Allard turned to the gates of memory, and gazing down dim vistas at many a vague crime and ambitious treachery, remained silent. "My cousin Adrian," Stanief resumed, after a moment in which he also looked across the past, "by this time perhaps my Emperor Adrian is fourteen years old. Not until he is seventeen can he be crowned and take the government in his own grasp; that is, the country is absolutely ruled by me for the next three years. By me; but those years will be a splendid warfare, a struggle muffled in cloth-of-gold, a ceaseless vigil beside which my old life was peace. The country is divided into two great parties: those who wish me to take the crown, and from whom I must protect Adrian; those who wish to rid themselves of me and govern as they choose through the child-emperor. Remember that neither faction believes I shall ever permit my cousin to take the Empire from me. Loyalty, honor, justice,--those are pretty, extinct phrases of chivalry to their minds." Allard made a movement of protest. "Surely not so bad, surely not nowadays," he objected incredulously. "Our country is still medieval," Stanief retorted. "I tell you not one-half the fact. But, I make no pose of virtue and perhaps I am merely obstinately resolved not to do what is expected of me, but I _will_ carry this through and crown my cousin on his seventeenth birthday, if I live." His voice hardened into steel, his velvet eyes flashed through their curtaining lashes. Allard rose impulsively and held out his hand. "'_Soit que soit_,' we said last night," he cried. "Let me aid; stand or fall." "A desperate cause," warned Stanief, keeping the hand in his firm clasp. "For day and night my enemies will pour their poison into Adrian's ears; Adrian, whose father must already have taught him distrust and dread of me. It may very well be that when I resign the absolute power to the young Emperor, he himself will first use it to crush me." "Impossible! And if it be so, at least we shall have fought the good fight." "Then open the lists to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. We will live our own way for these three years, and abide the decision." There was no question of etiquette between the two who stood together, with laughter glancing across the surface of an earnestness too deep for speech. Allard had no way of divining that the Stanief he knew did not exist for any one else; that the reserve of a lifetime was broken in their friendship. They sat down again, presently.