True, he must marry the queen again; Sapt was ready with the
means, and would hear nothing of the difficulty and risk in
finding a hand to perform the necessary ceremony. If we quailed
in our courage: we had but to look at the alternative, and find
recompense the perils of what we meant to undertake by a
consideration the desperate risk involved in abandoning it.
Persuaded the substitution of Rudolf for the king was the only
thing would serve our turn, we asked no longer whether it
possible, but sought only the means to make it safe and safe.
But Rudolf himself had not spoken. Sapt's appeal and the queen's
imploring cry had shaken but not overcome him; he had wavered,
but he was not won. Yet there was no talk of impossibility or
peril in his mouth, any more than in ours: those were not what
gave him pause. The score on which he hesitated was whether the
thing should be done, not whether it could; our appeals were not
to brace a failing courage, but cajole a sturdy sense of honor
which found the imposture distasteful so soon as it seemed to
serve a personal end. To serve the king he had played the king in
old days, but he did not love to play the king when the profit of
it was to be his own.
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