CHAPTER I

“I think you have no idea of the confusion of my affairs--nor of their apparent hopelessness. I speak of them to you because you are the only person whom I can trust.”

Thus Augustus to Aurora, and in these words she read his confession of utter defeat; she was deeply vexed; for some time past she had displayed ill-humor at the growing discomforts and perils of her situation; she was now at Varsovia, a barbaric place that she disliked, where Augustus had come to attend the Polish Diet that he had been forced to convoke. It was midwinter, and she sat over the fire in the huge stone chamber that was so difficult to warm, her great coat of lemon-colored velvet lined with white fur, thrown open on her lace gown, and the leaping glow of the firelight all over her bright beauty.

She knew that perhaps her principal hold on Augustus was her good temper, and seldom was she betrayed into anger; but now her disappointment made her answer sharp.

“Why do you not abandon Poland and return to Saxony?” she asked.

The King-Elector looked at her reproachfully.

“Is that your comfort?” he asked.

“I think that it is very good advice,” she replied, controlling herself not to speak bitterly.

Augustus, who looked tired and haggard (he was indeed more fitted to be the head of a brilliant court, the patron of arts and letters, than to confront these troublous times), flushed with rising annoyance.

“It is useless to discuss with you, Madame,” he said, “what you are too flippant to understand----”

“Oh,” interrupted Aurora, “do I not understand that I am at Varsovia in midwinter, cold and dull? That you are always ill-humored and absorbed in affairs, and that I have no company beyond Hélène who is love-sick, a parrot, and a monkey?”

Augustus rose from his seat by the great oak table.

“Very well,” he said quietly, “you had better return to Dresden, Madame. It is true that here I can give you no comfort. It is also true that I must remain--my crown, all my fortunes and perhaps my life, depend on these events.”

Aurora bit her lip in vexation at her own peevishness; she scorned fretful women, and she was moved by her lover’s gentle response.

She got up impulsively and held out her hands; a gorgeous creature in her rich clothes and vivid loveliness, illuminated by the tawny light of the flaming pine knots.

“Forgive me,” she said quickly. “I am ashamed of myself. I have been idle and frivolous, tell me how I can help.”

He kissed her hands in instant gratitude; he had always found her his best friend; she was more intelligent, perhaps more courageous than he, but she had managed never to offend him with her superiority, and she always soothed him with her firmness and encouraged him with her high spirits.

She smiled now with a certain tenderness at this magnificent-looking prince who was so downcast and so almost helpless; in her wild heart she perhaps a little despised him; certainly he was not her ideal hero, for all his strength and handsomeness and charm, but both out of kindness and interest she was his ally.

“Come,” she said, “forget, sire, that I am a woman, and talk to me as if I was your minister.”

She took the seat at the table he had just left and drew her coat round her, leaning back and looking at Augustus, who remained standing by the fire.

“My dear,” he answered, “I do not know if affairs could be much worse.”

“This Diet is not going to help you?”

“Would to God I had never had to summon it!” exclaimed the King-Elector. “The King of Sweden has as much influence there as I!”

“Ah!” murmured Aurora, “they are not loyal to you, these Polish princes?”

“There is not one man in Poland loyal to me,” replied Augustus bitterly; “this cursed war has alienated all of them.”

The Countess knew that good statecraft would have foreseen this; Poland, afraid of Sweden and jealous of its Saxon King, was fiercely resentful of a war bound to end in her subjugation either at the hands of Karl XII or at those of her own elected monarch; the remnants of the Saxon troops who had survived the battle of Riga Augustus had had to send back to Saxony to quiet the Poles, and for the same reason he had been obliged to call a Diet when he wished to raise an army.

Aurora, remembering the time and money spent on acquiring the crown of Poland, wondered if the bargain had been a good one for Augustus, who, used to being an absolute ruler in his own hereditary dominions, found himself little more than head of a Republic in Poland.

“Who are your enemies in the Diet?” she asked gently.

“Leczinski, of course, the Lubomirski, and the Sobieski--these and their followers are all secretly with the King of Sweden, and, naturally,” added Augustus, with, for him, considerable heat, “Cardinal Radziekowski is playing his own game which is not mine.”

“In brief,” said Aurora, “these Poles are seizing this moment for their own intrigues; they consider you as more dangerous than Karl, and would as willingly see you overthrown.”

This plain view of the case slightly startled Augustus, but he had to admit that it was true.

“And there is the revolt in Lithuania,” he added gloomily. “The Sapieha and the Oginski at each other’s throats--my troops in fugitive parties living on rapine because I have not the money to pay them----”

“You cannot summon the Polish nobles to raise their followers on your behalf?”

