d young officer in gray back
to the desperado young giant in homespun proved considerable of a reach
for the Hapsburg; but at last, by virtue of much caressing of his silky
beard with delicate finger tips, he arrived.

"So, it was you the marshal saved!" he exclaimed. "Yes, yes, I should
have remembered sooner. Colonel Lopez told me. A capable, faithful
officer, is Lopez! I could not but approve the finding of his court
martial. And yet, against his urgent advice, I have decided to pardon
you."

"To apologize, you mean?"

The Emperor looked hurt. As a foil for his royal clemency, there should
be humble gratitude. Maximilian often mistook fawning for such.

"Isn't it a bit odd," Driscoll queried whimsically, "that an ambassador
should be arrested?"

"Jove, that's a fact! I hadn't thought."

"Certainly. But if it don't occur again, we'll just let the apology go."

"No, no," protested the monarch. "You must have your apology. You will
receive it from the Grand Chamberlain to-morrow, and it will appear in
the Journal Officiel."

"Oh, all right," said Driscoll, "anything to clear the way." Whereupon
he plunged and stated his business.

With debonair Prince Max it was not a question of even who talked best.
It was who talked last. And Driscoll, being for the moment an exhorter
of both descriptions, drove home conviction as a sabre point. He spoke
bluntly, earnestly; and, at the scent of opposition, he spoke fiercely.
The South was defeated, he said, and the North would now make good its
threat to drive out the French. And the French would go, too. Suppose
they were even willing to undertake a great war for Maximilian, yet they
would go just the same. And why? Because they had fought the Russians.
They had fought the Austrians. And they were keeping the Italians out of
Rome to help the Pope. So they had not a friend left, not one, to help
them against the enemy they must soon fight, which was Prussia.
Consequently they would draw every bayonet out of Mexico, and Maximilian
would be left alone to face his rebels. But Maximilian could not face
the rebels alone. They had been dominant before the French came. To
replace thirty thousand French, Driscoll offered fifty thousand
Southerners, fifty thousand well-equipped, splendid veterans.
Twenty-five thousand were already on the frontier, he meaning those
under General Slaughter at Brownsville, and Shelby and the others were
not far behind.

"But," said Maximilian, smili