Page 274 - A Jacobite Exile

When Charlie stated that he had gone to Warsaw on a private mission,
whose nature was immaterial to the story, the doctor broke in:

"You need not tell me what it was, it was of course something to do with

Augustus. The way Charles is hunting down that unfortunate king is
shocking, it is downright malignity. Why, he has wasted fifteen months
over it already, and it has cost him Ingria. He could have made any terms

with Poland he liked, after his victory on the Dwina, and would then have
been free to use all his forces against us. As it is, he has wasted two

summers, and is likely to waste another, and that not for any material
advantage, but simply to gratify his hatred against Augustus; and he has left
us to take Ingria almost without a blow, and to gain what Russia has wanted

for the last hundred years, a foothold on the Baltic. He may be a great
general, but he is no politician. No real statesman would throw away solid

advantages in order to gratify personal pique."

"He considers Augustus the author of this league against him," Charlie said.

"He and the czar had no grounds at all of quarrel against him."

"We talked over that, the last time we met," the doctor said with a laugh,
"and I told you then that a foothold on the Baltic was so necessary to
Russia, that she would have accepted the alliance of the Prince of Darkness

himself to get it. As to Augustus, I don't defend him. He was ambitious, as I
suppose most of us are. He thought he saw an opportunity of gaining

territory. He has found that he has made a mistake, and will of course lose a
province. But Charles' persecution of him goes beyond all bounds. Never
before did a sovereign insist upon a nation consenting to dethrone its king

at his dictation.

"But go on with your story."

He listened without remark, until Charlie concluded.

"I wish you had been in our service," he said, "instead of that of Sweden.

You would have mounted fast. You have all the requisites for success,
above all, promptitude of decision and quickness of invention. You did well