"The Emperor--" Allard began incredulously.
"The Emperor needs you more than ever before. There are too many people who cling to the peace of the last years, who dread change and would force me upon the throne at any cost. The Empire--not Adrian's court--the vast middle class, the merchants, the quiet, staid aristocracy, the very peasants, want all to continue as it is. If I were still to govern with the Emperor they would rest content, but they see it will not be so. They fear Adrian, they know and detest Dalmorov and the party he represents. And they are not careful in their methods of obtaining what they want. John, if you knew the veiled insinuations, the bold offers, the tempters who pursue me night and day; if you knew how they watch for the hours when Adrian has been most hard, how they skilfully touch my pride, my patriotism, my resentment and knowledge of injustice, if you lived my life for twenty-four hours, then you might speak of weariness. But the worst--"
Aghast, Allard stared at him, deep after deep of the inner court opening before his dizzy gaze.
The hand on the table clenched; all the inherited lawlessness and ambition of a royal line blazed up in Stanief's darkly brilliant eyes.
"I want it," he said deliberately. "I want to rule this country, to toss Dalmorov from my path, to stamp out the satisfied triumph from these time-serving faces about me. I want to play this splendid game and remain chief in the battles of diplomacy and statecraft. I want my wife to continue in the life to which she was born. And I know the power to accomplish all this lies ready at my hand; I have only to take. Oh, I am no Galahad or Cincinnatus, no patient despiser of earthly good; no longer even the idealist who spun his dreams on the _Nadeja_. I have tasted of a dangerous fountain, and I shall thirst for its purple-tinted water all the rest of my time. I have no bent, no inclination, for obscure inactivity."
Stanief leaned back and idly picked up the pen on his desk.
"Yet Adrian's coronation takes place next week, exactly. Are we sufficiently inconsistent, we others? And I will pass my life in a castle of the north, or wandering over Europe. I only spoke to show you that my days are not serene either, and why you must go back to keep your guard of honor with Adrian. I believe he is safe; the secret police watch him ceaselessly and report to me. But I want you near him."