“Ah, your highness, let us not speak of my death, for it is a death which you would deplore.”
“Would I deplore your death?” Orleans’ head was now cocked until it almost lay upon his left shoulder. “It is a fact of which I am not wholly persuaded.”
“Monseigneur, mere self-respect demands that one’s death should rouse some grief among one’s friends. So I have made certain that your grief would be inevitable and deep. For I am impatient of truisms—”
“And what have truisms to do with our affair?”
“The statement that dead men tell no tales, your highness, is a truism.”
“Yes, and to be candid, Florian, it is that particular truism of which I was just thinking.”
“Well, it is this particular truism I have elected to deride. My will is made, the disposing of my estate is foreordered, and every legacy enumerated. One of these legacies is in the form of a written narrative: it is not a romance, it is an entirely veracious chronicle, dealing with the last hours of four of your kinsmen; and it is bequeathed to a fifth kinsman, to your cousin, the Duc de Bourbon. Should I die in one of your prisons, monseigneur,—a calamity which I perceive to be already foreshadowed in your mind,—that paper would go to him.”
The Duke of Orleans considered this. There had been much whispering; mobs in the street had shouted, “Burn the poisoner!” when Orleans passed: but this was different. Once Bourbon had half the information which Florian de Puysange was able to give, there would be of course no question of burning Orleans, since one does not treat a prince of the blood like fueclass="underline" but there would be no doubt, either, of his swift downfall nor of his subsequent death by means of the more honorable ax.
Orleans knew all this. Orleans also knew Florian. In consequence Orleans asked, “Is what you tell me the truth ?”
“Faith of a gentleman, monseigneur!”
Orleans sighed. “It is a pity. By contriving this conditional post-mortem sort of confession to the devil-work you prompted, you have contrived an equally devilish safeguard. Yes, if you are telling the truth, for me to have you put out of the way would be injudicious. And you do tell the truth, confound you! Broad-minded as you are in many ways, Florian, you are a romantic, and I have never known you to break your given word or to voice any purely utilitarian lie. You are positively queer about that.”
“I confess it,” said Florian, frankly. “Puysange lies only for pleasure, never for profit. But what do my foibles matter ? Let us be logical about this! What does anything matter except the plain fact that we are useful to each other? I do not boast, but I think you have found me efficient. You needed only a precipitating of the inevitable, a little hastening here and there of natural processes, to give you your desires. Well, four of these accelerations have been brought about through the recipes of a dear old friend of mine, through invaluable recipes which have made you the master of this kingdom. It is now always within your power, without any real trouble, to remove the scrofulous boy whose living keeps you from being even in title King of France. Yes, I think I have helped you. Some persons would in my position be exigent. But all I ask is your name written upon a bit of paper. I will even promise you that your mercifulness shall create no adverse comment, and that tomorrow people shall be talking of something quite different.”
And Florian smiled ingratiatingly, the while that he fingered what was in his waistcoat pocket, and reflected that all France would very certainly have more than enough to talk about to-morrow.
“This dapper imp, in his eternal bottle-green and silver, will be the ruin of me,” Orleans observed. But he had already drawn a paper from the top drawer: and he filled it in, and signed it, and he pushed it across the red-topped writing-table, toward Florian.
“I thank you, monseigneur, for this favor,” said Florian, then, “and I long to repay it by making you King of France. Let us drink to Philippe the Seventh!”
“No,” said Orleans,—“let us drink if you will, but I have no thirst for kingship. I play with the idea, of course. To be a king sounds well, and I once thought— But it would give me no more than I already have of endless nuisances to endure. As matters stand, I can make shift with the discomforts of being a great personage, because I know that I can, whenever I like, lay aside my greatness. I can at will become again a private person, and I can find a host of fools eager to fill my place. But from the throne there is no exit save into the vaults of St. Denis. So I procrastinate, I play with the idea of putting the boy out of the way, and I play with the idea of resigning my ministry, but I do nothing definite until tomorrow.”
“There are many adages that speak harshly of procrastination,” said Florian, as he poured and, with his back to Orleans, flavored the wine which was set ready. “Logic is a fine thing, monseigneur: and logic informs me that no man is sure of living until to-morrow.”
“But it is no fun being a great personage,” Orleans lamented, as he took the tall, darkly glowing glass. “I have had my bellyful of it: and I find greatness rather thin fare. I am master of France, indeed I may with some show of reason claim to be master of Europe. I used to think it would be pleasant to rule kingdoms; but you may take my word for it, Florian, the game is not worth the candle. There are times,” said Orleans, as lazily he sipped the wine which Florian had just seasoned, “there are times when I wish I were dead and done with it all.”
“That, your highness, will come soon enough.”
“Yes, but do you judge what I have to contend with.” Orleans launched into a bewailing of his political difficulties. Florian kept a polite pose of attention, without exactly listening to these complaints about Parliament’s obstinacy, about Alberoni’s and Villeroy’s plottings in their exile, about the sly underminings of Fréjus, about what the legitimated princes were planning now, about Bourbon, about Noailles, about the pig-headedness of the English Pretender, about the empty Treasury— Of these things Philippe was talking, in a jumble of words without apparent end or meaning. But Florian thought of a circumstance unrelated to any of these matters, with a sort of awed amusement.
“All this to make a maniac of me,” the minister went on, “and with what to balance it? Anything I choose to ask for, of course. But then, Florian, what the deuce is there in life for one to ask for at forty-nine ? I was once a joyous glutton: now I have to be careful of my digestion. I used to stay drunk for weeks: now one night of virtually puritanic debauchery leaves me a wreck to be patched up by physicians who can talk about nothing but apoplexy. Women no longer rouse any curiosity. I know so well what their bodies are like that an investigation is tautology: and half the time I go to bed with no inclination to do anything but sleep. Not even my daughters, magnificent women that you might think them—”
“I know,” said Florian, with a reminiscent smile.
“—Not even they are able to amuse me any more. No, my friend, I candidly voice my opinion that there is nothing in life which possession does not discover to be inadequate: we are cursed with a tyrannous need for what life does not afford: and we strive for various prizes, saying ‘Happiness is there,’ when in point of fact it is nowhere. They who fail in their endeavors have still in them the animus of desire: but the man who attains his will cohabits with an assassin, for, having it, he perceives that he does not want it; and desire is dead in him, and the man too is dead. No, Florian, be advised by me; and do you avoid greatness as you should—and by every seeming do not,—the devil!”