by Ouida
The rags stank on undisturbed, and the useful process of turning them into gold continued unmolested; Science, and the Municipality, and Deliornis were all satisfied; and if Hygeia continued to pout, well, she is, we know, but a minor divinity, and Pluto dislikes her, because she thins the crowds that pass the Styx.
Now, the priests and augurs of Mammon are numerous in the Senate and Chamber of Helianthus; they may be said to swarm there, like flies in a sugar-barrel; they are to be found even in undersecretaryships of State, and now and then one or other of them becomes a full-blown Minister, being given, of course, some Department of which he knows absolutely nothing, this condition being an essential rule in the formation of all modern governments. Therefore when Deliornis went to the Chamber, he found on the benches of his party various friends of his friends, and they pushed him with zeal and kindness up the rungs of the ladder of political success; for the manner in which he had behaved about his warehouses had shown that he possessed the making of an ideal public servant. He was intelligent, supple, pliant in form, tenacious in fact, adroit in speech, unburdened by prejudice or principle. He mounted easily from minor to major positions, and, whenever the aristocratic and conservative party was in power, it could not afford to pass him over with neglect. Delicate nostrils quivered sometimes, detecting the smell of the rags on his gold-laced coat; but that, of course, was mere fancy on the part of fastidious people who did not appreciate industry.
Deliornis was King John’s ideal of a Minister, and the odour of the rag warehouse did not irritate the royal nostrils as it did those of some fastidious persons, who believed that it could not be got rid of by means of wearing a broad sash ribbon across the chest, or a collar like a prize dog’s at the throat. To the King, Deliornis appeared absolutely devoted to the royal House; without any initiative, or opinions, except such as were suggested from above, i.e. by Providence, by Princes, or by the Conservative Press — a triad which is always working in common for the general good of nations and humanity. He was a fluent speaker, an adroit eater of his own words when desirable, and no one was better able to float a scheme for public works, or an addition to the public debt, and persuade an unwilling and sullen Chamber to vote a measure unwelcome to the country, but dear to the Palace and the Bourse.
Deliornis, his personality masked by the names of relatives, had placed much of his gold obtained from rags in international, or national, companies, for the most part manufacturers of destructive engines or of destructive chemicals. Before his present elevation to the rank of a Cabinet Minister, he had been Under-Secretary for Naval Affairs; and as the present Minister of Marine was a cousin of his own, they could, with pleasant agreement, furnish largely all kinds of murderous substances to the fleet; and, indeed, the cousin, being a man of talent, provided the maritime ports and dockyard depots so largely with these that there would be no space for his successors, when they came, to stick in a single shell. New inventions were, indeed, spoken of, which were being discussed and perfected; but, if it eventually became necessary to adopt them, the present enormous stores could always be sold to small and distant nations, and fresh purchases made in the name of the Hélianthine people; for this is statecraft as understood in the present days by professional politicians. To buy and sell at a profit has passed from the tradesman’s desk to the statesman’s portfolio, as the first of all commandments.
The cousin, also, having begun life as a clerk at a county court at a town in a hill district, and from that office having advanced to a chair of political economy at an university, knew considerably less about the water and the vessels which float thereon than any crab which sits in a rock-pool and sees the white sails, and the black smoke, pass in the distance. Therefore in the true spirit of a monarchical democracy he was considered of all men eligible as a Minister of Marine; and the battleships built under his orders and auspices were certain to topple head over heels at the first squall at sea, and sink like a stone; as well-behaved battleships, with a due consciousness of the anxiety of their constructors to begin building anew, always do in all oceans, seas, shoal’s, and channels, in both hemispheres. The shark, the octopus, the narwhal, amongst whose pleasant company their unhappy crews descend in the twilight of deep salt-water, are children in the art of acquisition compared to the dual entity of Cabinet Minister and public contractor.
