"Quite true," I admitted.
"Yet, like a craft that has fought its way through stormy seas around
the world, you sit there and try to assure me that you are content to
tie up against a rotting wharf, in an odorous slip, and pass the rest
of your days in inaction. It isn't like you, Dan."
"It looks very enticing to me just now, however."
"The trouble is," he said, "that your American diplomacy and your
amazing politics over here, offer no opportunities to a man of your
talents. You should go against the pricks of European intrigue. You
ought to butt in, as you fellows express it, upon French statecraft
which leaves nothing to be desired in the way of double dealings. You
should try Austrian lies, or German brutalities, or Italian and Spanish
sophistry, or English stupidity. Believe me, one of these would offer
many points of interest which should interest and engage your
attention."
"Why not Russian cruelty?" I asked. "That seems to be the only
important nationality you have omitted."
"Why not?" he repeated after me.
"You seem to have tired of it yourself, Saberevski."
He shrugged his shoulders, leaning back in his chair, and the
suggestion of a shadow passed across his handsome face.
"Dan," he said with an entire change of tone that startled me into
renewed interest, "I haven't any doubt that you have always regarded me
as a queer sort of chap, more or less shrouded by a mystery you could
not fathom. And you were right."
"I have never----" I began. But he raised a hand to arrest me.
"I know it," he said. "You do not need to assure me of that. You are
too much of a man, and your character is too broad and deep, for you
ever to attempt an intimacy which was not invited. But it is my
pleasure just now, old man, to give you a little bit of my history. It
may interest you. And it may lead to a change in your views; not
regarding you, but in connection with myself. I am a much older man
than you are; fifteen years and more, I should say. All my life, up to
the time we last parted, has been passed in the personal service of his
majesty, the czar. I have been as close to him as any man can ever
obtain, and I am probably the only one who has enjoyed his confidence
to the extent of retaining it in the face of studied opposition on the
part of the greatest nobles of the empire. But I have retained it, Dan,
and to such an extent that I suppose myself to be the only man living
to-day, against whom Alexander would not permit himself to be
influenced. There is a reason for it and a good one, but I need not go
into that."