The Missourian Part 56

"On the contrary, Mademoiselle la Marquise d'Aumerle counseled my departure, not my remaining."

The fingers tightened slightly over the bulge of the sutane. "She then presumed to differ from Her Serene Highness, Your Majesty's mother?"

"My mother would counsel the same, were she in Mexico. I thank you, padre, that I went to see the only one who could so take my mother's place, because now, at last, I know what I must do."

The priest took a long breath, and drew back, mentally, to some vantage point whence he could survey the field and plan his campaign anew. He nodded humble acquiescence, but the small bright eyes seemed to gorge themselves on the prince. Maximilian stirred restively. One has seen a lion watch the trainer's whip, as though he wondered that a creature with only a whip should yet, in some way, compel him to do this or that.

Before an obscure adventurer the monarch hastened to justify his abdication. But it did not make him easier because the padre listened so obsequiously, with never a quiver before the horror and misery pictured.

He only listened, this man of G.o.d, noting it all deferentially, item by item, with a smiling gesture that he heard and understood, and was quite ready for the next. Maximilian became aware at last of his own low stooping. And that moment he stopped abruptly.

"The Lord reward Your Majesty's tender heart," now spoke the priest, "and may the reward be such as a ruler should expect from his G.o.d!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Maximilian in impatient anger. "Have all the barbarities of civil war no power to move you? Do I not know that the savagery has already begun?"

The curate crossed himself. In humility he would bear the charge of hardness of heart. "Power to stir me?" he repeated. "If Your Majesty would think on his power to bring this same savagery to an end! That is his reward offered by Heaven, the reward of bringing holy peace to a stricken land."

"Did I not come for that? You only remind me how I have failed."

"And why, sire? Because your instruments were not blessed. The French oppressed the Church as well as the people. But now the French are leaving. It is the hand of Providence."

"She _said_ he would interpret the will of Heaven!" Maximilian exclaimed.

The priest heard, stammered, and went to wreck miserably, as a hypocrite unmasked knows that his next word must sound like hypocrisy. How slyly she had checkmated him! Forseeing his thrust, she had countered his every shift of cunning through this feeble fencer before him. And the mistake he had made, in sending Maximilian to her! For a moment the expression of the apostate Lutheran was very ugly in its baffled rage.

But he was too wise a trainer to lose patience utterly. He realized instead that the struggle was harder than any he had yet had with his royal dupe, since now his real antagonist was the young Frenchwoman.

"I? I interpret the word of G.o.d?" He said it very humbly, with bowed head. "Alas, Your Majesty knows I am the last to presume to that. But there are those who can. There is the Holy Father in Rome, who is infallible. I only know that _he_ told Your Majesty's servant, myself, that a ruler blessed by the Church is an instrument of G.o.d. But if the ruler turns his back ere his work is done----"

Maximilian's nostrils were dilating strangely, and the consummate tempter hurried on. He exalted the grandeur of the Emperor's task, yet craftily made success appear simple and easy. The forces of "the arch-rebel Benito Juarez" were concentrated in "a horde of impious thieves calling themselves the Army of the North." But Miramon, His Majesty's own general, was hastening to meet them. One decisive battle, and there would be no more rebels. The nation must then recognize that the Empire had sustained itself without French aid.

"Of course a few lives will be lost," he quietly sneered, "and we who do not understand may grieve for them, but the ways of Heaven, for its own ends, are inscrutable. Your Majesty knows that others before him, his ancestors, have had to wade through the blood of G.o.d's enemies. But Your Majesty's glorious ancestors were fulfilling their destiny. And why should not you, also, sire, you who are the child of destiny?"

It was a magic word. Fischer knew his man devilishly well.

"But how can I tell," Maximilian demanded petulantly, "that my destiny really lies in Mexico?"

"Then your destiny, sire, must lie in Europe, in Austria," was the priest's astounding concession. "After all, a prince's intuitions, being given him by divine revelation, can alone be his guide."