Something of these methods was undoubtedly known to King John, though not all, nor even a tenth part; for no monarch, dwelling as monarchs do in hothouses, seeing only the prize plants admitted there, can match in shrewdness a hard-headed tradesman, accustomed to contend with all sorts and conditions of people, and possessing a smart tongue, a pliant spine, and a brain accustomed to deals and markets and all the variations of speculation. The shrewdness of the tradesman is not the finesse of the statesman, and is apt to resemble the bull in the china-shop when it gets among delicate questions and intricate diplomacies; but in its own interests and in its own sphere it always remains the master of men who, whatever else may be their faults, have the hampering scruples of gentlemen.
The commercial man, the buyer and seller, the speculator on ’Change, the manufacturer, the intelligent dealer in skins, or manures, or chemicals, cannot make a safe diplomatist towards the middle, or close, of a life spent in other pursuits. Between the professional or commercial mind and manner, and the diplomatic mind and manner, there flow vast impassable streams of rose-water and aromatic vinegar.
But a successful Minister he can make; we see him on the ministerial benches of all the Parliaments of the world, and he has one superiority over better-bred men: he takes to flunkey ism as naturally as ducks to water. His spine, long bent before rich men, doubles in two before a royal presence; and for this attribute he is admitted to palaces. For this reason Deliornis had become a persona grata at the Soleia; he agreed with everything, he professed to see profound reason in what was foolishness, and profound insight in what was oblique vision; he was really penetrated by gratitude when he was treated with cordiality by his Princes, and felt a thrill of pride run down his spine whenever the royal hand touched his own in greeting or valediction. In the Palace he was considered to be of a right and reverend spirit, of remarkably good manners considering his origin, and of a docile and humble temper, infinitely rare, and as infinitely becoming.
Before the year was aged and its first frosts were felt on the wide Guthonic plains, King John went, as in etiquette bound, to return the visit of his nephew Julius, with a pomp and a costliness which contrasted unpleasantly, in the minds of those persons who were hard to please, with the necessity which the Exchequer was under, of grinding the souls and bodies of the general public between the mill-stones of fiscal extortion. A royal progress is still a very costly thing, although no cloth of gold and pourpoint of satin and collar of lace and corselet of jewels are worn, although all the stately and decorative figures of old are represented by figures totally undistinguishable, when travelling, from commercial clerks or shop-assistants out for a holiday at any seaside or riverside haunt. John of Gunderöde, in a drab-coloured greatcoat and a tweed travelling-cap, walked through the banks of palms and flowers with which the railway station of the northern line was decorated, and over the carpet which it is etiquette to spread wherever royal feet may tread; said a few words ungraciously with his Ministers, with the Prefect, the Syndic, and other big officials; then gave them two fingers in farewell, and stepped into his saloon-carriage, accompanied by his son Idumaea, and lighted a huge cheroot.
Every device which modern luxury could devise had been lavished on the royal train. Its upholstery was fit for a young beauty’s boudoir, well-known artists had painted its panels with charming groups, sculptors had designed its caryatides and its ceilings, its temperature was carefully regulated, and its atmosphere was delicately tinted to a soft rose hue; and King John smoked and slept and snored, and ate and drank, and was borne through meridional and central Europe as swiftly and agreeably as though he were a necromancer sailing through the air
on a magic carpet.
His Excellency Alexander Deliornis had been chosen to accompany the King on this official visit, and he was exceedingly elated; he would, he knew, get some great Order from the Emperor, and the visit would set him firmly in his ministerial saddle, on which he felt at times the unsteadiness of a man who has been sent to the riding-school too late in life. The Prime Minister, Kantakuzene, ought to have gone, and ought to have got the Order, but his republican antecedents made him a person disagreeable to the Emperor of the Guthones; whereas Deliornis, although he had sold rags, had never shown any tenderness to the classes by whom rags are worn. Like their rags, they stank in his nostrils.
