Princess Sophia, on her return to Amandos, found the affairs of State more irksome, if possible, than ever. The innumerable petty businesses to which she had to give her attention seemed more than usually futile to her, and there was no table handy where, after a day of unutterably wearisome routine, she could forget the Mayor and the wife of the Mayor, and the potatoes and tobacco, in the enchanting uncertainties of roulette. Prince Petros, at her request, relieved her during the day of a large part of her duties; but in the evening, when she would have been glad to get a game of bezique even with him—for his card-playing had strangely gone off of late—there was often some committee at which, so he assured her, the presence of one of them necessary.
It had more than once seemed to her that this recurrence of committees waxing more frequent than under her father, and she noted the circumstance as a curious one. There seemed, now that the House had risen, an interminable deal of business to be transacted, and it was{108} more often than not that Malakopf was closeted with the Prince for an hour or two after dinner. Again and again it happened that she and her husband would have just sat down to a game, when it was announced that the Prime Minister was below, and wished to consult the Princess on a matter of urgent importance. On such occasions she always asked Petros to represent her, since she really could not face Malakopf, and he obeyed with cheerful alacrity.
It was during one of these interviews—a tiresome after-dinner interruption—when the Princess was left yawning to herself in the drawing-room, that an idea occurred to her, so simple in itself, and so easy of execution, that she was lost in astonishment at her own stupidity that she had not thought of it before. What could be more obvious than that the remedy for these terrible days and interrupted evenings was in the establishment of a casino at Amandos, where she could play not this tiresome bezique, but the real unapproachable roulette? And she rose from her chair, and fairly danced round the room at the thought. She would send for Pierre—the inimitable Pierre—the most discreet and attentive of croupiers. He should manage the tables for her, and receive a magnificent salary. Oh, heavens! what a relief it would be to slip out of the House for a recuperative hour in the casino—to forget for a little the unrivalled tedium of State affairs! The casino should be built on Crown land, close to the Palace garden, and{109} there should be a quiet entrance through a private gate into the place, to save going round the garden walls. There should be a little red room, like that in which she had played so often at Monte Carlo, and which of late the obsequious manager had reserved for her when there was a party with her, where Pierre, urbane and infallible, should set the little ball spinning, with his thrilling plain-song chant, ‘Faites vos jeux, messieurs et mesdames—faites vos jeux!’
The entrance of Petros interrupted her rosy visions, and before he was well inside the room:
‘Oh, Petros, I have such an idea!’ she cried. ‘I shall start a nice little casino here at Amandos, and while you, you dear industrious old thing, are having your endless interviews with centipede Malakopf, I shall run across and just take ten minutes at roulette—a breath of fresh air. It shall be built on that piece of land, just outside the garden, where you wanted to have an asylum for decayed and idiotic old gentlemen, and Pierre shall be the manager.’
Now, though Malakopf often groaned under the slowness of the Prince, Petros was not altogether without wits. Perhaps his late interview with Malakopf had sharpened them—indeed, he seemed to Sophia to have acquired a certain quickness lately, though not at cards; but, at any rate, he saw at once that Sophia was coming to meet their schemes half-way, as Malakopf had wished she should. A reigning Princess, winning and losing{110} money from her loyal subjects, could not be construed into an edifying spectacle, and he made no doubt that the people of Rhodopé would agree with him. She could not, so he thought, have hit on a more simple and direct method of dividing the folk into two parties—one for her (a small one, he hoped), and one (consequently a large one) against her. Truly she was sowing the seed of a revolution broadcast, and it would grow up armed men against herself. His face was a miracle of delighted sympathy.
‘Oh, Sophia,’ he cried, ‘how great an idiot you must think me for never having suggested that! Oh, if I had only had the idea, the casino should have been ready when you returned! It should have been built in a day, like a fairy-palace, to pleasure you. And Pierre, Pierre is just the man—sober and steady, and full of the divine fire. I remember his laying his hand on his heart one night after one of those evenings, those dear evenings, we spent together at Monte Carlo, and saying: “I adore the Princess! None plays so finely as she!”’
Sophia was charmed with his readiness to take her idea up.
