The King Across the Mountains

The King Across the Mountains

A perilous moment at the puppet-theater. The audience — consisting mainly of the children of the poor, there by themselves, or those of the lower middle-class, accompanied by their country-girl nursemaids; of the meaner class of peasants, up to the city to hawk a wicker-basket-box of dubious eggs; and of super-annuated servants given a penny to spend by Young Master, or of the commonest of common laborers, smelling powerfully of the fish- market or the livery-stable — the audience at the puppet-theater are sitting at the edges of the benches, wondering if Little Handsome Hansli is going to be eaten up by The Ogre. Little Handsome Hansli is wondering, too.

“ Who will save muh from being eaten by The Ogre?” he cries (or, at any rate, a voice from behind the backdrop understood to be his, cries) allowing his dangling legs to buckle and his dangling hands to be twitched aloft in prayer; “who will save muh, will nobodduh save muh, will somebodduh save muh, will anybodduh save muh, and if so, who?” A good question. At this, the much bigger puppet, half-man and half-beast, chops its jaws to show its monstrous fangs and tushes, rubs its belly in the nummy-nummy sign, jumps up and down and makes menacing gestures and utters the famous gurgling-growling sound known world-wide* as “the chortle of The Ogre” —

“WHO will save muh?” A thirteen-year-old baby-minder at this point beginning to whimper, her four-, five-, and six-year-old charges at once burst into loud wails. “Help! WHO?” cries out the Little Handsome Hansli puppet; whereat observe a not-overbright hostler’s helper starting to his feet and being tugged back down by his convives under some dim adumbration that this is really not allowed. And whilst Little Handsome Hansli’s despairing hoot of “Whoooo?” rings through every dirty ear and a few clean ones —

— see suddenly appearing from Stage Right, a puppet truly marvelously adorned, and crying out, “I will save you, Little Handsome Hansli!” Much

* World-wide throughout Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, that is.

applause. This figure wears a tall, brimless hat of black samite, with a cross, rather like the archaic headgear of a Hyperborean Uniate mountain archpriest, hat protruding up from a large and battered crown; its garments a mixture of inauthentic military and ecclesiastical rag-tags. ‘Twill save you from filling the upper and lower intestines of The Ogre, for I am PURSER- JOHNNY, the Slayer of Frenchmen, Ogres, Monghouls, and Turks! — take that, The Ogre, you!, and this, and this, and —” Much, much applause. Shouts.

Shortly afterward, having quitted the puppet-theater, “We have really nothing quite like that in The Hague,” said Dr. Philosof J.M.R. van der Clooster, Director of the Stateholders’ Collegium in the Dutch capital.

“No. Uniquely a part of our own rich cultural heritage, if that is what one would correctly call it,” said Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy, of many degrees and titles, and of the City of Bella, capital of the Triple Monarchy of Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania (fourth largest Empire in Europe [Russia, then Austria-Hungary, then Germany; the Turks, their European territories reduced largely to Albania, Thrace, and part of Macedonia, were fifth]). Doctor Philosof van der Clooster, on a trip around anyway the Old World, had stopped offbriefly in Bella; and Eszterhazy was showing him sights. “I hope you have not picked up anything in that flea-pit. I warned you. But you would go.”

“I have sprinkled with powder. But tell me, though, Compeer” — Dr. J.M.R. v.d. C. was a fellow-member of the Effectively Noble Order of Saint Bridget of Sweden (Savants’ Section) — “who and what is or was ‘Purser- johnny’? ”

“Prester John,” said his compeer, shortly.

“Ah, ahah!” sang out the Netherlander, in high delight; “Prester John!” — as though the emphasis would save from confusion with any possible Prester Jane, Prester William, or (shall we say) Prester Olga. “I did think it would be most unusual for any mere purser to achieve apotheosis —”

“Most unusual,” agreed Dr. Eszterhazy. Wondered if he should refer to the process for which the British in India had a name, whereby unfamiliar ethnically-exotic words were transformed into ethnically-familiar words — such as assuming that the names of the Prophet’s grandsons, Hassan and Hussein, were actually the home-like Hobson and Jobson. He decided not to. Van der Clooster was very knowledgeable, but he was (often) very heavy. If, for example, one referred to “the songs of Homer,” van der Clooster might ask if one meant Homer, the Hellenic poet, or Homer Rodeheaver, the American hymn-singing evangelist. Eszterhazy observed, as they proceeded, the perhaps picturesque population of the teeming South Ward; but he for once (once?) observed without enthusiasm.

“Tell me, my dear Compeer,” avoiding the erratically-located stall of a seller of “green” sausage, “who do you think Prester John really was?” — van der Clooster.

The mid-afternoon chimes of a clock-tower sounded nearby, informing them, musically, of the not-very-latest-news, viz., that Malbrouk had gone to war. A wind, brief but brisk, stirred about the usual South Ward stirabout of old pie-papers, old fruit-peelings, dust, desiccated horse-dung; and blew away the ragged clouds, revealing patches of blue skies, revealing the mountains.

Some might perhaps perform the same tasks day after day, month after month, year after year, without fatigue: His High Highness the Heir, for example, never tired of hunting, or of taking troops on manoeuvres; for that matter, Betti and Borri Kratt, who rolled meat-pie-crust in a room in an alley off Lower Hunyadi Street, never tired of mixing flour and water and processing dough. Did Dr. Eszterhazy never tire of reading books, of study­ing and studying, day in and month-year-out?

Sometimes, yes he did.

“Who do you think wrote the famous so-called Letter from Prester John, claiming to be both priest and king, thus causing medieval Christendom to look upon him as its possible savior from the Mongol Hordes; who?”

A flock of brown-and-white milch-goats followed its piping herdsman, ready to provide strictly-fresh milch as when/where called for, passed by; Eszterhazy, stepping delicately, avoided the evidences of its passage. “Who?” echo of Little Handsome Hansli? “One may only guess. My guess is that some medieval monk on Mount Athos wrote it, in a fit of boredom and wishful thinking.”

Van der Clooster disputed the guess until they reached their next stop, the Archepiscopal Museum; and after that they called at Rudl’s Famous Mussels with Fresh Sweet Butter House. And then they went to Dr. v.d. Cloos- ter’s hotel rooms for Holland gin. And then it was time to take the visiting savant to catch his train for Zagreb. Ah, Zagreb! Glamorous, sparkling, brilliant Zagreb! Eh? Well, maybe not.

Steam engineering, his current study, had grown lately just a trifle stale, perhaps from overwork; half, Eszterhazy wished to geologize a bit; half, he would study Sympathetic Ethnology, (i.e., Magic) among the Men of the Mountains. And, whilst he hesitated, the voice of a spirit whispered in his ear, “Why not try both?”

Geologists, amateur and professional, had tapped the rocks and stones of the Hyperthracian Hills, and, discovering no mines of gold and silver or precious stones or coal, had departed. Botanists bearing butterfly nets had sallied through them, failed to find exciting new specimens, and also departed. Each mountain (and each valley) was said to have its own peculiar count or prince — and some of them were said to be very peculiar indeed. This profusion of nobility was held, in Bella and in Avar-Ister, to be perhaps not in the best of taste. “If a man there has a cow, he’s a count,” it was said in those cities. “If he has two, he’s a prince.” The princes, anyway, were proud, even if poor; Bella and Avar-Ister did not like them? Of no importance, they did not like Bella or Avar-Ister. So there. They stayed in their remote reaches and recesses, reportedly pursuing, barefooted, the chamois from crag to crag, exercising the jus primae noctis, and administering the rough and ready justice of the region without much recourse to the larger and more lagging units of government.

Many thought these petty chieftains to be a joke, but Eszterhazy was not among that many. In his first class at the School of Geology, the Lecturer, trying to slide them in easily without the use of too many technical terms right away, had explained that mountains might be divided into two categories: “Young, rugged mountains . . . and old, worn-down mountains.” And had explained this and explained this forever. Eszterhazy, at least, would never forget it. The Hyperthracian Hills, then, were old, worn-down mountains. And their minor nobility were an old, worn-down nobility, dating back to the times of Tsar Samuel and the Bulgarian Wars, and the troubled era which followed. Who had held rule in Little Byzantia and the Hyperthracian Hills, then? who kept the poor man’s crops and the widow’s goat-kid from the fire? and, who had protected the pedlar’s pack and market- stall? when the Palaeologian Dynasty in Constantinople was tottering to its end; and the Ottoman Empire not yet achieved that which was to allow a traveller, even as a conquered subject, to walk one league along a road in safety? Who had exercised misrule was both easier and harder to say: brigands, certainly: nature was not alone in abhorring a vacuum, vacuums occurred in power as well as in laboratories; brigandage formed as scum forms on stagnant water. Who — in the as yet nameless mountains and wilderness areas later called Greater and Little Byzantia — who had filled that vacuum, who alone had enforced the Natural Law and the Social Contract?

The petty princes, then not so petty; the minor nobility, then not so minor.

That is not to say that they had governed well, for sometimes some of them had governed ill. But, as a certain ancient rabbi (Eszterhazy did not remember his name) was cited as having said, “Pray for the welfare of the government; for, were it not for the fear of it, men would swallow one another up alive.”

