“What is thy judgment, Lord de Haslan,” asked Rudolph. “It is thy province to instruct the counsels of kings, to enlighten the conscience of rulers, and disseminate the sentiments of justice among populations.”
“The downfall of kingdoms, in my judgment,” replied the chancellor, “is the result of disregard of those native principles of equity which bind man to his fellow man, which are crushed, undeveloped, or concealed by reason of the weight of authority, wealth, or rapacity; and thus the concentration of national forces is broken up, and an opening left in the national armor for a fatal thrust from an insidious foe, or an open assailant. I believe the insidious foe who attacks from within, under the guise of loyalty, is the chief source of the disunion and fall of kingdoms. When the arm of justice is palsied by the poison of deceitful insinuations emanating from the intriguing emissaries of a foreign despot, and plain honor and good faith are subjected to speculations on unseen things, and these speculations are associated designedly with assumed menaces from the unseen, the heart of a nation must lose its native throb, and its hand must be weak before its enemies.”
“I would inquire,” said Lord Bruno, “to what ‘insidious foe’ the Lord Justice alludes.”
“To every insidious foe,” replied the chancellor, “who to-day counsels his King to adopt one course until the King is irretrievably committed thereto, and then on the field of battle or elsewhere, before the walls of Vienna, or at any other place, in the
