May I name it? may I be so irreverent? It is in herself - her heart
is soft.'
'Her courage is faint, Baron,' said the Princess. 'Suppose we have
judged ill, suppose we were defeated?'
'Defeated, madam?' returned the Baron, with a touch of ill-humour.
'Is the dog defeated by the hare? Our troops are all cantoned along
the frontier; in five hours the vanguard of five thousand bayonets
shall be hammering on the gates of Brandenau; and in all Gerolstein
there are not fifteen hundred men who can manoeuvre. It is as
simple as a sum. There can be no resistance.'
'It is no great exploit,' she said. 'Is that what you call glory?
It is like beating a child.'
'The courage, madam, is diplomatic,' he replied. 'We take a grave
step; we fix the eyes of Europe, for the first time, on Grunewald;
and in the negotiations of the next three months, mark me, we stand
or fall. It is there, madam, that I shall have to depend upon your
counsels,' he added, almost gloomily. 'If I had not seen you at
work, if I did not know the fertility of your mind, I own I should
tremble for the consequence. But it is in this field that men must
recognise their inability. All the great negotiators, when they
have not been women, have had women at their elbows. Madame de
Pompadour was ill served; she had not found her Gondremark; but what
a mighty politician! Catherine de' Medici, too, what justice of
sight, what readiness of means, what elasticity against defeat! But
alas! madam, her Featherheads were her own children; and she had
that one touch of vulgarity, that one trait of the good-wife, that
she suffered family ties and affections to confine her liberty.
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