Of course nowadays, he thought, glancing at this official structure and that, one placed one’s trust in such institutions as the Constitutional Monarchy, the Parliamentary Rule, and the Dedicated Civil Service. And — looking elsewhere around the world — God! one had better!

On his way home from the perhaps over-large railroad station, Eszterhazy, glancing helplessly from right to left from the midst of the usual tie-up of jammed wagons and carriages, observed a light landau of the latest design (with royal crest upon the door), the driver of which was rather recklessly plying his whip — and not seeming much to regard upon whose beast or body the lash came down. Seated in the carriage was a young man whose weakly-handsome features were immediately familiar: and not alone because he looked rather like Little Handsome Hansli, and this started another, and yet not dissimilar, trend of thought.

August Salvador Ferdinand Louis Maurits was the son of Ignats Salvador Samuel, Heir to the Triple Crown: in short, he was heir to the Heir. The Crown Princeling was in his early twenties, and some said that his rosy face was adorned with merely whiskers and weak good looks; and some, whatever they may have thought, did not say so. True that there were no lettres de cachet, no Bastille nor its equivalent: still, why make waves?

Baron Burgenblitz of Blitzenburg knew why — he liked making waves. “I say that we could learn a thing or two from the Turks in the matter of succession,” said he. “Pick the likeliest lad among the next ofkin, and as for the rest, strangle the lot!” This prickly Baron was not welcome in many houses in Bella; fat lot he cared.

When Bummschkejer’s, the great drapers on Austerlitz Crescent, had exhibited its first wax mannequins, there had been enormous excitement. The woman-mannequin had been greatly admired for her Paris fashions, as she stood in the window. But when the throng in Bella had observed that the man-mannequin, with his almost-impossibly-regular arched eyebrows, intense blue eyes, Cupid’s bow and cherry-red lips, pale strawberry-pink complexion, beautifully fuzzy whiskers, and immaculately-shaven chin — an instant conviction had been formed that the mannequin was actually a statue of the Crown Princeling.

And what else of the Crown Princeling?

Ignats Louis, the King-Emperor, not one of your keen disciples of Pesta- lozzi or any other professor of theories of education, had said once or twice, “As long as the lad has learned his catechism and can sit a horse, who cares if he knows mathematiccy and the Spanish guitar?” On the few occasions when they — briefly — informally — met, the Crown Princeling addressed the King-Emperor as “Bobbo,” and the King-Emperor addressed the Crown Princeling as “Baby.”

As for the Heir himself, he was always rather busy slitting up the boars and stags which he hunted to the sound of drums and trumpets according to the custom of the antique battue', and when not, he was busy drilling his regiments. To the officers and men of his regiments, he applied more or less the same standard as his sovereign applied to the Crown Princeling, save that he was rather more liberal in regard to the catechism. “Mind you,” he said, “I won’t have no outright heresy in me ranks; none of them Dacians, Luetics or pedagogues, or whatever they be called. But I ain’t too pertickler if a man’s a bit muzzy about the difference between them mortuary and them venereal sins, for I ain’t too clear about ’em meself.” There were said to be a few things which the Heir was none too clear about; never mind.

“But I hate a man who haven’t got a good seat. Flog a fellow a few times and he’ll sit up straight and do the jumps real good, see if he don’t.” One saw.

Under the circumstances, it was perhaps not to be expected that strict application to any course of study was required of the Crown Princeling; and this was just as well (Eszterhazy thought), because certainly none was forthcoming. He grew up able to sit a horse well enough on parade, and to hunt the boar and stag; and one saw him often at the lighter theaters and music halls and race-tracks and cabarets; and, beyond that, if there was nothing, well, at least one saw and heard nothing.

In an open and competitive examination for the Throne, Ignats Louis, the King and Emperor (King of Scythia, King of Pannonia, Grand Hetman of Hyperborea, Emperor of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania) would not even have won a scholarship. But what he did not have in wits, he made up for by his immensely paternal personality, as the Heir made up for his own lack with a dogmatic doggedness which at least got things done. But with what did the Heir’s heir, August Salvador, the Crown Princeling, compensate? Fortunate that the question was seldom asked, for there seemed seldom if any answer.

Well! The King-Emperor was in good health, the Heir was as strong as a bull, one prayed for long life for both of them — and for the rest, one trusted in the principles of Constitutional Monarchy, Parliamentary Rule, and a Dedicated Civil Service —

God! One had better!

Eszterhazy had most recently seen the Royal and Imperial Youngling at the latest quarterly levee. Present was the entire Diplomatic Corps, including His Highness Sri Jam Jam Bahadur Bhop, Titular Personal Envoy of the Grand Mogul. The Grand Mogul himself was living, not very grandly, in exile, in Burmah, having (rather rashly) assumed — and not he alone — that the Englishmen visible in India had been all the Englishmen there were . . . and now and then he fretfully complained about the low quality of his opium ration; but these facts had as yet been but dimly perceived in Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania, where the British Ambassador, Sir Augustus Fink-Nottle, saw no reason to press the point. He always bowed very politely whenever he encountered Sri Jam Jam, a nonogenarian who lived chiefly on Turkish Delight. The American Minister, General Hiram A. Abercrombie, not one of your sticklers for protocol, thought that old Sri Jam Jam was the Grand Mogul, and always saluted him. The old man, in turn, seeing that Abercrombie (in the democratic-republican manner) wore no uniform, believed him to be one of the butlers, and always gave him a tip. The general always took it. The carpets of the Titular Personal Envoy were regularly cleaned (for free) by the Armenian Lesser Merchants’ Guild, which retained fading but still-fond memories of the protection offered by a long-past Grand Mogul to their merchant-shipping in the Indian Ocean at a time when it was being rather vexed by one Wm. Kidd, a Master of Craft, and one with some very odd notions of the principles of meum and tuum.

Also present and accounted for as a fully-accredited member, in fact the Doyen or senior member, of the Corps Diplomatique, was the Nobly Born Legate of the Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta; rumor, painted full of tongues, from time to time, circulated in Bella to the effect that the Knights were indeed no longer sovereign in Malta; but the Minister of Foreign Affairs had a rather large back-log of work, and no time to pay attention to rumors. “Where are all these places in Southern America?” once he asked Dr. Eszterhazy, distractedly. “What is the Argentine Republic? Once there was a Confederation of the La Plata; why can I not find it on my map? The Emperors of Hayti and Brazil do not answer their mails. And — is the Confederation of the La Plata the same as the Confederate States, or is it not? Do we recognize these American States, or do we recognize only some of them, and if so, which? What and where is the Republic of Texas? Things were simpler before Bonaparte, don’t you agree, Engelbert?” Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy said that things were seldom simple, and that this was no exception.

“However,” said he, “we must take things as we find them. I shall send you a minute on the American question. [“Oh, thank you, Engelbert!”] — meanwhile, should we not reply to the request from the Republic of San Marino to lower the excise tax on pasta ... or is it pizza?”

“I don’t know, it is so long since I have studied Dante,” said the Foreign Minister, dolefully.

It was on this occasion — i.e., that of the levee — that His Young Highness the Crown Princeling, in reply to the question if he thought that Prester John had lived in Abyssinia, revealed that he had never heard of Prester John. Or, for that matter, Abyssinia.

“Is that the same as Absentia?”

“Oh, your Young Highness! Surely you will recall [softo voce] that Prester John was a mysterious and possibly mythical king who, it was hoped, would save the world from the Mongol Hordes? There is no such place as Absentia!”

“The which from what? Nonsense. Course there is. Remember What’s- his-name, who fiddled the regimental accounts and fled the country? Was tried in Absentia, wasn’t he?”

“Oh Your Young Highness! The Mongol hordes'. Genghis Khan and Tamurlane! Towers of skulls, you know.”

“Anything like the Tunnel of Love?”

A nearby and newly-arrived Emissary (from the Ty-coon of Cho-sen, or some such place and title), fortunately at that moment asked if he might hear some example of the native music of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. Dr. Eszterhazy’s tenor immediately began the chorus to a popular tune of which the Noble Infant was sure to have heard; and in a moment the Crown Princeling’s baritone enthusiastically joined in with Port, port, port, and port, port, port, oh Heigh-ho andjolly-oh,

Oh, port, port, port!

If the Congress of Europe could only be run along the lines of a glee club, then Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania would be sure to prosper.

Meanwhile, it was certainly time for Eszterhazy to have his holidays — or, as the Americans would call them, vacation.

The Heir considered the boars of Greater Byzantia to be runty, and there were not enough stags; also the topography was not favorable to cavalry charges; and these opinions he carried over to the adjacent regions of the Hyperthracian Mountains. The Heir went there but seldom. And as there was a paucity of light theaters, cabarets, race-tracks, and music halls, the Crown Princeling never went there at all. But every seven and a half years, come drought or flood or whatever, the King and Emperor went there; and on one such visitation, years ago, Eszterhazy had been an equerry, Yohan Popoff a prince-host: and so an odd sort of friendship had developed.