‘At last, and at last!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Petros, my soul is sick for roulette!’
‘Poor dear Sophia,’ said he, ‘and I am afraid you find me grown very dull. But it is true you have every reason to find me dull; I am so taken up with these public affairs, that the work has become a passion to me. In my little way, I have{111} tried to fulfil these duties; at first, I allow, with distaste, but the performance of them has brought its own reward.’
‘Ah, copy-books—copy-books!’ cried Sophia, laying her hands laughingly on his shoulder.
‘Copy-books—even so, Sophia,’ he said. ‘The proper study of mankind is man, and it is better to be useful than to be clever. I am full of such thoughts. And it is dull for you. Would that I could do more, however.’
‘You are a dear, good man, Petros,’ she said, ‘and I am delighted with you.’
‘I have done my best,’ he said, with a quiet dignity and an extreme sincerity of manner.
He glanced for a moment at a bundle of papers he held in his hand.
‘No, no,’ cried Sophia; ‘you shall not attend to any more business to-night. What are those papers? Throw them into the grate, and talk to me about the casino.’
The man had his part at the finger-tips.
‘The latter with pleasure, the former I must refuse to do,’ he said. ‘How would you greet me, Sophia, if I came to you next week and said your Civil List had not been paid, or that a deputation insisted on waiting on you? What is the time? Just eleven. Well, we will sit and talk, and soon I must go back to work. No, no,’ he cried, as she would laughingly have taken the papers from him; ‘it is for dull old people like me to do this sort of work. You shall not see any of them, Sophia;{112}’ and with a quick motion he folded them up and put them in his pocket.
But he had had a rather awkward moment. It was quite true that they were not for Sophia to see, since among them was a note from Malakopf containing urgent advice to him not to be in too great a hurry, and quoting Napoleon to that effect.
So—for there was no law in Rhodopé against gambling, and not likely to be while Sophia lived—the Princess’s casino rose apace. The marble quarries belonging to the Crown grew loud with the chisel, and unceasingly poured forth their translucent treasures to pleasure the Princess; for the hangings of her rooms the silk-worms toiled and span, and for their colouring the purple shells of Tyre worked their miracles; for her the looms of the Orient clashed and wove, and the red roses on Arab stuffs grew thicker than the stars at night.
By spring the walls had risen to their full stately height, and Duvelleroys, of Paris, who had contracted for the finishing and decorations of the establishment, were already sending out their artists and argosies. A flight of broad marble steps, balustraded in a grotesque flamboyant style, led up to the great terrace running along the west front, which overlooked the town of Amandos, and commanded a magnificent sea-view. In summer this would be an out-of-door dining-room, where the player would cool his fevered brain by the contemplation of the infinite sea, and the sight of the sun{113} setting in amber clouds behind the northern cape of Corfu. Double doors gave entrance to a marble flagged hall, from which opened the various cardrooms; on the left was the largest public-room, for roulette only, and a cabinet off this, with scarlet satin walls, was called the Princess’s room. Straight in front of the entrance were the rooms for baccarat, and on the right was what Sophia called the nursery, a room devoted to the innocent, if somewhat lugubrious, pursuit of ‘little horses’ and the ‘train’; but, as she said, a finished gambler was made, not born, and the young needed education. A smoking-room, containing a bar and a white marble statue of Luck, from the chisel of Augier, blindfold and smiling on one side of the mouth, completed the square.
On the first floor were the dining-room and the various drawing-rooms, where the less orthodox games of whist, picquet, and bezique might be played; while the downstairs rooms of the club—so Sophia named it—were devoted to the truer forms of play. Thus, as she acutely observed, extremes could be seen meeting, for in her club, as in all other clubs, whist was only allowed in certain rooms.
Upstairs, again, over the dining and drawing-rooms, were some twenty bedrooms, so that the most thorough devotees—those, in fact, who were purged of all other desires—need not leave the club night or day, and the goddess of their worship might directly watch, if so she felt disposed, over their{114} slumbers, and send them dreams full of the true religion.