With a stephanotis in his buttonhole, and a gratified smile upon his round, red, full face, the chiffonnier en gros, as Tyras called him, awaited his sovereign on the station platform, and followed him with nimble humility into the royal carriage. These are the hours in a politician’s life which compensate to him for all the brow-beating in Parliament, the heckling in the Cabinet, the endless stream of applicants pouring in and out of his antechamber, the turning of his coat in the sight of the public, the incessant existence of attack and retreat, of defence and defiance, of asseveration and apology, which make up a political career in Helianthus.
Probably no one enjoys ministerial greatness so thoroughly as an arrivé who has been very low down in the social scale. All the fuss and form and ceremony attendant on it bore the aristocrat, offend the taste of the gentleman, but delight the newly arrived; the bowing magistrates, the robed and gilded mayors, the staring crowds, the resounding bands, the verbose greetings, the decorated platforms, the gigantic feasts, — all these enchant the man who has risen from the office-stool to the Cabinet Council; to no other is the red carpet so roseate, or the broad breast-ribbon so dear, or the roar of the cheering such heavenly music.
The royal train had cost some three million of francs; each voyage which it made cost another million; and King John’s visit to the empire of his nephew would cost several further millions; and both in his own country and in that of Julius, bundles of cut grass and a handful of hens’ eggs were taxed at all the town gates, and both peoples paid a hearth tax, though many of their hearths were cold. What had the cost of his train, and the tax at the gates, or the tax on the hearths, to do one with another, each of these potentates would have asked in amazement if any one had had the hardihood to draw in his hearing such an insufferable comparison.
But from the insolence of such parallels monarchs are carefully screened.
Royal visits have this disadvantage, that if for any cause — a hostile Press, a political rancour, or an individual apprehension on the part of the guest — the exchange of these courtesies be considered unwise or ill-timed, their abandonment causes friction, and creates bad feelings between the nations involved, even as cards not returned, or invitations not accepted, make enemies in society of those who hitherto have been on terms of amity. It is easy to produce anger; it is difficult to allay it; and to efface the recollection of it is almost impossible, even with that giddy thing — a national susceptibility. The kisses of Henry and Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold were soon forgotten; the loss of Calais and the day of Pavia rankled in Tudor and in Valois souls through centuries.
The emotions of nations are like mercury in a glass tube: — they rise and fall with incredible rapidity. Both finance and journalism want the quicksilver to dance up and down, or their own occupation would be gone; so the cold hand or the hot hand presses the tube by turns. Every one wants the temperature which suits himself, and very naturally does his best to produce it.
King John slept and smoked, lunched and dined, bathed and dressed, and was whirled through provinces and countries with scarcely perceptible movement though lightning-like rapidity. Now and then he looked out of a window, and saw long lines of dark forlorn figures stooping over dark stony lands, or groups of factories under clouds of black and lurid smoke, or sluggish grey canals with barges creeping slowly through their slime; but they had no interest for him. The only sight which interested him was when in a railway siding, waiting for his train to pass, he saw a military train close packed with soldiers and horses, or a crowd of conscripts huddled together on a station platform, or a squadron of cavalry trotting smartly over the dust of a country road.
They were the soldiers, the horses, the conscripts, the cavalry, of the various States which acknowledged the suzerainty of his beloved nephew and ally — the nephew of whom he was never sure, the ally who would one day swallow up him and his, if it were possible to do so, by the one law of which he would be unable to dispute the justice: the law of superior strength.
When the monarch entered into the especial dominions of the Lillienstauffen he found the deepest interest in every mile of the iron way. It was his ideal, this State, or conglomeration of States, in which militarism was the law of national life, and mere babes were drilled in the infant schools. It was a model country in his eyes; its stations were all designed to be used for defence if needed; its churches were all loopholed to be used for artillery if wanted; lines of circumvallation and fortification cut across its woods and pastures, and surrounded its old historic towns; in all its cities, large and small, there were the blare of trumpets, the beat of drums, the clash of arms, the roll of caissons; the empire of Julius was, before all else, a military country. A cursory glance showed that fact even to any civilian; to a military scientist like John of Gunderöde it revealed its imposing preparations for war in a thousand ways.