And so, soon after van der Clooster had departed for Zagreb, Dr. Eszterhazy put aside steam engineering for a dual-purpose visit to the Hyperthracian Hills.

“And what shall ye do with these wee bits of prettystone ye’ve gathered?” asked Prince Popoff, at table. His table.

“Set some of them, anyway, in brooches, and give them to my aunties,” said Eszterhazy, promptly — not wishing to bother his host with boring descriptions of trituration, spectroscopic analysis, and the like —

— and besides, some of them he did propose to set in brooches and give them to his aunties.

“Very good,” said his host. “Then ye’ll not be digging great holes and corrupting my peoples with moneys. Goats fall into great holes sometimes, if they be new great holes. And about the only times my peoples see moneys is when some strangers have to pause at the cross-stop and pay the imposts for their goods and gear. Which ain’t often, as there are easier ways to get out of Austria than this way. To get into Austria, for that matter.

Eszterhazy was not thinking much about Austria, save that he knew that the forthcoming Congress of Europe was to be held in Vienna. Mostly he was thinking how pleasant it was to be in this mountain fastness so far from Bella (and from Vienna, too, for that matter) and its cares, and how restful and trustworthy not-so-old Popoff was, and how rustic and pleasant he looked. Then at once there entered someone new to him, an old woman who did not think so. At all.

“You have no face, you have no stomach,” she squawled at the Prince. “Look, look! crumbs in your moustache, wudkey on your breath, wine on your waistcoat, your hair looks like badly stooked straw, last week’s shirt;

what an example for a prince of the mountains and a descendant of His Reverence — / don’t know — my life has been wasted, poured out like wash- water; you might as well have grown up in the stye, sucking the grey sow’s teat; where is the hot bread for the zoop, the hot bread for the zoop? Holy Souls in Purgatory, is no one at work in the kitchen?” Never ceasing to scold and shriek, she hustled out; old and scrannel, not in the least picturesque, boney and rat-toothed, leaving behind her the echo of her voice — like a badly-worn cylinder for one of the new talking-machines: Edisonola, it was called — and an odor of onions and armpits.

Eszterhazy supposed her to have been either mother or mother-in-law, or possibly the invariable “extra-aunt”; had she been mistress or wife, certainly she would long ago have been dropped off the Bear-Tooth Crag, with a couple of pig-irons (to be retrieved later) on each leg. But —

“She was my wet-nurse,” said Prince Popoff, whose arcane talents evidently included telepathy; “of course I need a wet-nurse now the way I need another orifice in my fundament, but I can’t get rid of her.”

“Doubtless she is very faithful,” murmured Eszterhazy.

Popoff scratched his thatchy chest, gave a deep grunt. “You think so?” he next asked. “I assure you she would poison my zoop for a penny if she thought she could cheat my sons the way she cheats me. I shall douse you with wine,” he said, pouring a nice slop onto the be-sopped table-cloth, and a bit more into his guest’s glass. This was old high courtesy, mountain style, and was supposedly to put Eszterhazy at his ease, and make him need not worry if he slopped some himself; how tactful, yes? Not according to the Uniate Exilarch, Venerable Joachim Uzzias, D.Th., Ill, who declared it to be a pagan libation, and had written a pamphlet denouncing it. The Uniate Exilarch never ventured within a hundred miles of the mountain principalities, for the princes would certainly have burned him alive on general and hereditary principles before the government could have interfered; perhaps to display his scholarship or perhaps from prudence, the Venerable had published the pamphlet in Ancient Armenian, doubtless to the edification and enlightenment of any Ancient Armenians who could read it. The modern Armenians, most tactful of living men, had bound their presentation copy in tooled morocco, and deposited it in a mesh-fronted bookcase, the key to which was immediately lost, in their Guildhall, in Bella. And had peacefully gone on about their business of roasting and grinding the best-grade coffee, washing carpet-wool, goat-hair, and hog-bristles; cleaning the rugs of all the best houses in Bella (the worst were lucky to have their trod-mud floors covered with fresh rushes twice or thrice a reign), including those of Jam Jam Sahib; and processing a certain quality of millet much favored by the Town Tartars for feeding to their cage-finches — but perhaps no more for now of the Armenians, excellent people; they scarcely enter this account at all. Sometime maybe. Maybe not.

“Really?” enquired Eszterhazy, the nanny having re-entered with the hot bread and re-exited because there was not enough of it. “One is certainly told that the servants of this ancient house —”

been here forever,” said Prince Yohan, a trifle mechanically; “or, at any rate, a very long time.”

“—are famous for their loyalty and devotion.”

“To the ancient house,” said the prince, starting to slurp his zoop. “Not to any particular member of it. Wait! Let me crush ye some peppers, else the zoop will be bland as maize-pap,” he made a gesture — several gestures, in fact — and a pestle of malachite began to grind in a mortar of chalcedony (both, perhaps, once graced the table of a Grand Comnenus in Trebizond, before the horses and riders of Ottoman the Turk had galloped out of the east. . . and galloped . . . and galloped . . . and galloped . . .) — the mortar and pestle ground: no visible and corporeal hands ground with them. Certainly not those of the rustic prince, which rested prominently a ways off, on the table. This prince awaited the response of Dr. Eszterhazy, his guest.

There was no response.

The reputation of these minor semi-sovereigns for magic was of course well-known. Well-known.

“Take,” invited Prince Yohan, concealing his disappointment, if any. “Take some on your spoon and stir it about in the zoop.” His eyes roved round the setting on Eszterhazy’s side of the table. “What!” he exclaimed. “They have given you no spoon? Animals! My father would have had them impaled . . . well, my grandfather . . . certainly my great-grandfather —”

The prince began to whistle, snap his fingers, stamp his foot. “Pray do not bother, Your Vigor,” said Dr. Eszterhazy. ,

“But ye must have a spoon!”

“Certainly. And as you have told me often enough that your guests have the liberty of your kingdom, I shall take the liberty of taking yours.” Eszterhazy indicated. With his finger. Did he crook his finger? He did something with his finger. And His Vigor, Yohan, Prince Popoff, watched dismally as his spoon slithered across the table, mounted into the mortar, gathered half a load of crushed peppers, and slithered across the rest of the table, coming conveniently to a stop-slither at Eszterhazy’s hand. Who calmly stirred it into his zoop, then lifted the stoup to his lips, and drank off its contents.

“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Delicious! Ah, there is nothing like a good, old-fashioned stoup of zoop!”

Said his host, at last meeting his eyes, “You have learned much.”

“And still have much to learn,” was the reply.

The prince gave, this time, a merely minor grunt. “Well, as ye have heard, as I have said, ye have, we both have, the liberty of — Well, I shall see what I can do for — You can read the Szekel runes, my guest?”

“Those, and others.”

“The language of the Old Men and the Dead.”

“Both.”

“Essential. And — Aramaic?”

“Yes. Though it depends a good deal on the characters used. The Hebrew ones I read with fair ease. The Nestorian, rather less so. And as for the Jacobite, I must first transliterate. Then I have comparatively little trouble.”

“All right. And as for the medieval Latin and Greek, I am sure I need not ask. So. In the morning —”

“If you don’t die in your own dirt by then,” interrupted the old wet-nurse, entering with a tray pressed to her bodice. “Some of them pots hasn’t been cleaned since Sobieski was King of Poland and Tessie was King of Hungary; much you care. Here. Sweet and sour sow. Certain, I culled the raisins with my own fingers. Who else ’ud do it? Not them high and mighty wenches, who creeps in and out of Someone’s bed on their filthy feets. Ah —”

“Put it down, Wetsy,” directed the prince. “And you may retire tomorrow and on full pension, as well you know.”

She may well have known, but know it or not, she made no reply, but addressed her next remark to her one-time nurseling’s guest.

The old woman had set a second dish down, evidently a pasta pudding with fat, spices, and honey; and she put her hands on her hips and looked at him. “So tell me, Sir Philosopher,” she said, after a moment, “be’s it true that some wiselings such as you, they are a-seeking for to make a machine which it will fly?”

The pudding, the sort which he would have killed for when a boy, looked impossibly heavy, and might have killed him now. There was a bason of small apples; he would numble one of them for his dessert; and in the meanwhile, the longer he could keep the conversation off the pudding, the better. “Yes, Mother,” he said — and such a look she flashed at him! He had best remember not to “Mother” her again — “it is true. Some of them are seeking.”

She asked, with every sign of sincerity, “Why don’t they study trees? Shrubs?”

He asked, a bit puzzled, “Why? Are there trees and shrubs which fly?” She nodded, curtly, as though this itself was a matter well-known, and of not much interest. “Oh. How can one tell . . . which, I mean?”

“One goes and learns,” she said. Prince Popoff ate silently. “One can tell... oh, by the way the knots are formed ... for instance . . . and by the way the trees reach towards the sky. And the way the shrub-twigs behave.”

A piece of the sweetened pasta, browned by the oven, fell from the prince’s mouth to his waistcoat. He picked it up and put it in his mouth again.

“No more manners than the piebald dog,” the old woman commented.

