ng bitterly, "you forget that the United
States would still object to my poor Empire."

"Not when the French leave, they wouldn't. We would become citizens. We
would not be a foreign intervention. You would be backed up by Mexicans
against Mexicans, and the North could not interfere. But, suppose that
the French remain, wouldn't they have to fight? And they would need our
aid to do it, too. Don't you see, sir, that in any case you should make
us very welcome?"

"There is assuredly no other way to look at it!" admitted the prince
uneasily.

Dreaming himself a monarch of chivalry days, Maximilian was subtly
enthralled by the idea of a band of heroes flocking to his standard,
their swords on high. Stouter than those warriors who had helped
Siegfried to his bride, they would hold for him a treasure greater than
that under the Rhine. Themselves and their children forever, they would
be the real mainstay of the dynasty founded by Maximilian the Great.
They were Anglo-Saxons, Germanic, his own kindred, and to him they came
for new homes and a new country. They would be his landed gentry, his
barons, his hidalgos. It was a prospect for an emperor; above all, for a
poet emperor. As he looked now on the young Confederate officer, on him
who had seemed a desperado, Maximilian thought that here stood one who
was the instrument of Destiny.

"Can--can they really come?" he demanded breathlessly.

Driscoll smiled. "Of course, there's no time to lose," he replied. "For
instance, if I'd had your answer there at Murguia's ranch, I'd have
gotten back in time to head off whole regiments who've probably given up
their arms since then. But you can still count on an army west of the
Mississippi that hasn't surrendered yet. At least _my_ general
hasn't, not Old Joe, and he won't either. But you must say 'yes' pretty
quick. We're restless, and might conclude to run the French out of here.
We haven't forgotten how Napoleon forgot to help us."

It was a cunning stroke. Maximilian would have asked nothing better than
independence from his "dear imperial brother," and just this was the
bribe so temptingly held out by the instrument of Destiny. But the
Hapsburg of the heavy, trembling underlip credited wavering as
statesmanlike prudence.

"To-morrow," he said, "no, the day after, you shall have my decision."

Jacqueline witnessed the ambassador's departure. Hidden among the roses
of the fortress rock, where she sat with a book, she peeped o