"As readily as German, I think. You may recall that I had an English
tutor, and maybe I did not tell you in that interview at Paris that I had
spent a year at Harvard University."

"What the devil did you do that for?" growled Von Stroebel.

"From curiosity, or ambition, as you like. I was in Cambridge at the law
school for a year before the Archduke died. That was three years ago. I
am twenty-eight, as you may remember. I am detaining you; I have no wish
to rake over the past; but I am sorry--I am very sorry we can't meet on
some common ground."

"I ask you to abandon this democratic nonsense and come back and make a
man of yourself. You might go far--very far; but this democracy has hold
of you like a disease."

"What you ask is impossible. It is just as impossible now as it was when
we discussed it in Paris last year. To sit down in Vienna and learn how
to keep that leaning tower of an Empire from tumbling down like a stack
of bricks--it does not appeal to me. You have spent a laborious life in
defending a silly medieval tradition of government. You are using all the
apparatus of the modern world to perpetuate an ideal that is as old and
dead as the Rameses dynasty. Every time you use the telegraph to send
orders in an emperor's name you commit an anachronism."

The count frowned and growled.

"Don't talk to me like that. It is not amusing."