“Will you teach me, then? I will give —”

“No,” she said. “I can’t teach you. You are not ready. I can tell that by ...” she reached out a finger-nail (it had not been cleaned lately) and let it rest a moment between his brows. . . the eyes. Maybe some day.”

Her look, which had been a trifle abstracted, now came to focus on the present once again. Swiftly she scanned the table, then again she put her gaze on the guest. “And the zoop was no good, I suppose. They makes it better in Bella, I am sure.”

Heroic measures were called for, else she might begin asking about the pudding. “First rate it was, Madamka. No, they don’t. And here’s something to prove it.” And something popped up and peeped out of the doctor’s pocket and described a parabola as it passed over the table. It was the size, shape, and glitter of a gold royal, and so perhaps it was one — though who can indeed be sure, as it came to rest in Madamka’s left ear, whither one would not have wished to follow and examine. Evidently feeling no such non-wish or scruple, she did examine it, immediately redeposited it in her bosom, made an antique curtsy (during which at least seventeen bones were heard to snap, crackle, and pop), and left the dining room in such haste as to make one suspect that she may have suspected Eszterhazy of being willing to change his mind.

Eszterhazy had earlier smoked a long pipe of the local, infernally strong dabag as it was called; he felt now a desire for the Indian weed, but in a milder and mellower form. Also he desired to remove traces of the meal from face and fingers. So, leaving his host with his own long pipe, his feet into the fireplace, and being smoked by sundry smokes; Eszterhazy ascended with measured tread up to his rooms.

Paradox was plentiful within the halls of Castle Popoff. When Eszterhazy went to wash his hands and face, he saw the basin was marble and the ewer was onyx; but when, having by and by dropped a quantity of segar ashes, he looked for a broom to sweep it up, he found no semblance of the familiar citified item of yellow straw, fitted up and stitched together by Tartar or Gypsy aided by a device like an enormous tuning-fork, no: he saw a bundle of coarse vegetation rudely bound to the butt-end of a stick; in short, a twopenny bezom such as one’s country-cousin’s servants use to expel the dried mud from the porch. Eszterhazy decided to let the ash lie. The Indian segar had been rolled around a reed; withdrawn before smoking, this left quite a nice air-channel, and required no cutting or biting of the end: curiously, as the ash fell upon the dark drugget, it retained the hole where the reed had been, thus clearly identifying itself to be the ash of a Trichinopoly cheroot, as any fool could plainly see, and hardly required reading a monograph on the subject.

Next morning. Going through the Great Hall in hopes of finding some breakfast other than the one deposited in his ante-room — a panikin of coffee astringent enough to tan hides, a pot of quite cold maize-pap, and the pick- led head of a large lacustrine fish — passing through the Great Hall, adorned with rude and massive furniture, on or in which giants might have sat cross-legged and smaller men have camped, with rusting and not so rusting stag-spears and boar-spears, spring-guns and man-traps, banners warped and tattered with very great age, a ragged and hairless hide which might just possibly be (he thought, afterwards) the skin of a flayed enemy — walking through the Great Hall, Eszterhazy heard a low, murmuring voice, apparently coming from a room with an open door; automatically, he peeped in and paused.

It was evidently the chapel (or evidently a chapel) and within, with a minuscule congregation, someone was celebrating the Divine Liturgy. Or, to use the phrase favored by another facet of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, someone was saying mass. Very well, the House of Popoff, though it had not particularly impressed him as being particularly pious, had a chaplain. And the Chaplain was reciting his daily Office. No reason why not. Though it was slightly surprising that the chapel door was almost immediately and silently closed in his, Eszterhazy’s, face. Still —

In the immense kitchen where the somewhat surprised staff was giving him such citified foods as a pan of gammon and eggs, browned bread with goose grease (he declined the cracklings, at least for breakfast), and a cup of “weak” coffee — it was quite strong enough to satisfy the Death’s Head Hussars, whose coffee was famously strong — in this corner of the huge kitchen, Dr. Eszterhazy let his mind wander back to the scene in the small room. Maybe the chaplain was some hedge-parson with dubious credentials, and that was why they did not want the guest to see him and perhaps inadvertently make a report. Well enough; understandable — but why, in that case, since Eszterhazy knew no such cleric, why was he so sure that he had at least partly recognized the priest, though indeed his face he had not seen.

Then, too, he was — despite the briefness of his glimpse — absolutely sure that the service being celebrated was neither Roman Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox; certainly it was not Uniate (or Eastern Catholic) either; having experienced many an English Sunday, he knew that it was not Anglican: what, then, was it?

Easier to ask, than answer.

Somewhat he had seemed to sense affinities to the Rites of Malabar. But the Malabar Rites had been abolished. Hadn’t they? And, anyway, somewhat he hadn’t seemed. So — certainly it was something else. So. In which case, what else?

Of a kitchen-hand he asked at a venture, “Is that a Romi service they are holding up yonder?”

The kitchen-hand’s reply, smacking nothing of the Council ofNicea, was, in toto, “You don’t like your eggs, my Little Lord?”

It didn’t smack of the Council of Trent, either.

“Sure I like them. Let’s have another piece of gammon, here —”

“There bain’t another piece oLgammon, my Little Lord —”,

and I’ll let you have some real good snuff, Swartbloi’s, the best in Bella.” Eyes gleaming and nostrils twitching, the kitchen-hand departed, walking fast. By and by he returned, depositing on Dr. Eszterhazy’s plate something resembling a desiccated bat.

“Cook have locked the larder, my Little Lord, and she keeps the key atween her you-know-whats; but I’ve brought ’ee a pickled pigeon, my Little Lord, up from the Servants’ Cellar; and I’ve told Cellarman I’ll share the nose-baccy with he.”

Somehow the “Little Lord,” Engelbert Eszterhazy, A.B., Phil.B., M.A., M.S., M.D., D. Muc., D. Phil., Ph.D., D. Sc., and much more, did not fancy the pickled pigeon; but he gave over the snuff anyway. And, by and by, his host appearing, they went up to the Old Book Room in the South Tower and looked at a lot of old books. And then they went up into the mountains and tried — by word and song and gesture and something more — to move a lot of old boulders.

Some of them they did move, and some of them they didn’t move.

And what with one thing and another, the scene in the semi-secret sanctuary quite went from his mind. And it was a long time before it returned.

The earth of the Red Mountain (not very far off was the Black Mountain, Montenegro, an independent country whose prince-bishops had not very long ago become kings) — the earth of the Red Mountain had been transmuted by spring rain into red mud, and Eszterhazy did not move with perfect ease.

“I don’t mind, particularly, shooting at a bird with a cross-bow,” he said, out in the woods of the mountain with his instructor; “but I think I particularly mind shooting with a cross-bow at a great auk, because I well know it to be extinct; besides it never lived here.”

“Less rattlement,” warned his instructor, “or I’ll make ye shoot at a dodo. Up a little to the right, and forward.”

Eszterhazy saw the great auk fall; but when he went to retrieve it (the hound absolutely refused), it had vanished. Some days later, however, he saw it in the muniments room, in a glass case. In the case next to it he saw a clutch of ostrich eggs. And in the glass case next to it, he saw the dodo. Both birds were smeared about the feet with what seemed to be dried red mud.

One day, not many days later, as they were standing at an open window, Prince Yohan suddenly exclaimed, “Hah! This is scrying time. Fine time for scrying, this!”

Deeply interested, Eszterhazy asked, “How do you know?”

Prince Popoff showed him a face slightly surprised. “How know} Why .. . the time of the month — Taurus, upon the cusps of the Ram — the cuspal times are decidely best for scrying, one isn’t sure why. — And then, too, observe the weather! The air’s not flat and dead, such as leaves the living images lying slack all around, no: neither is there a tearing wind or storm, you know, that’s no good, that tears the living images all up, and scatters them about, you see.

“But just look now. You see the air is clear and clean; you see how the clouds are scudding along and there’s brisk breeze. That means the living images will move along fairly quickly, it means that you can see them fairly clearly and cleanly in the scrying ink or in the scry-stone or scrying glass. One doesn’t always use a pool of ink, you know.”

Eszterhazy said he knew. “There are those who use a crystal ball,” he said.

Prince Popoff now looked at him in more than mere surprise. “There arc?” he cried. He was absolutely astonished.

By and by, having recovered from his astonishment, he took his guest into an inner room where they had not been before. It had been plastered, but it , had not been plastered lately, and patches of the primeval plaster had here and there crumbled and fallen, revealing — beneath the place where the plasma and slab of lime, sand, and water had been — areas of the primeval stone walling of the chamber. On the walls hung (often rather askew) badly engraved likenesses of the present emperor, sundry kings and so on; as well as wood-cuts of various voyvodes, counts, boyars, mukhtars and mamelukes and metropolitans and mprets and patriarchs and princes — God help us! — who knew who else? Eszterhazy, widely believed to know everything, knew not all of them — including a likeness of a sombre, brooding, melancholy countenance, a likeness (going by a name scribbled in a corner of the [perhaps] drawing) which he thought was perhaps of that John who was not only the last Catholic King of Sweden (bad timing, John) and enemy of the famous (infamous?) Gustav the Troll, but also the last Swedish King of Poland (bad timing, Poland) — though maybe it wasn’t.