Malakopf saw the building go up with mixed feelings. At first he had been quite of the same mind as Prince Petros, agreeing that the Princess was playing most directly into their hands and forwarding their schemes. But the reception of the prospectus by the people, and the avidity with which the shares in the undertaking were snatched up—for the Princess had floated a company—was somewhat puzzling to him. Hitherto gambling had been almost unknown in Rhodopé, always excepting in the precincts of the palace, but the idea of gaining rouleaux of gold by merely sitting in an admirably comfortable arm-chair in a beautiful room seemed to have taken strong hold on the public imagination. The shares were divided into ￡60,000 of ordinary shares, and ￡40,000 of debenture stock, which were to pay 5 per cent. The Princess had herself invested ￡10,000 in the ordinary shares, and Prince Petros, with characteristic caution, ￡5,000 in debenture stock; but within three hours of the subscription being opened, every share was taken up. The stock was issued at par, but before the week was out it was already quoted at 115, and before the building was complete it reached 120, and Prince Petros was strongly inclined to sell out, though the fear of his wife’s scorn prevented him.
Here, too, Malakopf had acted with Semitic prudence. Supposing by any chance the Princess{115} should, in some unforeseen way, frustrate the scheme of himself and Petros, and she and her gambling continue to throne it over Rhodopé, it would be well to have a foot in her camp, and while investing only ￡1,000 under his own name, he telegraphed from Vienna in the name of a large banking firm there to secure ￡10,000 of ordinary shares, or as many as might be allotted.
But these three were the only large investors, and for the most part the money was made up by small speculators, on the strength, so it seemed, of the Princess’s name. Ten fishermen from Mavromáti, for instance, who, so to speak, did not know red from black, clubbed together and purchased a ￡100 ordinary share; a wild-eyed shepherd-boy came in from the remote hills, and asked for twenty francs worth of the new club; and the head of the Education Department put a question in the Assembly as to whether it was permissible to invest the surplus of the Government grant in the Princess’s company.
Now, Malakopf, astute politician as he was, and unrivalled astronomer of the financial heaven, could not with certainty interpret these signs of the times. The readiness with which the subscription was taken up seemed to augur either a greater popularity of the Princess than he had bargained for, or a love of gambling in her subjects hitherto void of fruition. If either of these interpretations was correct—and he did not see a loophole for a third—it argued not well for the success of the anti-dynastic conspiracy.{116} He had hoped that there would be some outburst of popular feeling against the scheme, or an unfriendly reference to it in the Assembly. It is true there had been some great outburst of popular feeling, but that had been in favour of it; and as for the unfriendly reference in the Assembly, that was still unspoken. For himself, he dared not allude to it in a hostile spirit (Prince Petros’s tongue was also tied), for he had openly invested ￡1,000 in the company, and he would without doubt be called ugly names if, after that, he showed public disapproval of it. More than that, supposing he organized a successful opposition to it, he stood fair to lose that much larger sum which he had covertly put into it. Of his two possible interpretations for the success of the subscription, he much preferred to attribute it to the popularity of the Princess, for if a latent love of gambling was innate in the hearts of the Rhodopians, he had to face the fact that before long she would be doubly endeared to her subjects, since, considering her merely as a gambler, she was unique and magnificent—even Petros, with his system, allowed that—and there were no two words to the question.
Prince Petros meantime watched the rising walls with a daily accession of disgust and misgiving. He was a skilful card-player, but he was not a gambler. His daydream of seeing Sophia go evening after evening to empty and depopulated rooms, to find Pierre mournfully yawning behind his hand, and regretting the gay stir and bustle of Monte{117} Carlo, was replaced by a vision which showed him Sophia crowned and honoured queen of the gamblers. He was both more sanguine and more easily cast down than his acuter colleague. He had foreseen a complete and immediate success when the idea of a club was put to him by his wife, where Malakopf had only seen a possible factor of success; and similarly now, while Malakopf was dubious, the Prince was frankly despondent.
