too.  Boldly proclaim your position as the Secret Intelligence Agent, by which you learned their whereabouts, and that they harbor the charitable young man who saved your life.  Touch lightly on his thumping you within an inch of it, and enlarge on your undying gratitude.  Apologize to the young lady—­lay all blame on her irresistible charms and abuse a little the fair and fickle Fraulein von Vieradlers who has eloped without so much as an adieu to you!  Depend upon it, Jews though they are, they will applaud your Christian forgiveness, and, I do not doubt, Frenchman though he is, young Clemenceau will give you his hand.  Dilate not at all, but urge him to leave the town without delay.  From the maid I will get to know the hour of the chaise’s starting and the route so that you can plant your men.  I grant that this has the air of a highwayman’s attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the youth.  It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with a cane into the bargain.”

Sullen fire burned in the hearer’s eyes.  He stamped his foot, suppressed an oath, and when he looked up, had a serene countenance.

“You have said enough.  A willing steed does not need the spur.  I will lay the train and prepare the match.  Let each look to himself lest he suffer by the explosion.”

Successful though the old woman had been in her arrangement to convert an offended employer into a vigorous ally, she shuddered as if he were, in these ominous words, as good a soothsayer as he pretended to be.

CHAPTER VII.

ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES—­A BAD ONE.

Probably no more terrifying a figure could have presented itself at the Persepolitan Hotel than the major of cavalry, and he looked the type of his class, insolent with aristocratic hauteur, martial to the point of arrogance, and domineering and as blustering toward inferiors as he would have been bland and meek to his superiors.  The landlord, one of the hybrid Levantines in whose blood that of a dozen races flowed, was as alarmed as the maid, whom he sent up the stairs to announce the visitor to Herr Daniels.  Strange to say, the officer, who had taken a seat in the sitting-room, unasked, with his heavy sabre held upright between his knees, bore the somewhat lengthy delay with patience.  The girl returned to say that Herr Daniels would be honored with the visit, although, he had said, he had not a pleasant remembrance of the gentleman.  In fact, before his assault in the street upon La Belle Stamboulane, the major had persecuted her and deserved the reproof from her father which it was too dangerous, as Munich society was ruled, for him to utter.

But, contrary to all precedent, the military Lovelace quietly walked into the room where Claudius was restored to health and whence he had been removed to the inmost chamber vacated by the young singer.  The major’s accident might account for his meekness, but his manners and voice accorded with his speech so that one attributed the change to an altogether different cause than a purely physical one.