Baffled in his quest, Colonel Czartoriski left Brutli, acting upon instructions from the Princess of Dardania, and a few days of intense quiet and happiness succeeded his departure. The unfeigned joy felt by all the attendants of the betrothed pair in their reconciliation was reflected in the faces of the deaconesses and their Syrian peasants, and smiling looks and gifts of flowers or fruit greeted both Cyril and Ernestine everywhere. Even the melancholy Paschics went about with a beaming countenance and a flower in his buttonhole, and Mr Hicks’s characteristic pessimism displayed itself only in a remark aside to Mansfield, to the effect that this was the calm before the storm. What he wanted to know was, what would all those European kings think about it? It happened that the Chevalier Goldberg was at the Schloss at Vindobona, closeted with the Emperor on a matter of high financial importance, when the Queen’s letter to her Pannonian kinsfolk arrived. The Chevalier had received the news of the engagement by telegram some days before, and therefore his presence at the palace on this particular morning may or may not have been accidental. “Well, Goldberg, so our friend Mortimer is to marry Queen Ernestine?” said the Emperor, returning to the room after being summoned away by a message from the Empress. “So I have heard, sir.” “Well, no one is likely to offer any real objection. The Emperor Sigismund will dislike the idea, no doubt, but he has no means of coercing the Queen, and her son’s past treatment of her debars him from putting in a claim to interfere. But it is a preposterous affair, for Mortimer is little better than a beggar. I thought, Goldberg, that you financiers always made a point of paying your instruments well, that they might do you credit?” “I have sometimes thought, sir, that your Majesty, and I, and the Syndicate I represent, and various other important people, are only the instruments--the pawns, if you will--of this little Englishman, who plays because it interests him to move the pieces.” The Emperor smiled. “We shall have to do something for him, I suppose,” he said. “Is there anything that strikes you as particularly suitable?” “Ah, sir, your Majesty knows that there is one post for which Count Mortimer is supremely fitted. His appointment to it would be welcomed with acclamation by the Jews all over the world.” “You are sure of that? Well, I will set on foot negotiations. I am uneasy--in common with the whole Catholic world--about those fortified convents which Scythia has for years been so busy erecting on every point of vantage round Jerusalem. At the present moment I think we should be able to make her see reason; but when this famine is over----! But the Jews must be unanimous, Chevalier. That is indispensable.” “I cannot conceive that any opposition could arise, sir.”