Sometimes, indeed, as he sat at a cafe table on the Champs Elysees when awakening dreams of Spring were in the air and a military band was playing in the distance, dormant ambitions awoke.  Sometimes when he watched the opalescent gleam in his glass as the garcon carefully dripped water over absinthe, he would picture himself wresting from the incumbent, the Crown of Galavia, and would hear throngs shouting “Long live King Louis!” At such moments his stimulated spirit would indulge in large visions, and his half-degenerate face would smile through its gentle but dissipated languor.

Louis Delgado was a man of inaction.  He had that quality of personal daring which is not akin to moral resoluteness.  He was ready enough at a fancied insult to exchange cards and meet his adversary on the field, but a throne against which he plotted was as safe, unless threatened by outside influences, as a throne may ever be.

When Louis presented Jusseret to the Countess Astaride there flashed between the woman of audacious imagination and the master of intrigue a message of kinship.  The Frenchman bent low over her hand.

“That hand, Madame,” he had whispered, “was made to wield a scepter.”

The Countess had laughed with the melodious zylophone note that caressed the ear, and had flashed on Jusseret her smile which was a magic thing of ivory and flesh and sudden sunshine.  She had held up the slender fingers of the hand he had flattered, possibly a trace pleased with the effect of the Duke’s latest gift, a huge emerald set about with small but remarkably pure brilliants.  She had contemplated it, critically, and after a brief silence had let her eyes wander from its jewels to the Frenchman’s face.

“Wielding a scepter, Monsieur,” she had suggested smilingly, “is less difficult than seizing a scepter.  I fear I should need a stronger hand.”

“Ah, but Madame,” the Frenchman had hastened to protest, “these are the days of the deft finger and the deft brain.  Even crowns to-day are not won in tug-of-war.”

The woman had looked at him half-seriously, half-challengingly.

“I am told, Monsieur Jusseret,” she said, “that no government in Europe has a secret which you do not know.  I am told that you have changed a crown or two from head to head in your career.  Let me see your hand.”

Instantly he had held it out.  The fastidiously manicured fingers were as tapering and white as her own.

“Madame,” he observed gravely, “you flatter me.  My hand has done nothing.  But I do not attribute its failure to its lack of brawn.”

“Some day,” murmured Delgado, from his inert posture in the deep cushions of a divan, “when the time is ripe, I shall strike a decisive blow for the Throne of Galavia.”

Jusseret’s lip had half-curled, then swiftly he had turned and flashed a look of inquiry upon the woman.  Her eyes had been on Louis and she had not caught the quick glint that came into the Frenchman’s pupils, or the thoughtful regard with which he studied her and the Duke across the edge of his teacup.  Later, when he rose to make his adieux, she noted the thoughtful expression on his face.