There was also a copy of the Martin Behaim map, with gores, presented to the English King Henry VIII, powerful presumptive evidence of the early discovery of Australia; only Henry wasn’t interested in having Australia discovered (he was far more interested in discovering what he called the “pretty duckies” of Anne Boleyn), and neither was anyone in Scythia, Pan- nonia, Transbalkania, or Great or Little Byzantia. How came it here? Who the Hell knows; where it didn’t have cobwebs, it had fly-specks. There were old globes almost moist with the foam of perilous seas in faerie lands forlorn, and here and there were odd skulls of the wisent, the aurochs, the wild mules of the Veneti, and — perhaps, perhaps — the unicorn: and if it wasn’t a unicorn, what was it? the rhinoceros, oryx, or narwhale? Nonsense. What would a skull of a rhinoceros, oryx, or narwhale be doing on the wall of an olden schloss in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania? Ha! Have you there!

“You can have half my kingdom,” said Prince Popoff, seating himself, “but you can’t have my chair. Pull up another.” And while his guest was pulling, the prince opened a small ebony chest from which he removed a something swathed in somewhat soiled white samite, and from the wrapping extracted a rather glossy black stone. Maybe Doctor Dee thought it was coal, and maybe Edward Kelly thought that it was coal, and maybe Horace Wk/pole thought it was coal; but Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy thought that it was not coal. Prince PopofF took it very carefully in his hands; and, saying, “Hold it like this” held it like this.

After some moments, he said, “It is not necessary, but it helps to repeat what was said by Bishop Albert of Ratisbon — oh, very well, then, Regensburg — called ‘the Great’ — Albertus, I mean, not the city —” and he repeated some phrases, in what some might regard as a rather debased Latin of the Swabian sort; others, on the other hand, might regard it as “Humanistic,” and not debased at all.

Eszterhazy watched carefully, sometimes he had rather to squint, he did repeat the phrases as best he remembered them (he remembered them rather well); and then —

“Hm,” said Prince Yohan. The surface of the stone, the upper surface, which had evidently once been highly polished, which so far had remained rather glossy or might one say sheeny, suddenly displayed a face. A human face.

At first Eszterhazy could not make it out. It seemed to slide across the face of the stone — or perhaps it was across his own vision — as though imprinted on a piece of silk which moved, passed, at an odd angle and in a way which he could no more identify than he could the likeness itself. Prince Yohan, though, seemed to be having less trouble. But then, he had had more experience. “Who is this mere child, of man size and, I suppose, man’s estate?” he asked. Eszterhazy could of course not answer, though he strove to get the image back in focus as his host held it rather slightly obliquely.

“He must be of importance,” the Prince went on, staring into the surface, “else why has Psalmanazzar scried him?”

“Psalmanazzar? ”

“Yes. Psalmanazzar. Its name. Ships have names, do they not? And so do scry-stones. The scry-stone of my uncle-cousin, Baron Big Boris, is named Agag, because it walks delicately. A metaphor, of course. Well, as for this youngling, I see passion plain in his face ... a mere prettyboy? no: more ... I see lust, and resolution and irresolution, mixed. . . . Tell me, so, savant, who is he?”

And Eszterhazy again gazed swift into the scry-stone and swift he saw the face one instant fixed before it fled into flux and swift he cried aloud and answered, “O God! O Christ Human and Divine! It is August Salvador, the Crown Princeling! Oh!”

In the brief pause which followed, he noticed that the room smelled of mold. Then he asked, “What is he doing here? I mean, there? And is he near — or far?”

Said this wise man of the mountains, “Middling near. And getting nearer. What -?”

Eszterhazy said that they would soon see “what.” And, “How quickly can I get a message to the nearest telegraph office?” he asked.

Said Prince PopofF, “Write it. And we shall see how soon.” He led Eszterhazy to another desk, satisfied himself that it provided paper which would take ink, ink which was not too gummy, a steel pen whose nib he promptly licked to make certain that it would hold the ink, and powdered cuttlefish bone to dry it. Then he began to bellow. By the time Eszterhazy had finished the message and shaken the powder off the paper —

VON SHTRUMPF. OFFICE OF THE PRIVY PURSE, it ran. KINDLY INFORM WHEREABOUTS H.H. THE CROWN PRINCELING. E. ESZTERHAZY —

— someone was waiting to take the message in a large and hairy hand. A mountain pony, saddled and bridled and only a bit hairier, had appeared in the courtyard to carry the messenger.

“Stay for an answer,” Popoff instructed. “And — Constable — if anyone tries to wait in the office to observe either the message or the reply, discourage him or them from doing so, d’ye hear? And all this under the invisible seal of silence; go!”

A clap-clap of hooves and a flurry on the road. Then, “Now we must wait,” said the prince; “meanwhile let me show you further how holding the scry-stone so as to be best read is like holding the clinical thermometer so as to be best read.”

Eszterhazy said, “Axillarily, I see no problem. Orally, I see a small problem. Rectally, I —”

“Haw!” said Prince Yohan. “Now . . . sometimes you have to shake it down first ...”

IMPERIAL ORDERS, began the reply. DO NOT, REPEAT DO NOT, PERMIT TO PASS THE HIGH PERSON OF WHOM YOU ENQUIRE. SPECIAL DETAILS BY SPECIAL TRAIN. KISSING, VON SHTRUMPF.

“ ‘Kissing’?” queried the prince. “Kissing?”

“Undoubtedly the abbreviated idiom of the telegraph, and certainly stands for ‘KISSING THUS THE HANDS AND FEET,’ and so on.”

“Ah, just so, and highly proper,” said the prince. “Well, the constable says he has had look-outs posted by the railroad at Zlink, and has given instructions that if a special train approaches and does not stop, they are to shoot at the engineer and stoker with powder and ball. Furthermore, we are piling logs upon the tracks a mile farther along, just before what we call Dead Man’s Bridge Ravine —”

“I quite see why you do,” murmured his guest.

“And whilst we’re waiting, let’s have some chops off last week’s boar, and whilst we’re waiting for that, let’s have a pot of Mokha coffee with some Yah-mah-ee-ka rum. Eh?”

Said Eszterhazy, “Let’s.”

The “special details by special train” proved to consist, not in any manuscript list, but of elements reposing within the bosoms of two distinguished persons; as their carriage and horses had also arrived by the same special train, those same eventually drew up within the courtyard. And therefrom they debouched. They knew Eszterhazy. Eszterhazy knew them. He proceeded to make introductions.

“Prince,” he said, “allow me to present Reserve-Captain Von Shtrumpf, Gentleman-Serjeant of the Black Rod to the House of Peers, and ex-officio Chamberlain of the Office of the Privy Purse; Captain, my honored host, His Vigor, Prince Yohan Popoff.” Both persons announced themselves to be Enchanted; and Eszterhazy proceeded to introduce Militia-Major Shtruvvelpeyter, a Principal Secretary to the Foreign Office. By a singular coincidence, once again the persons introduced were Enchanted. It went without saying that the members of the Royal and Imperial Family were above being officially managed by any Government offices. (Brought over the Irish Sea to sign the death-warrant of Charles I after conviction by the so-called High Court of Parliament, Colonel Hercules Hunks — actually — forthrightly told Cromwell, “My Lord General, two things are certain. First, this court can try no man. Second, no court can try the King.” Cromwell, not one to stick on ceremony, said, “Thou art a peevish, froward fellow, Col. Hunks. Get thee hence.” In private, Cromwell conceded that Hunks may have been technically correct. But he cut off King Charles’s head anyway. Oh dear.) Yet the Royal and Imperial money-bags of S.-P.-T. were something else. Hence the politely-named Office of the Privy Purse. Which provided a good deal of management indeed.

One might say, for example, “Surely Your Young Highness’s sense of honor and duty will prevent Your Young Highness from taking such a course”; yet His Young Highness’s sense of honor and duty might not prevent him from taking such a course at all. If, however, one were to say to him (for example), “Alas, there is not currently so much as a single copperka to Your Young Highness’s account in the Treasury. However, should Your Young Highness see fit to preside at the Dedication Ceremonies for the new Mechanical Drawbridge over the Ister and the new Civil Reformatory (dull as such ceremonies doubtless are), no doubt an advance subvention might be applied to the Office of the Privy Purse from the Public Works Accounts”; then one might manage him, if not quite well, then well enough. For a while, anyway.

Hence.

“Where is he, Engelbert, where is he?”

“Engli! Have you got him?”

“ ‘He’? ‘Him’?Have I got whom?”

Both officials replied in joint voice, “Baby!”

“Ah, the Royal Infant. The Crown Princeling,” said Eszterhazy. “No, / haven’t got him. I can tell you, on local authority, however, that he is middling near, and getting nearer. But . . . why do you ask?”

They were by now seated on the worn-smooth old front steps of Palace Popoff, or whatever it might be called. Vast vistas stretched in front of them: not merely blue in the distances, but, beyond the blue, grey and brown and some nondescript and probably indescribable colors.