Maximilian's eyes flashed.

"Then I abdicate--herewith!"

Fischer meekly a.s.sented.

"There are rumors, nay, more than rumors," he mused aloud, "that a strong hand is needed in Austria. I repeat only what all Europe says boldly, that Franz Josef cannot long hold his throne. Yes, yes, sire, but do not stare so!--Yet the crown prince is a child. Who then shall be regent? Who but----"

"Enough, enough, I say! Now look to my orders. We start to-morrow."

The secretary beamed unctious joy that his master had so decided, and was bowing himself out, when abruptly he paused, "Oh, I forgot, a packet for Your Majesty."

Maximilian took the missive. It was not heavy. It did not seem as heavy as Fate, not as heavy as a coffin.

"This is an old date," he said in a puzzled way. "See, the postmark, 'Brussels, Sept. 17.'"

"It just came by courier from Vera Cruz, being sent via New York no doubt accounts for the delay."

Maximilian sighed. Even the post no longer considered royalty. Packets had taken on leisurely habits since the Empire's crumbling--or since the secretary's ascendancy. He broke the seal with tremulous fingers. The thing must tell him of Charlotte.

"From Monsieur eloin," he said.

"But he--he does not send bad news, nothing, sire, of Her Imperial Highness?"

Well enough did that soul of mud know the letter's contents. Well enough he knew that eloin and himself could waste no time on an insane woman.

Their chances of future position were in too critical a state. And the packet was designed for just such a crisis as the present.

Maximilian frowned, read excitedly. He was swept along as by a torrent.

Fixed on him were the small bead eyes of the priest, darting a light, like a flame on oil. And when the Emperor gasped quickly and sprang to his feet with hands clenched in the manner of a strong man, the priest was ready.

"Good news, then?" he cried. "What fortune! Now Your Majesty will hurry the faster to Vienna?"

Maximilian gave him a glance, as though he were dense to think so.

"Here, read, read it!"

M. eloin, sycophant, courtier, had never sung for his royal patron a roundelay more pleasing than his prose of the moment. It caused to vibrate the very heart chords of the susceptible prince. There were subtle appeals to spite ungratified, to wounded pride, to ambition, to honor. The letter ran:

... Nevertheless, I am convinced that to abandon the throne now, before the return of the French army, would be interpreted as an act of weakness.... If this appeal (to the Mexican people) is not heard, then Your Majesty, having accomplished his n.o.ble mission to the end, will return to Europe with all the prestige that accompanied his departure; and mid important events that are certain to happen, he will be able to play the role that belongs to him in every way....

And then the supreme refrain:

In pa.s.sing through Austria, I was able to bear witness to the general discontent that reigns there. Yet nothing is done yet. The Emperor is discouraged; the people fret and publicly demand his abdication; the sympathies for Your Majesty are spreading visibly throughout the entire Empire; in Venetia a whole population wishes to acclaim its former governor....

Thus it was that eloin pilfered Jacqueline's lever, and thus he used another fulcrum, as he had promised Charlotte he would. By pandering to Maximilian's Austrian ambitions, he showed the weak prince how they could yet never be realized if prestige were lost in Mexico. To keep this prestige, to increase it, Maximilian must prove to Austria that he could hold the empire he already had, and that without foreign bayonets.

He had only to stay a short time after the French should evacuate. And then, within a few months, a few weeks, he might lay down the sceptre voluntarily, to take up the one awaiting him across the ocean.

"We will leave here in the morning," cried Maximilian--"no, to-night, at once!"

"For Vera Cruz, sire?" queried the padre.

"No, for my capital, for my palace! And father, allow no one to mention abdication to me again. My decision to stay is irrevocable."

The padre promised faithfully that he should not be disturbed, and this was one promise that the good padre kept.

CHAPTER X

ALONE AMONG HIS LOVING SUBJECTS