“I dare not--for it would be to risk a refusal.”

Aurora bit her lip.

“But you have the Polish army.”

“There are only 18,000 men--not paid, not armed--and their generals uncertain whether to fight for me or Sweden!”

“And every one knows this?”

“I fear that my weakness is but too apparent--see how they have forced my hand in the matter of the Diet!”

“And you dare not bring back the Saxon troops?”

“It would be the excuse and the signal for a general revolt in Poland,” replied the King-Elector.

Aurora von Königsmarck mentally cursed Poland; she had been perfectly content in Dresden before ambition had urged Augustus into this troublesome glory.

“What will the Diet do?” she asked, suppressing her irritation and speaking with gentleness.

Augustus began pacing up and down the room.

“Who can tell?” he replied wearily, “intrigues and counter-intrigues--all irresolute, all crying out for freedom and justice and none knowing where to look for it! Meanwhile everything goes to ruin while they are talking, and the King of Sweden advances daily deeper into the country.”

Aurora frowned; hitherto, with a woman’s evasiveness, she had refused to glance at the state of matters in Poland; now she forced herself to face them, and to apply all her intelligence to helping her lover in what seemed indeed a desperate pass.

“And the Czar?” she asked.

“The Czar needs assistance himself,” said Augustus grimly.

“But the Muscovites? Did you not tell me that he was sending some men into Lithuania?”

The King-Elector became angry at the thought of this, the sole fruit of the secret treaty of Birsen.

“He has sent some villains who are doing more damage than the Swedes,” he replied hotly. “They have turned freebooters, and are utterly deaf to discipline and orders--’tis but so many marauders the more in the wretched kingdom, and yet further inflames the Poles.”

Aurora could not forbear a smile.

“There are the troops you were to train?” she asked.

“Yes, God help me, and now they are here I have not a single Saxon officer available--not that a corps of Turenne’s veterans could train these savages!”

Aurora knew, though she forbore to mention it, that Augustus had failed to fulfil his side of the bargain, and had not been able to raise a single regiment of the German troops promised to Peter, nor to pay him anything for the maintenance of the Muscovites sent into Lithuania.

“So you see,” added the Elector, with rather a bitter smile, “that my position is desperate on all sides.”

“Come here,” smiled Aurora.

He crossed to her chair; she took his hand and pressed her soft cheek against his rings and ruffles.

“My poor dear,” she said caressingly. “I wonder if I can help you now, to return a little all the joy you have given me?”

She would have kissed his hand, but he prevented her, eagerly lifted her face and kissed her lips.

“What have I done for you!” he cried. “Why, you have gilded all my life!”

“You have been very good to me,” she said, a little wistfully. “Men can be so cruel. I think you hardly know how grateful women are for kindness.”

He smiled tenderly; his handsome face lightened of half its care as he looked at her.

“Not women like you, Aurora!”

“Yes, women like me,” she replied. “Why--you might get tired of me.” She caught her breath a little. “I might fade--I am not as pretty as I was--but you----”

“Aurora--I adore you.”

“Thank you,” said the Countess unsteadily. “Thank you for loving me. That is why I want to help you--you have made life wonderful to me by your love----”

He dropped his hands to her shoulders and she looked up at him.

“And you--have you not loved me, Aurora?” he asked.

“Oh, a woman’s love does not count!”

Augustus did not understand her mood, he was not a man to nicely read a woman’s complexities; and the next second Aurora did not understand it herself, and was lifting her shoulders with a laugh both for her words and his bewilderment.

“I am a silly creature,” she said lightly, “but I only seek to please you.”

She gently drew herself away, rose and went to the fire; the yellow coat, the gleaming hair, dressed in long, smooth curls slightly disordered and falling over the smooth white fur; the proud air and bearing of her, the piquant, gay face, made a fair picture in the brilliant glow that shone on her from head to foot and threw her figure, a thing of light against the gloomy background of the room, darkening in the fading light of the winter afternoon.

“Now--my advice,” she said. “I wonder--will you take it?”

Augustus smiled at her; his handsome face was no longer troubled as he gazed at this brilliant, darling companion of his; his distresses that sat lightly enough on him anyhow were almost forgotten as he contemplated her courage and her gaiety.

“Tell me,” he answered gently.

There was something of challenge, almost of defiance in her beautiful eyes as she replied, but she spoke very sweetly.

“You must make peace with Karl.”

Augustus did not speak.