“Why do we ask -?”

it is such a stupid story —”

The stupid story was soon told, unfinished as it was. Not only had the Crown Princeling — who was constitutionally forbidden to marry “a subject,” because, as any fool might realize, to do so might and probably would create Faction — not only had he nevertheless made plans to do just that, but the “subject” was already married; a Gypsy dancer, she was already married to a Gypsy dancing-master and fiddler. More, she was estranged from him, and lived under the protection of (translation: was being kept by) a boss-butcher (“One of the biggest stalls in the Ox Market, he has, Engli”). And what did His Foolship think of these trifling trifles? That they were just that. “Love cares nothing for trifles,” he was reputedly reported to have said. Did love care nothing for the Constitution and for bigamy? Evidently not a bit.

“Anyway, we are going to be married in another country so it will be all right,” he had said. It made one want to beat his empty handsome head against a cattle-car.

So much for all hopes that he, only twice removed from The Throne, might get better sense as he grew older — and old enough to assume the three crowns which alone kept three countries together. The royal wittold did, however, take the precaution of travelling under another name; hence the hopeful card-case full of pasteboard imprinted with the name of Bill Silas Sneed, Drummer in American Cloth and Cheese.

Really!

Of these three countries, one was Scythia, which, alone among the Indo- European-speaking nations of the world, spoke a modern dialect of Gothic; one was Pannonia, which spoke Avar, not an Indo-European language at all; and the third, Transbalkania, was not properly speaking, a country or nation at all, but a confederation, the peoples of which spoke a variety of tongues. And none of these nations, countries, or peoples liked each other very much at all.

Only the Triple Crown of the Triple Monarchy held them together. And the heir to the Heir was about to contract an illegal, unconstitutional, impermissible, and totally impossible non-marriage, acceptable to none of his peoples. Oh dear.

More.

Did he not know that the city in which he planned his nutty nuptials, videlicet Vienna, was about to hospit the Congress of Europe — where Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania would attempt finally to rectify its almost- unrectifiable boundaries — and that in consequence S.-P.-T. would become a laughingstock? No. (Of course not.) Did he care? (Don’t ask silly questions.) And, for a frowzy icing on this very rancid cake, just as Marie Antoinette did not want to flee from France until her diamond-crusted travelling-case was ready (in consequence of which delayed flight. . . well, never mind. Oh dear.), so August Salvador did not want to leave on his not- even-morganatic honeymoon without his wardrobe. And, lest by an examination at the border of his baggage, with its crest-embroidered underwear, he be discovered, he had hit upon the — for him — brilliant idea of concealing it all beneath a Seal of Diplomatic Immunity. And of which Immune Diplomat was the Seal?

That of the Titular Personal Envoy of the Grand Mogul.

Oh dear.

Popoff hauled out his maps; they were compared to those which Von Shtrumpf and Shtruvvelpeyter had brought with them. On which of the spider’s-web of roads (assuming the web to have been spun out the anterior of a very drunken spider) which obtained between Bella and the border might His Young (not to say, infantile) Highness be assumed to be now in progress?

They came to no conclusion.

Popoff was not precisely shy about showing the use of his scry-stones; that is, he turned an enquiring look upon Eszterhazy, who nodded. That was enough for Popoff. Von Shtrumpf wished to be assured that no form of witchcraft was involved; Dr. Eszterhazy showed him in print, fetched down from the prince’s shelves, that the last Ecclessiastical Council of Ister, whilst utterly condemning the ceremonial eating of horse-flesh on holy days “after the manner and usage of the pagan and damnable Sarmatians, upon whose so-called sacred places it is permitted, nay meritorious, to micturate”; said absolutely nothing on the subject of scrying: which was good enough for Von Shtrumpf. And Shtruvvelpeyter recollected that “he had read something-or-other about it in a French or German paper once — frightfully scientific these French and Germans were, not so, Engelbert?” — and that was good enough for Shtruvvelpeyter. So Popoff once again uncovered his scry-stones. Psalmanazzar. And Agag.

Psalmanazzar showed, briefly and rather vaguely, the Crown Princeling’s face at the window of a vehicle; Agag (on indefinite loan from the prince’s cousin, Baron Big Boris) proved to be a bit more precise as to what else the Crown Princeling was doing: he was picking his shapely nose.

“By the color of the mud splashed against the carriage window,” suggested Eszterhazy, “I should infer that the carriage is now travelling along the Official Northern Remote Route Road.”

“And if so, almost a sufficient punishment for his sins!” cried Shtruvvelpeyter. “The local holders of the electoral franchise so seldom chose to pay the very moderate poll-tax that, as a result, the road there hasn’t been paved since . . . since . . . well, since quite a while ago. Or so they tell me. I have never been.”

“I have,” said Popoff. “I trust that His Young Highness is not obliged to try any of the local hostelries. The fleas there are reported to be large enough to qualify as cavalry remounts.”

Von Shtrumpf, however, was not interested in such matters. “If this crack-brained enterprise of August Salvador’s is not nipped in the bud,” he declared grimly, “our grandchildren may find themselves paying poll-taxes to Austria or Russia or — God help us! who knows what nation or nations which may snap us up as we come apart, like Poland, for lack of a sensible sovereign — Bulgaria, maybe — or Graustark, even — in any of which cases ' I shall migrate to Egypt, rather than submit. Very well, if ‘well’ it is, His Nipplehead is on the Official Northern Remote Route Road: what next?” And, before anyone could answer, added that there were worse fates than being bit by fleas, however large.

Eszterhazy rubbed his forehead with his knuckles. “Much as the magnetic telegraph has served to debase human language,” he said, “still, it is swifter than any horse, or locomotive engine. The same telegram, in effect, which was sent me, should it not be sent to the cross-station at the terminus of the Official Northern Remote Route Road?”

Agreement was that it should; the message was redrafted, and handed over to either the same constable, or another available such; there seeming to be no limit to or shortage of men of that rank in the region of the Red Mountain; who had taken the message of enquiry originally drafted by Dr. Eszterhazy. And so then arose the question, what should they do in the meanwhile?

Von Shtrumpf chose to make a speech. “Only the existence of a single sovereign,” he said, “keeps the Flemings and the Walloons together in Belgium. The same is true of Scandia and Froreland. Of Austria-Hungary. And of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. Let the respected sovereign be removed, and what may the result be? Chaos. That’s what.”

Eszterhazy, a trifle more testily than was usual with him, said, “And my hair is getting thinner on top. What else is new?”

PopofF, who seldom displayed interest in any events of a political nature more current than the Pragmatic Sanction, which had confirmed Maria Teresa as (among other items) “King” of Hungary — the ancient usages of that nation making no provision for a Queen Regnant — pointed out that Switzerland had remained united as a republic despite its severalty of languages and peoples. It was pointed out to him that Switzerland had had more centuries to grow used to such union than S.-P.-T. had had decades; for a moment he grew silent. Then —

“I know what let’s do!” he exclaimed. “Ye all know the trouble with boar- spears is that the momentum of the charging boar sometimes carries him, the charging boar, that is, right up along the shaft of the spear, so that sometimes he can slash his tushes into the huntsman before he dies. Well, I have had cross-guards set onto my new boar-spears, so as to prevent this. In theory. Why shouldn’t we, in the time we’re waiting, all go out and see how this works? Eh?”

Shtruvvelpeyter said — let it not be said with haste, but without delay — that, alas, his gout —

And Von Shtrumpf declared that, being a servant of the August House, he had no right to risk his person in anything but service to that House. “Much as I should like to, of course. Love to.”

So it was at length agreed that they should grill some chops offlast week’s boar (by now growing rather short on chops), and, in the meanwhile, have some good hot Mokha coffee with some good Yah-mah-ee-ka rum. And this was agreed to.

Before and after the grilling of the chops and the eating thereof, a game of whist was played, one of boston, and then another of whist; presently people began to squirm. Von Shtrumpf returned to his theme, but his heart seemed not in it. “And what keeps the Wallachians and the Moldavians united in Romania?” he asked, rhetorically.

“The subventions paid them by the Czar of Russia,” was the short reply of Shtruvvelpeyter. As this was not the answer which Von Shtrumpf had expected to get, he followed the way of all flesh, and ignored it.

“What is delaying the fellow?” he asked. “Can he have stopped to drink somewhere?”

Prince Popoff did not appear worried. “Nothing is delaying him, except the fact that his horse has no wings. And when on such a mission, he would certainly not have stopped to drink somewhere. Fierce and faithful are the constables of this mountain region. He will be here in a minute.”

With perhaps more precision than appropriate in a guest, Von Shtrumpf took out his heavy gold watch and clicked it open. “He will? Let us see.” For a while nothing was heard except the grumbling of a well-masticated chop off of last week’s boar as it travelled through someone’s stomach and upper or lower intestine. Then the sound of a set of hooves clattering into the courtyard.

“Here he is now,” said Popoff. “How long was that?”

“Bind-Satan-and-send-him-down-to-Hell! — ExACTly one minute!” he looked at his host with much respect.

