; the king, with his habitual fearlessness, had gone
alone, but only to refuse with scorn Count Rupert's terms. Enraged at
this unfavorable reception, the audacious criminal had made a sudden
attack on the king, with what issue all knew. He had met his own
death, while the king, perceiving from a glance at the document that it
compromised well-known persons, had, with the nobility which marked him,
destroyed it unread before the eyes of those who were rushing in to
his rescue. I supplied suggestions and improvements; and, engrossed in
contriving how to blind curious eyes, we forgot the real and permanent
difficulties of the thing we had resolved upon. For us they did not
exist; Sapt met every objection by declaring that the thing had been
done once and could be done again. Bernenstein and I were not behind him
in confidence.

We would guard the secret with brain and hand and life, even as we had
guarded and kept the secret of the queen's letter, which would now go
with Rupert of Hentzau to his grave. Bauer we could catch and silence:
nay, who would listen to such a tale from such a man? Rischenheim was
ours; the old woman would keep her doubts between her teeth for her own
sake. To his own land and his own people Rudolf must be dead while
the King of Ruritania would stand before all Europe recognized,
unquestioned, unassailed. True, he must marry the queen again; Sapt was
ready with the means, and would hear nothing of the difficulty and risk
in finding a hand to perform the necessary ceremony. If we quailed in
our courage: we had but to look at the alternative, and find recompense
the perils of what we meant to undertake by a consideration the
desperate risk involved in abandoning it. Persuaded the substitution of
Rudolf for the king was the only thing would serve our turn, we asked
no longer whether it possible, but sought only the means to make it safe
and safe.

But Rudolf himself had not spoken. Sapt's appeal and the queen's
imploring cry had shaken but not overcome him; he had wavered, but he
was not won. Yet there was no talk of impossibility or peril in his
mouth, any more than in ours: those were not what gave him pause. The
score on which he hesitated was whether the thing sho