had been good-looking and had held
himself so well, he had thrown a stone at him. Yes--blind gutter-bred
fool that he'd been:--his first greeting to Marco had been a stone,
just because he was what he was. As they stood here in the crowd in
this far-off foreign city, it did not seem as if it could be true that
it was he who had done it.

He managed to work himself closer to Marco's side. "Isn't it
splendid?" he said, "I wish I was an emperor myself. I'd have these
fellows out like this every day." He said it only because he wanted to
say something, to speak, as a reason for getting closer to him. He
wanted to be near enough to touch him and feel that they were really
together and that the whole thing was not a sort of magnificent dream
from which he might awaken to find himself lying on his heap of rags in
his corner of the room in Bone Court.

The crowd swayed forward in its eagerness to see the principal feature
of the pageant--the Emperor in his carriage. The Rat swayed forward
with the rest to look as it passed.

A handsome white-haired and mustached personage in splendid uniform
decorated with jeweled orders and with a cascade of emerald-green
plumes nodding in his military hat gravely saluted the shouting people
on either side. By him sat a man uniformed, decorated, and
emerald-plumed also, but many years younger.

Marco's arm touched The Rat's almost at the same moment that his own
touched Marco. Under the nodding plumes each saw the rather tired and
cynical pale face, a sketch of which was hidden in the slit in Marco's
sleeve.

"Is the one who sits with the Emperor an Archduke?" Marco asked the man
nearest to him in the crowd. The man answered amiably enough. No, he
was not, but he was a certain Prince, a descendant of the one who was
the hero of the day. He was a great favorite of the Emperor's and was
also a great personage, whose palace contained pictures celebrated
throughout Europe.

"He pretends it is only pictures he cares for," he went on, shrugging
his shoulders and speaking to his wife, who had begun to listen, "but
he is a clever one, who amuses himself with things he professes not to
concern himself about--big things. It's his way to look bored, and
interested in nothing, but it's said he's a wizard for knowing
dangerous secrets."

"Does he live at the Hofburg with the Emperor?" asked the woman,
craning her neck to look after the imperial carriage.

"No, but he's often there.