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 VI

"IMPOSSIBLE" OR "IMMEDIATE"?

OTENOVICS was indeed in a quandary. Mistitch had precipitated an unwelcome and premature crisis. The Minister's deliberate, slow-moving game was brought to a sudden issue which he was not ready to face. It had been an essential feature—a governing rule—of his campaign to avoid any open conflict with the Prince of Slavna until an occasion arose on which both the army and the King would be on his side. The King was a power not merely by reason of his cheaply won popularity, but also because he was, while he lived, the only man who could crown Stenovics's operations with the consummation to which the Minister and his ally, Countess Ellenburg, looked forward with distant yet sanguine hope. The army was with him now, but the other factor was lacking. The King's pride, as well as his affection, was enlisted in his son's interest. Moreover, this occasion was very bad.

Mistitch was no better than an assassin; to take up arms on his behalf was to fight in a cause plainly disgraceful—one which would make success very difficult and smirch it forever and beyond remedy, even if it came. It was no cause in which to fight both Prince and King. That would be playing the big stake on a bad hand—as Stafnitz put it.

Yet the alternative? Stafnitz, again, had put that 129