Its roads were all made to serve for the passage of troops; its bridges over rail and river were all built for military use; in every little village there were drilling, and trumpeting, and butt shooting; every factory, mill, and warehouse, every group of farm buildings and school tenements, had its possible utility in war marked upon ordnance maps. He knew that on the frontiers of the Guthonic empire every preparation for offensive and defensive warfare was carefully made, and he viewed with admiration the immense barracks, and the gigantic fortifications, which studded the land like couchant herds of mammoths.
Many admirers praised Julius for his self-denial in keeping his sword sheathed, and his armed host in unmobilised peacefulness; but, in truth, he did not go to war because he was not by any means sure of his allies, or certain that his friends would not at the first opportunity become his enemies. Indeed of the latter fact he was quite sure, and it was for that which he prepared.
No dominions in the world were so exclusively dedicated to the possibilities of war as those of Julius. Everything, and every creature, in it was consecrated to preparations for success abroad and at home against foreign foes or native agitators. The nation ate, slept, worked, lived, in a coat of mail, like a man-at-arms of old.
It was thus that the King would have made Helianthus had he but had his way and an unrestricted exchequer. He would have known how to value and to use a dominion like this of his nephew, a nation which allowed itself to be kept ready equipped for war aggression of any kind, and motionless under all maltreatment by its ruler, like the set of tin soldiers which lie side by side in their wooden box till they are taken out and put in line by the hand which disposes of them.
Helianthus was, on the contrary, a country full of legend; of self-will, of vague remembrance of a great past, remote but glorious; of irritated discontent with the meagre results of its recent achievements; it liked its shirt-sleeves, its songs, its bare feet on the hot turf, its dagger in its sash, its free chatter on the stone bench, its wild dance, when the empty stomach jumped in the air and the hunger of it was forgotten in caper and caress, as the maidens gambolled in the shadows like fawns and kids, while the moon shone down between the vine leaves. The Hélianthines were the last people in the world to please a monarch soaked in, and encrusted by, militarism as a salted fish is saturated with brine. He could not run a poker down their backs; he could not make them mute, rigid, mechanical, tight-buttoned, belted, gloved, booted, with eyes fixed, and feet moved like cloc
k-work; they were only awkward and grotesque in that drilled state; put the wild goat in harness, where are its mountain agility and grace?
At the capital city of his empire, Julius, in the uniform of the 6th Hélianthine Cuirassiers (for to wear each other’s uniforms is a delicate mutual compliment, invented by themselves, which sovereigns never neglect to observe), met him at the central station, and embraced him on both cheeks, and greeted with equal effusion the young Count of Idumaea, whilst his tallest and stoutest giants in towering fur shakoes and glittering corselets made a double living palisade between which his guests passed to their carriages. John of Gunderöde had been unable to show him any such giants as those, and Julius was as proud of them as, in the nursery, a child is proud of having a bigger Noah’s ark or taller rocking-horse than any that a small child-visitor possesses at home.
He also shook hands cordially with Deliornis, on whose breast he knew that he would have to place on the morrow the great Order of the Eland. The rags of the Minister’s past stank in the nostrils of Julius; but he ignored them with admirable philosophy. Deliornis was a useful creature to him at the head of foreign affairs in Helios.
‘My beloved uncle and revered ally,’ Julius called his guest at the banquet-table of that day; but he took care that the entire course of his revered ally’s visit should be a sequence of carefully calculated mortifications. The thorns were all masked by the roses, but they were sharp. The King felt, as his reverential nephew intended him to feel, that there are alliances which closely resemble vassalage, and that Helianthus would never be permitted to become wholly independent of the empire of the Guthones.
He was shown, moreover, how, beside this wonderfully accurate military machinery, so perfect in all its parts, so polished in all its intricacies, so entirely under command, so unfailingly ready in any season and at every hour, his own army, which he had left behind him between the mountains of Rhætia and the Mare Magnum, was but an awkward, rusty, bruised, and halting engine, uncertain in movement and possibly incapable in emergency.