Count Piper noted their expressions and the glance they exchanged.
“Ah, gentlemen,” he said, “you do not know with whom you have to deal!”
“In what way, sir?” asked Baron D’Imhof, who felt more at ease in the presence of the minister than in that of the King.
“Your errand is desperate,” replied the Count, with some feeling for fellow diplomats in a hopeless position, “and the success of it, gentlemen, does not depend on any arts of your own.”
“No,” said M. Pfingsten, “but entirely on the disposition of the King of Sweden.”
“Exactly,” said Count Piper. “Your only hope is that you may excite compassion in the heart of a man who has never known a gentle emotion, and turn from his course the most obstinate creature who ever breathed.”
He smiled cynically, and made a movement with his hands as if he cast away the responsibility of his master’s actions.
“You give us good hopes,” said Baron D’Imhof, with some bitterness.
Count Piper did not directly reply to this.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I will give you this advice--whatever the King says accept it; take up your hats and begone with what good grace you can, for he will never alter his mind.”
As he spoke Karl entered from the cabinet, carrying a paper on which the close writing still gleamed with the wet ink.
He gave this to Count Piper and bade him read it to the Saxons.
“I will give your master peace on these terms,” he said, “and you must not hope that I shall alter any of them.”
The minister bent nearer the two tall candles on the table that gave the sole light in the rooms and read, in an even official voice, the terms of the conqueror.
The King had written his fiat with his own hand without troubling to call his secretary, and the calligraphy was quick and flowing as that of one whose thoughts move faster than his pen; as Piper knew Karl was only now putting on paper the terms that he had in his mind from the first to impose on Augustus.
“_Firstly._--The Elector must renounce forever the throne of Poland, recognize Stanislaus Leczinski as King, and, even in the event of this prince’s death, make no attempt to regain the throne.
“_Secondly._--He must renounce all the alliances he has made against Sweden--particularly those with Muscovy.