'But what? You months ago expressed the warmest satisfaction at the security, though I am quite prepared to admit that the security, is of rather an unusual nature. You also agreed to the rate of interest. It is not everyone, Mr Levi, who can lend out a million at 5-1/2 per cent. And in ten years the whole amount will be paid back. I - er - I believe I informed you that the fortune of Princess Anna, who is about to accept my hand, will ultimately amount to something like fifty millions of marks, which is over two million pounds in your English money.' Prince Eugen stopped. He had no fancy for talking in this confidential manner to financiers, but he felt that circumstances demanded it.
'You see, it's like this, your Royal Highness,' began Mr Sampson Levi, in his homely English idiom. 'It's like this. I said I could keep that bit of money available till the end of June, and you were to give me an interview here before that date. Not having heard from your Highness, and not knowing your Highness's address, though my German agents made every inquiry, I concluded, that you had made other arrangements, money being so cheap this last few months.'
'I was unfortunately detained at Ostend,' said Prince Eugen, with as much haughtiness as he could assume, 'by - by important business.
I have made no other arangements, and I shall have need of the million. If you will be so good as to pay it to my London bankers - '
'I'm very sorry,' said Mr Sampson Levi, with a tremendous and dazzling air of politeness, which surprised even himself, 'but my syndicate has now lent the money elsewhere. It's in South America - I don't mind telling your Highness that we've lent it to the Chilean Government.'
'Hang the Chilean Government, Mr Levi,' exclaimed the Prince, and he went white. 'I must have that million. It was an arrangement.'
'It was an arrangement, I admit,' said Mr Sampson Levi, 'but your Highness broke the arrangement.'
There was a long silence.
'Do you mean to say,' began the Prince with tense calmness, 'that you are not in a position to let me have that million?'
'I could let your Highness have a million in a couple of years' time.'
The Prince made a gesture of annoyance. 'Mr Levi,' he said, 'if you do not place the money in my hands to-morrow you will ruin one of the oldest of reigning families, and, incidentally, you will alter the map of Europe. You are not keeping faith, and I had relied on you.'
'Pardon me, your Highness,' said little Levi, rising in resentment, 'it is not I who have not kept faith. I beg to repeat that the money is no longer at my disposal, and to bid your Highness good morning.'
And Mr Sampson Levi left the audience chamber with an awkward, aggrieved bow. It was a scene characteristic of the end of the nineteenth century - an overfed, commonplace, pursy little man who had been born in a Brixton semi-detached villa, and whose highest idea of pleasure was a Sunday up the river in an expensive electric launch, confronting and utterly routing, in a hotel belonging to an American millionaire, the representative of a race of men who had fingered every page of European history for centuries, and who still, in their native castles, were surrounded with every outward circumstance of pomp and power.
'Aribert,' said Prince Eugen, a little later, 'you were right. It is all over. I have only one refuge - '
'You don't mean - ' Aribert stopped, dumbfounded.
'Yes, I do,' he said quickly. 'I can manage it so that it will look like an accident.'
