no
more.

CHAPTER XXX

MAN AND WIFE

Felix lost no time in seeking an interview with Prince Waldemar. He
preferred to look for him in his own house than to meet him
accidentally on 'change.

Waldemar did not keep him long waiting, neither did he treat him to
any display of his superior rank. He received him in his study.

"Ah, your highness is occupied with business," said Felix, with the
airy manner of an intimate friend; but he was secretly astonished to
see that a man of the prince's high position was actually cutting the
pages of the pamphlet before him, and underlining with red and blue
pencil-marks the passages that pleased him most.

The prince laid down the pamphlet, and asked Felix to take a chair.

"I have only this moment heard," continued the banker, "that your
excellency had arrived in Paris, and I hastened to be the first to pay
my respects."

"Strange! At this very moment, I, too, was occupying myself with your
affairs," returned the prince, with a peculiar smile, which Felix
noted and thought he understood. He tried to put on a jaunty air as he
made answer:

"I have come as an envoy under the protection of a flag of truce into
the enemy's country."

The prince thought to himself, "The fellow's flag of truce is a
handkerchief worked with the letter E."

"Even greater powers than we," went on Felix, twirling his hat in his
fingers with some embarrassment, "have in sudden emergencies
co-operated, and from being enemies have become fast friends,
recognizing that to bury the hatchet was for their mutual advantage."

"And may I inquire what is for our mutual advantage?"

"My projected loan."

The prince said nothing, but the smile that played upon his thin lips
was a sufficient and most irritating answer. Felix began to lose his
calmness. He rose from his chair, and in his earnestness leaned over
the table at which the prince was sitting.

"Prince," he said "this loan is for the benefit of the Holy See. You
are, I know, a good Catholic."

"Who has betrayed my secret?"

"Besides, you are a thorough aristocrat. It must go against your
highness's feelings to see that while in Hungary a bureaucratic
minister pillages the Church and puts its revenues in his pocket, a
band of freebooters throws the patrimony of St. Peter to the mob. All
this can be prevented by our striking one blow. You will strike it,
for you are a nobleman in the best sense of the word."

"What else am I?"

"Ab