There entered now, still sweating and steaming from his ride, a typical rural constable, which is to say, a typical mountain-man, with a leathern band affixed round his right arm; on this was a much-effaced sigil, symbol, or shield, and a much-effaced numeral. The man bore in his hand a folded piece of paper, and this he handed over at once to the outstretched hand of Prince Popoff. Who gave it a quick glance, and swore.

“Bind-Satan-and-send-him-down-to-Hell, indeed! O Thou dear Cross! But this is the message we gave ye to send. Where is the answer?”

The man brushed moisture from his bristly cheek and chin, and from his great drooping moustache. “There ben’t no answer, My Worship,” said he. “The clerk, he jiggles and he dickies his little clicket; and, says he, he says the string be broke.”

“He says — what?”

“The what is broke?”

“That there li’-bit wire string as the message they say it pass along, what they say” continued the constable, evidently no great believer in the miracles of magnetic telegraphy. “It has fell.”

For an instant this curious image was considered; then, almost simultaneously the four others cried, “The line is down!”

The constable nodded his shag-head. Then he passed the back of his shag-wrist across his lips, a gesture evidently noticed and identified by His Worship. “Down to the kitchen, then,” said Prince Yohan, “and tell them to give ye a big drink from the second-best barrel.” The man brightened directly, bowed deeply, and was off immediately. Evidently there were barrels below, and perhaps far below, even the second-best. “Well here’s a fine how-are-ye,” the prince said. “No telegram can get through to the crossstation at the terminus of the Official Remote Northern Route Road.” Outside, a slight and soft Spring rain came mizzling down. Inside, the four men considered this new development. “Outrageous,” said Eszterhazy, “that in a country abounding in goodly trees, telegraph wires should continue to be strung in places from shrub to shrub, and from bush to bush! No wonder the line is down . . . again. The wonder is that it is ever up, at all. Well -”

But Von Shtrumpf, still riding the rails of his one-track mind, said, dolefully, “Not alone chaos. Inevitably, civil war. Unless-unless — it may be treason to suggest, but — if not this heir to the Heir — then who?”

Who, indeed.

A moment’s silence. Then: “Queen Victoria has many sons,” said Shtruwelpeyter, as though commenting on the weather.

The subject was seldom spoken of, but here perhaps the major, after all a principal secretary to the Foreign Office, had found the kernel in the nut. Not much may have been known about Salvador Samuel, self-styled “Sovereign of the Scythians and Pannonians,” but it was known that he had married Magdalena Stewart: call her “Mad Maggie” who would, she nevertheless had been a Stewart (or Stuart) and a Royal Stuart (or Stewart) at that: she had also been an ancestress of the British Queen, however many times removed. And more than once, more than one mind in Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania had considered (with more than one emotion) of an almost-endless line of vessels ascending the Ister and bearing as it might be such names as HMS Take, Catch, Rake, Snatch, Seize, and so on and so on; at least one of them conveying, as it might be, Prince Alfred, Prince Arthur, Prince Leopold, or Prince Who, with his umbrella and his cricket-bat and his crown. . . .

“Austria and Russia would never allow it,” said Von Shtrumpf. “Would they? — we should all have to drink tea! ” he cried.

But Eszterhazy had something else on his mind than the possibly enforced consumption of Orange Pekoe, Lapsang-Souchong, or Oolong. “I suggest that you two gentlemen of the Court consider what you both may think best; meanwhile our host and I will withdraw so as not to disturb you.”

Withdrawn into an ante-room the open doors of which debouched upon the vastly wide steps, “Very tactful,” said Prince Yohan. “Verytactful. And now that ye have got us both alone, what is it that ye wish to propose? Eh?”

“Would you very much like to swear allegiance,” asked Eszterhazy, “to some, say, King Algernon or King Archibald?”

The prince surveyed the moist landscape. “Not very much, no,” said he. “I won’t speak of my own ancestral pretentions, every family has those — I suppose that your King Algebra or King Artichoke would be better than some King Vladimir or King Otto — always better King Log than King Stork . . . but . . . what . . . ?”

Eszterhazy shortly gestured to where the light sparse green had begun to grow up along the foothills, ranges, and ridges, of the Red Mountain. “ That is what I would propose,” said he. “Since His Young Highness the Crown Princeling cannot be prevented, via telegraphed orders, from entering Austria along the Northern Remote Route Road, he must be prevented by some other means; he must, in short, not be allowed to leave the country while this imbecile lust is upon him.”

“And therefore?” Yohan looked at Eszterhazy.

Eszterhazy looked at Yohan.

“Need I remind Your Vigor of the ancient parable about Mohammed and the mountain?” he asked.

They were outside. They were by no means out of sight of any part of the castle, but they might by no means be seen from the front parts of it. “Some say that these mountains are worn-down, and not rugged,” said Prince Pop- ofT.

“Some do,” murmured Eszterhazy.

“But parts of them are rugged enough, that it helps to know the mountain passes if you want to move an army through —”

“Indeed

“Now, right here — here — through these declivities and between these peaks, ye see — ”

“I see.”

“This is where he would have to come, Old Ginger I mean, ye see.”

“I see,” murmured Eszterhazy. Old Ginger. What a perfect nickname for the Holy Roman Emperor at the time of the Third Crusade: Old Ginger.

That is (or was), Frederick Barbarossa. Of course his real name was no more Barbarossa than it was Old Ginger. Or for that matter, Hobson or Jobson. Still, it was an interesting survival, one which Eszterhazy had not encountered before.

It was an appropriate place for old survivals, here among the men of the mountains; for they were very much old survivors themselves. In fact, recollecting another old legend, that which had them pursuing the chamois, barefoot, from crag to crag, he considered that these men might themselves be compared to chamois, living where others would not live; and then, by adaptation, living where others could not live. Those snobby, Frenchified bourgeois nobility of Bella and Avar-Ister, who so looked down upon the men of the mountains — if the men of the mountains, ignorant of cities though they were, if they had to live there, they would survive . . . they would manage... if he had to, Prince Popoff could carry carcasses in the Ox Market... but let the reverse be true, if Baron This of Bella, or Count That of Avar-Ister, had to live on the Red Mountain, they could not live there at all. Surely they would die.

“Well, enough chatter. To work, to work.... I don’t suppose that we need go galloping along a cliff-face, arrantaparranta, as Homer said about the mules. Here, right here”; the figure of a woman appeared at one of the rear gates, and came towards them almost running; “this here outcrop of rocks right here, they are certainly a genuine part of the mountains —” The woman began waving her apron at them. Eszterhazy peered at her, wonder­ing. “Surely that is your old wet-nurse,” he said. “Madamka. I wonder what she wants.”

“Wants to poke her hairy nose into what is none of her business, I am sure. Never mind her. Here. Get your back up against this big clump of rock just as ye see me doing. Reach behind and grab aholt of it, just dig in your fingers, so — ”

Eszterhazy followed the directions. But before the next set might be given, the once-wet-nurse arrived, the very figure of fury.

“No!” exclaimed the old woman, screwing up her features, so that they looked even more unattractive than usual. “No! No! This is not right! His Reverence may have done it; then again he may not have. He would have good reason — you have not! This is not right, this is not right!” and she clenched her jaws and face-muscles, and she rolled her eyes, performing in a few seconds a “scene” which might have taken others minutes, quarter- hours, or longer.

His Vigor, the Prince Yohan Popoff, said, with controlled forcefulness, “Wet-woman! Old nurse! Do not interfere! Be quiet —”

“No!” she screamed. “No! I won’t be quiet! It is not right! The manners of our mountains do not like it! The —”

“Smudgy old woman,” cried her long-ago nurseling. “Ye know little enough of what is meant by ‘the manners of our mountains’! Be gone, I say!

Be gone! Or I shall send your sons away to the cities! No law obliges me to retain them here on retainer because long ago I nursed their mammy’s pap! Leave off, I say! Be gone!”

She was gone.

She being gone, a gesture from the prince, and again they huddled close to the mass of rock. “Remember,” urged Popoff, “what the Romi, Lucretius, said about the atoms. You must conceive of these with the most strong conception of which you are capable. Conceive of yourself as amongst the atoms of these rocks. Then conceive of yourself as moving them, these atoms of the rocks, mounds, and mountains. If you but have faith that you can, you can push and press and shove atoms A and B — atoms A and B can then move atoms C and D and E and F — and, if you do not yield, atoms C and D and E and F can move atoms G and H and I and / and K —

“Move! Move! Move! Move!”

Eszterhazy had thought and conception and belief and faith. He pushed. He did push. He shoved. He did shove. He moved. He did move. And the rocks, did they move? The rocks moved, too.

Did the boulders move? The boulders trembled, shuddered; seemed to move. Did the mountains move?

The mountains moved.

(In the chapel of the Armenian Merchants’ Guild in Bella long ago a traveller safely returned from Africa had hung up near the high altar an ostrich- egg in a container of golden filigree on a golden chain, as a thanks offering. Now, suddenly, it began slowly to swing like a pendulum. The phenomenon was duly recorded in the records of the congregation; Eszterhazy, learning of this phenomenon, was moved to make certain researches, and to convey the results to certain of his correspondents; why indeed do we not speak of an eszterhaziograph instead of a seismograph? who indeed can say?)

