So the Countess had been fired with ardent dreams and later, when the
time seemed ripe, it was to her that Jusseret went, and with her that he
made his secret alliance.
The ambitions cherished by Marie Astaride to become Louis' queen were
secondary to a sincere devotion for Louis himself.
When at the last he had weakened and threatened to crumple, it was she
who goaded him back to resolution. When the Duke had gone half-heartedly
to his lodge to await the decision of the European Powers, it was she
who went to Puntal to direct the conspirators and watch, from the
windows of her hotel suite, the fortress on the jetty.
Her one deplorable error had been in mistaking Benton for Martin. This
had been natural enough. Though she had never met the "English Jackal,"
she had once or twice seen him at a distance, and she had been misled by
a strong resemblance and an excessive eagerness.
The afternoon she had spent on the balcony of her suite, her eyes fixed
on the Fortress do Freres.
At last, with a wildly beating heart she had seen the King, Von Ritz and
the escort ride up to the entrance and disappear. She had
waited--waited--waited, her nerves set for the climax, until the
continued silence seemed an unendurable shock.
Then the King and escort emerged. She, sitting pale and rigid, saw them
mount and turn back unharmed toward the city. Her ears, eagerly set for
the detonation which should shake the town and reverberate along the
mountain sides, ached with the emptiness of silence.
Across the street a soldier, off duty and in civilian clothes, sat on
the sea-wall and whittled. Incidentally he noticed that Madame the
Countess was interested beyond the usual in some matter. He was there to
notice Madame the Countess. His instructions from Von Ritz had been to
keep a record of her goings and comings, and who came to see her or went
away.
Therefore, when the King and his small retinue had trotted past the
window and when Madame the Countess rose to go in, and when just as she
crossed the low sill of the window she suddenly caught up both hands to
her throat and fell heavily to the floor, the soldier, whittling a small
crucifix, made a record of that also. When a moment later a gentleman
whom he had not seen in Puntal for months, but whom he knew as the Count
Borttorff, because that gentleman had formerly been Major of his
battalion, hurriedly left a closed carriage and entered the place, the
incident was noted. When still later both Borttorff and the Countess
emerged and reëntered the conveyance, driving rapidly away, he likewise
noted these things. Going from the pier whither he had followed the
closed carriage, he reported his observations with soldierly dispatch to
Colonel Von Ritz.