The huge priest came on the instant. He bore a candle in one fat, freckled hand, and above its light the dull flesh of his face shone yellow. His head was as ever pear-shaped with its heavy, flabby jowls, and in the apex the two little beads of eyes leaped adventurously at sight of the prince. "I am here, sire," he said purringly. "Your Majesty, then, wishes me to prepare for his return to the imperial palace to-morrow?" "No, father," His Majesty answered stoutly, though not without an uneasy glance. "To-morrow I set out for the coast. The _Dandolo_ is still there at anchor. You will give the necessary orders to my Hungarians, who will be my escort." Fischer opened his lips, to close them. The involuntary creasing of his brow smoothed at once. Maximilian, who had dreaded argument from this man, breathed easier. But of course any man would give way when a Hapsburg had irrevocably made up his mind. The padre laid down the candle, and interlaced his bloated fingers over his paunch in an attitude of sleek calmness. He was smiling and fawned meek anxiety to second his patron's least wish. "Your Imperial Majesty's wisdom, I see, is not a thing to be turned by the fraeulein?" "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 God, 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 God!" "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?"