‘There is no hope here,’ he said to the Prime Minister one day, ‘where I had hoped so much. She is more popular than ever, and the gold burns in the people’s pockets while they wait for the club to be opened. They are gamblers—born gamblers—I am sure of it, and she is the finest of them all. You can take my word for it, there is no one in the world with so fine a style. They will worship her method of play, they will adopt it universally, so far as their more timorous natures permit, and she will pile success on success. Half Rhodopé will think of nothing but doubling their winnings, the other half of repairing their losses. I almost wish I had never come to this damnable country. Rhodopé will become a roulette-board, and I of infinitely less moment than the marble which the croupier sets spinning.’
Malakopf moved impatiently in his chair. He no longer treated the Prince in private with the least form of ceremony.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, do not be so fretful and childish!’ he said. ‘If I, who am as cunning as{118} the devil and as wise as the original serpent, cannot yet make up my mind how this experiment of your wife’s will turn out, how is it possible for you to see the issues with such clearness? You do not grasp the situation. This new club is a new factor in our scheme; it is quite likely that it is a factor against us. On the other hand, it may indirectly give us an opportunity. We have to wait, so let us do so like reasonable men. I have no patience with prophets—there is no such thing as prophecy; the whole world is one calculation. You have not calculated; you only prophesy. I never prophesy; but I am not without a mathematical gift.’
‘You are not tied by the ankle to the steps of a throne,’ retorted Petros. ‘You do not know Sophia as I know her, and, what is more, you have only a thousand pounds in this precious club.’
Malakopf had not told, and did not intend to tell, Petros about his further investment, and he replied:
‘You are wholly wrong, my dear Prince. Because you drink tea with Princess Sophia, and see her in her stays, you think you know her better than I. Perhaps you know the people better also. I, at any rate, know that she is capable of almost anything—certainly of any piece of extravagant folly, but also, I am afraid, of a consummate stroke of Statecraft. If I were to take to prophesying in your spirit, an uneasy man would be standing in your shoes. You don’t see a quarter of the possible risks we may have to run, but you see no more of our possible opportunities. But observe, I never pro{119}phesy, and I have not yet enough data to tell how this affair will turn out. Be good enough to wait; nothing was ever done in a hurry, though things may be done fast.’
Pierre, obedient to the commands of his adored Princess, arrived in the month of April, and expressed himself charmed with all the arrangements, and more than gratified with his salary. The Princess gave him audience at the Palace on the day of his arrival, talked to him for an hour with great vivacity, and would have liked to ask him to dinner, if it were only to see Petros’ face when she told him who her guest was. But she refrained, and Pierre, who would have been greatly embarrassed by the honour, was allowed to take his departure in peace.
The club was formally opened on the first of May, so breathless had been the speed with which the Princess’s plans were put into execution, and she herself performed the ceremony in full state. Levée dress with orders was worn, and the gardens of the Casino presented the most brilliant appearance. Only those who had paid their subscriptions and become members of the club were allowed in the spacious grounds, but it really seemed as if all Rhodopé were members. The Princess had arranged quite an imposing little ceremony, resembling the enthronement of a bishop. Followed by Petros and her ministers, she walked up the steps of the south veranda, and in breathless silence tapped at the closed doors leading into the great hall. From inside Pierre’s voice asked, ‘Who is there?’ The{120} Princess thereupon replied: ‘I, Sophia, hereditary Princess of Rhodopé,’ on which Pierre threw the doors open, and, bowing low, preceded her to the big public room, while the Guards’ band in the gallery trumpeted out the Rhodopé anthem. Arrived at the large roulette room, she, Prince Petros, Malakopf, the Mayor of Amandos, the Minister of the Interior, the first Lord of the Admiralty, the Commander-in-Chief, the Lord Chancellor, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Chairman of Council, took their places round the table, and Pierre seated himself in the croupier’s place. Sophia had also asked the Bishop of Amandos to take his place with them, adding, however, that as scruples might stand in his lordship’s way, this was to be considered as an invitation and not a command, and as an invitation he had refused it. Everyone then staked twenty-seven napoleons (the same number being the years of the Princess) on a half-dozen of numbers, and Pierre set the momentous ball spinning. Round and round it went, slowed down, wavered, and finally lurched into zero, the number backed by the bank.
Princess Sophia sprang up and clapped her hands.
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