"The red rose for the Elphbergs, Marshal," said I gaily, and he nodded.
I have written "gaily," and a strange word it must seem. But the truth
is, that I was drunk with excitement. At that moment I believed--I
almost believed--that I was in very truth the King; and, with a look of
laughing triumph, I raised my eyes to the beauty-laden balconies again
. . . and then I started. For, looking down on me, with her handsome
face and proud smile, was the lady who had been my fellow
traveller--Antoinette de Mauban; and I saw her also start, and her lips
moved, and she leant forward and gazed at me. And I, collecting myself,
met her eyes full and square, while again I felt my revolver. Suppose
she had cried aloud, "That's not the King!"
Well, we went by; and then the Marshal, turning round in his saddle,
waved his hand, and the Cuirassiers closed round us, so that the crowd
could not come near me. We were leaving my quarter and entering Duke
Michael's, and this action of the Marshal's showed me more clearly than
words what the state of feeling in the town must be. But if Fate made me
a King, the least I could do was to play the part handsomely.
"Why this change in our order, Marshal?" said I.
The Marshal bit his white moustache.
"It is more prudent, sire," he murmured.
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