the green avenues of trimmed trees. "I do not know why I should speak of
politics to a woman; but you and I are as one: you should know the
worst. I am not my own master, and they who rule me presume to dictate
my course as regards my heart. Brain and sword are theirs, but I shall
feel too ignoble a slave if I sacrifice my love for you to _la haute
politique_."

"Sacrifice your love! That would be odious--that must not be! Do you
mean that they want you to marry? How cruel!"

He did not smile at the absurdity of her protest, it was so sincere.

"Well, Césarine, they are blind here, and deaf to the signs along their
own frontier. The French rely on a Russian alliance, when already Herr
von Bismarck, the Prussian ambassador at St. Petersburg, long ago
secured its suspension. Besides, the Crimean War will always be
remembered against Napoleon--it is so easy not to ally oneself with
England, and, considering her proverbial ingratitude, so rarely
profitable. I spoke of Bismarck! This man of a million, with deep, dark
eyes, fixed and unreadable, with a cold, mocking mouth, iron will and
mighty brain, is soon to be pitted against Napoleon, the shadow whom you
have seen. I am no soothsayer, but I can tell which must go down in the
charge, and never to hold up his head again. I am one of the flies on
the common wheel who will be carried into the action and smashed,
whoever is the victor. I am unwilling to perish thus, when I can find in
love of you a paradise on earth wherever you consent to dwell with me.
Listen: I am entrusted with a prodigious sum in cash by a political
organization, the headquarters of which in France are here, at the old
marchioness's--a veteran puller of the wires that move the European
puppets. They have practically seized my German bands, and unless I