Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/64

 order a general election. Or you can suspend the Constitution, and govern without any Soviete at all."

The King laughed again.

"I'm afraid the Soviete might ask for a little evidence, a few proofs, in support of my sweeping charges. I could hardly satisfy them by declaring that I had my wife's word for it. But, seriously, you exaggerate. Tsargradev is anything you like from the point of view of abstract ethics, but he's not a criminal. He hasn't the faintest motive for doing anything that isn't in accordance with the law. He's simply a vulgar, self-seeking politician, with a touch of the Tartar. But he's not a thief, and I imagine his private life is no worse than most men's."

"Wait, wait, only wait!" cried the Queen. "Time will show. Some day he'll come to grief, and then you'll see that he's even worse than I have said. I feel, I know, he's everything that's bad. Trust a woman's intuitions. They're much better than what you call evidence."

And she had a nickname for him, which, as well as her general criticisms of his character, had pretty certainly reached the Premier's ear; for, as subsequent events demonstrated, very nearly every servant in the Palace was a spy in his pay. She called him the nain jaune.

Subsequent events have also demonstrated that her woman's intuitions were indeed trustworthy. Perhaps you will remember the revelations that were made at the time of M. Tsargradev's downfall; fairly full reports of them appeared in the London papers. Murder, peculation, and revolting secret debaucheries were all, surely enough, proved against him. It was proved that he was the paid agent of Berlin; it was proved that he had had recourse to torture in dealing with certain refractory witnesses in his famous prosecution of Count Osareki. And then, there was the