"You are right, excellency," replied Count Saurau, smiling, "I really feel sick and exhausted. It will be best for me, therefore, to keep my bed for a few days, and my well-meaning physician will doubtless give stringent orders not to admit anybody to me and to permit no one to see me on business." "As soon as your physician has given such orders," said Thugut, "send me word and request me to attend temporarily to the duties of your department as long as you are sick."
"In half an hour you shall receive a letter to that effect. I go in order to send for a physician."
"One word more, my dear count. What has become of that demagogue, the traitor Wenzel, who headed the riot last year? I then recommended him to your special care." "And I let him have it, your excellency. I believe he has entirely lost his fancy for insurrectionary movements; and politics, I trust, are very indifferent to him."
"I should regret if it were so," said Thugut, smiling. "I suppose you have got him here in Vienna?"
"Of course; he occupies a splendid half-dark dungeon in our penitentiary."
"Picking oakum?"
"No; I hear he has often asked for it as a favor. But I had given stringent orders to leave him all alone and without any occupation whatever. That is the best way to silence and punish such political criminals and demagogues."
"I would like to see this man Wenzel. We shall, perhaps, set him at liberty again, "said Thugut. "Will you order him to be brought here quietly, and without any unnecessary eclat?"
"I shall send him to you, and that shall be my last official business before being taken sick."
"Be it so, my dear count. Go to bed at once; it is high time."
They smilingly shook hands, and looked at each other long and significantly.
"It will be a splendid patriotic festival to-morrow," said Thugut.
"A very patriotic festival, and the inauguration of the banner particularly will be a glorious affair!" exclaimed Count Saurau.
"What a pity that my sickness should prevent me from attending it!"
He saluted the prime minister once more and withdrew. When the door had closed behind him the smile disappeared from Thugut's features, and a gloomy cloud settled on his brow. Folding his arms on his back, and absorbed in deep thought, he commenced slowly pacing the room. "The interview with the empress must be prevented at all events," he muttered, after a long pause, "even if all diplomatic relations with France have to be broken off for that purpose.
Besides, I must have those papers which he wanted to deliver to the empress; my repose, my safety depends upon it. Oh, I know very well what sort of papers they are with which they are threatening me.
They are the letters I had written in cipher to Burton, the English emissary, whom the French Directory a month ago caused to be arrested as a spy and demagogue at Paris, and whose papers were seized at the same time. Those letters, of course, would endanger my position, for there is a receipt among them for a hundred thousand guineas paid to me. What a fool I was to write that receipt! I must get it again, and I am determined to have it!"
A few hours later, an emaciated, pale man was conducted into the room of Prime Minister Baron Thugut. The minister received him with a friendly nod, and looked with a smiling countenance at this sick, downcast, and suffering man, whom he had seen only a year ago so bold and courageous at the head of the misguided rioters.
"You have greatly changed, Mr. Wenzel," he said, kindly. "The prison air seems not to agree with you."
Wenzel made no reply, but dropped his head with a profound sigh on his breast.
"Ah, ah, Mr. Wenzel," said Thugut, smiling, "it seems your eloquence is gone, too."
"I have formerly spoken too much; hence I am now so taciturn," muttered the pale man.
"Every thing has its time, speaking as well as silence," said Thugut. "It is true speaking has rendered you very wretched; it has made you guilty of high treason. Do you know how long you will have to remain in prison?"
"I believe for fifteen years," said Wenzel, with a shudder.
"Fifteen years! that is half a lifetime. But it does not change such demagogues and politicians as you, sir. As soon as you are released you recommence your seditious work, and you try to make a martyr's crown of your well-merited punishment. Traitors like you are always incorrigible, and unless they are gagged for life they always cry out anew and stir up insurrection and disorder."
Wenzel fixed his haggard eyes with a sorrowful expression upon the minister.
"I shall never stir up insurrections again, nor raise my voice in public as I used to do," he said, gloomily. "I have been cured of it forever, but it was a most sorrowful cure."
"And it will last a good while yet, Mr. Wenzel."
"Yes, it will last dreadfully long," sighed the wretched man.
"Are you married? Have you got any children?"
"Yes, I have a wife and two little girls--two little angels. Ah, if I could only see them once more in my life!"
"Wait yet for fourteen years; you can see them then if they be still alive, and care about having you back."
"I shall not live fourteen years," murmured the pale, downcast man.