“Of course you will have to take his terms, but it seems to be his rôle to be generous,” continued the Countess. “And better be at his mercy than at that of the Poles, your own subjects.”

Augustus thought so too; it was not very pleasant to contemplate humbling himself before the boy King whom he had hoped to conquer so easily, but his pride was not very deep-seated, and he bore no rancor against anyone, not even against the man who had defeated him; if he could purchase ease and safety by submitting to Karl he was ready to do so without any bitterness, and, as Aurora suggested, it was easier to accept terms from a fellow-monarch than from his own subjects.

“You must open negotiations at once before you lose everything,” continued the Countess quickly.

“But he will not listen--why should he?” returned Augustus doubtfully.

“If the ambassador is well chosen he will listen.”

“But it is no object to him to make peace,” said the King-Elector uneasily. “Doubtless he will prefer the glory of overrunning Poland and possibly Saxony.”

Aurora did not yet mention what made her feel sure that the King of Sweden might be brought to reason; she was sure that her project would be distasteful to Augustus, and she was waiting her moment to broach it; twisting one of her long ringlets round the slender fingers of her left hand that sparkled with some of the Saxon jewels, she frowned into the flames.

“No,” added Augustus gloomily. “I see no hope--’tis a youthful captain, intoxicated with success, inured and implacable by nature. I believe he fights for glory, and nothing, to him, would be greater glory than the conquest of Poland--by arms and by intrigues. He thinks to dethrone me by means of factions--look how he has armed the Sapieha against me and torn Lithuania with civil war----”

“I know,” interrupted Aurora, curbing some impatience; it seemed to her that Augustus went round and round the same points, in a confused manner, which was irritating to her own clear mind that looked ahead to ultimate issues. “But the trial might be made.”

“It would have to be secret,” said the King-Elector, “and kept very carefully from the ears of Patkul and the Czar.”

“Naturally,” replied the Countess drily. “The Czar will be easily hoodwinked; as for Patkul, it is he who is the cause of all this trouble, if need be he must be sacrificed.”

Augustus turned a startled face.

“Patkul?”

“Yes, Patkul, this adventurer who has embroiled us all!”

“You mean that I should surrender him to Karl?”

“If Karl demanded it.”

“God forbid!” cried the King-Elector hastily.

“Oh, Sweden would be merciful,” said Aurora impatiently, “as I told you, it is his rôle.”

“He would not be merciful to Patkul,” replied Augustus, “who, besides, is Peter’s envoy, and sacred.”

“Oh, bah!” exclaimed Aurora, with a flash of her gorgeous eyes. “What is the Czar to you, or what has he done for you that he should be considered?”

“My honor and the law of nations----” began Augustus.

The Countess speedily demolished this masculine defense.

“Where,” she asked acutely, “was either, when you attacked the King of Sweden?”

As this action had been contrary to both, the King-Elector had nothing to reply; rather pale, he stared at the ground.

“You see,” added Aurora, anxious to soothe now that she had silenced, “it is not, and never has been, any question of any law or any honor, but simply of each man for himself in a desperate game.”

Augustus sighed.

“We need not raise the question of Patkul,” he said, with the evasion of weakness.

“We must,” replied the Countess. “For I believe it will be the first thing the King of Sweden will demand, and we must know how to answer him.”

Augustus did not speak; he did not think it possible that he could ever come so low as to deliver the man who trusted him to his enemy, but he thought that Karl might be pacified with some apparent submission and Patkul saved nevertheless.

“As you said yourself,” continued Aurora, “matters are desperate, and we cannot pause for niceties.”

She cared nothing herself for anyone but the man who, at once her master and her slave, was essential to her power and therefore to her happiness; the terrors of war, the miseries of the peasantry, the sufferings of the civilian populace, the bloodshed, the families ruined, the lands laid desolate, did not touch Aurora von Königsmarck; her gay and volatile nature did not even glance at the dark side of life.

Already, in this bitter crisis, her spirits were rising at the thought of the new exciting and brilliant part she intended to play with so much success.

Patkul was to her but a pawn in an elaborate and delicate game, and she had completely forgotten Hélène D’Einsiedel.

She went up to Augustus and laid her proud head against the laces on his breast; tall as she was she hardly reached to his heart.

Clasping him tightly in her lovely arms, and looking up at him, all soft and smiling, she whispered: “I will be your envoy to Karl of Sweden!”

Augustus remembered Peter’s words at Birsen, and caught hold of her hands and held her away from him with a movement almost of anger.

Aurora only laughed; she had foreseen this opposition and knew that in the end, as always, she would have her own will.