The Grumpkin Gorge, long unrecognized as a gorge, the roadbed of the Official Northern Remote Route Road, from (and to) Austria, was now blocked. Not entirely blocked, to be sure. Individuals, individual men, as individuals, might and could have moved therethrough, carefully picking their way. But no mass or group of men might now move through swiftly. And, certainly, through these mounds of lichen-crusted rocks, schist, granite, what-have-you, no carriages and no baggage-wagons might move at all.

Which left, in that part of the country — unless one wished to carry no baggage other than an alpenstock — only the Official Southern Remote Route Road from Austria.

From (and to) Austria.

Eszterhazy, as he pushed and strained and heaved, and “conceived,” had an impression that they appeared like a pair of piano-movers: he knew, though, that it was no mere piano that they were moving. It did not surprise him that there was an intermittent fall of smaller stones and rocks rolling

and raining down upon them; but he paid not much attention to it until he heard his co-mover, Popoff, cry out in pain.

“Keep on, keep on, do not stop,” said the prince, grimacing.

Dr. E. did not stop; but, looking down, and perceiving some large shadow, he did look up. Immediately his impression was that of an enormous bird flying overhead. Almost instantly he realized that it was no bird. Whatever it was, was almost at once out of sight — he could hardly stop what he was doing to run forward and look up to see better. But in a moment the shape came again into sight and view. The old woman did not look down at him. She did not say anything. He had never seen her before — he had not? — yes, of course, he had — but never at such an angle. Far high and above, she was, and she was riding on something. She was riding side­saddle, as what woman would not? — for if not, her skirts would bunch up, and Heaven forbid one might observe in daylight with one’s eyes that which, properly, one ought to observe only at night-time, with one’s hands and fingers. Yes, side-saddle she rode, angry was her face; who was she and on what was she riding?

A few more passing flights she made, she did not swoop, merely she flew riding by, she sat upon a branch of a tree, God have mercy on us, and a bunch or bundle of shrubbery, sticks, twigs, was fastened at the end of it. As he now watched, straining upward as well as straining backward, he saw a rock come falling down. And it did not fall from higher up on the outcrop of rock against which the two men were still straining.

There came to Eszterhazy anyway some of the words of an old text he had seen once — a part of a reply of the then-monarch of part of what subsequently became the Empire, in response to an alleged fall of what would now be called meteorites — it had begun We, Isidore Salvador, Vigorously Christian King of all the Scythias, and had gone on to say that Reports of stones falling from the skies must suppose that there are stones in the skies, and, as it is well-enough known that there are no stones in the skies, We must reject such reports out of hand . . .

They were no meteorites which had now fallen; therefor

“We must stop now,” said Popoff. “Here. Help me back. Oh.”

Popofflay reclining with one leg bandaged. Von Shtrumpf and Shtruwel- peyter were playing another of their endless, two-handed games of cards. Everyone was, in theory, waiting: but everyone had almost forgotten what it was which they were waiting for . . . Enter another rough-looking fellow with a leather arm-band.

“Ah, it’s a constable. What’s up, Constable? Found another stray cow?” please Your Princeliness, there are Mongols on the Meadow Road, where the stop-station be. They say they have leave to pass, and us mayn’t stop they. So the guards they’m asked we to leave you know, and to instruct them in this matter.”

The card-players looked up from their greasy decks. “Mongols in the meadow?” asked Von Shtrumpf.

“What can he mean?” enquired Shtruwelpeyter.

Popoff moved to rise, sank back with a groan. “No use,” said he. “/can’t go. So you three had better go.”

They went.

The young man there at the border-station did look somewhat like Little Handsome Hans'li the puppet, and he was shouting. “What do you mean, you can’t let me cross without orders? How dare you stop me? I have Diplomatic Immunity!” His voice was slightly hoarse, as though he had been shouting for a while; but he might as well have told them that he had Pott’s Fracture, for all the good it was doing him. “ ‘Orders,’ what orders?” he cried, literally stamping his foot. “For that matter, whose orders?”

Eszterhazy stepped forward; and, as all eyes turned on him, he said, “These orders, sir,” and he handed over the document which had been handed him by his host, Prince Yohan — who had copied it, with a suffi­ciency of moans and groans, as he lay upon his couch of pain — copied it from some older form and model. The young man took it, not without a look of injury and outrage, and glanced at it.

The document began:

WE, JOHANNES, to our well-beloved Cousins and fellow-Christians of high degree, videlicet the Kings of the Greeks, Franks, Burgundians, and Castillians, as well as to all Hetmans, Woywodes, Chieftains, Dukes, Counts, and Constables . . .

— and went on to describe by title, clothing, and bodily appearance (as revealed by Psalmanazzar and Agag) His Young Highness, heir to The Heir, etc., etc., and adjured ACC THE AFOREMENTIONED to

pay him all worshipful respect — but allow him not to pass without further word and release, and herein fail not, by the Holy Sepulchre and the Anointing Oil, lest they die unshriven and impaled and become meat for pigs and crows . . .

There was a signature, and a very large seal.

His Young Highness, August Salvador, the heir to the Heir, did not bother to carry further the unpersuasive role of Mr. Bill-Silas Sneed, Drummer in American Cloth and Cheese. He read the document, and his laugh, as he tossed it down, seemed genuine. His face, which had been petulant and fatigued, once again justified its likeness, appearing (suitably framed) upon the tables of about half-a-million servant-girls and shop-keepers’ assistants. The document fell, and one of the wild-looking men picked it up. There were a number of wild-looking men at the scene, many with leather arm-bands and leather badges. They may not ever have done much writing themselves, but they had evidently a respect for that which was written . . . had they lived where more was written, and more often, perhaps they might have had less.

The Crown Princeling said, “You must have ransacked my old Bobbo’s trunk to locate this antique mummery, or flummery. Even if those kings were present, do you think that any of them would pay attention?”

“No,” said Eszterhazy, “but there are constables present, and they will.”

So there were. So they did. This ancient office, for long a sort of quiet smile, these ancient officers of the counts’ stables, duties now largely confined to the impoundment of cattle, lost, strayed, or stolen; of this ancient office, still they were officers. Hulking, hairy, uncouth, wild-looking, unkempt, a simple badge of office strapped to a sleeve, they passed this odd, odd document from hand to hand; and those who could read, read it to those who could not. And always they pointed to the seal. And always they pointed to the signature.

And steadily they continued coming in from the woods. And gradually they blocked the road. And gradually the Crown Princeling wilted. His bravado, his self-assurance, melted away. Mere youth and courage and passion had carried him thus far. If he had simply gone out on this mad-cap scheme in disguise, he might have succeeded. Even if he had added to this mad-cap scheme the hare-brained addition of a false diplomatic immunity, he might have succeeded.

Then again, he might not.

At other border-points, crossings, stop-stations, no one might have ever heard of the Grand Mogul; seeing a diplomatic seal, they might have simply let the baggage and its owner pass on into foreign territory. But here —

Right here — only here — and here alone, they had heard of him quite well. That is, not precisely of him — the last him, dying (long after the Sepoy Mutiny) in squalor and exile — but of his ancestors. Babar? Akbar? Well, anyway — Tamurlane. And Genghis Khan.

And Genghis Khan.

Something about that last name caught in Eszterhazy’s mind. It, but not quite exactly it. Had it not other forms? Certainly. Zinghis Khan, he had surely seen that one somewhere. But that was not it. In a flash and a surge it came to him. Chinghis Khan. Well. And what of it?

Old Gingers. That of it. He had been wrong about its having been a nickname for Barbarossa. This is where he would have come, Old Ginger, I mean ... it helps to know the mountain passes if you want to move an army through .. . Well... It may haye passed out of all common knowledge that, here in Eastern Europe, they had once waited for the Golden Horde to come riding. But it had not passed out of common knowledge here. And here was where August Salvador had come with his preposterous “diplomatic immu­nity” (probably his valet had bought it from the valet of the tottery Jam Jam Sahib).

The rough, archaic-looking, archaic-thinking rural constables looked grimly at the poor, befuddled, school-and-lessons-shunning Princeling.

“The Mongols shall not pass,” they said.

Long after Eszterhazy had uttered the tired, worn-past-satire words — indicating Von Shtrumpf and Shtruvvelpeyter — had said, “Will you go with these gentlemen, please?” for what else could he have said? — still, he looked at the document, smeared as it was by the honest dirt on the rough and calloused hands of the rural constables, the last of whom to read it had passed it on to him. He looked at the seal. It had meant something to these wild men. But it meant nothing to him. And the signature? Again — it had meant much to the men of these half-lost, secluded mountains, where the past lived on and the present was not yet born; did it mean anything to him, Engelbert Eszterhazy, Doctor of this and Doctor of that?

His own finger traced the large, archaic letters. Yohan Popoff. Well, and so —

Not quite. He had read — what he had expected to read, not actually what

was written. Which was:

Yohan Popa

Yohan Popa, was what the signature actually read. In other words, words which both mystified and made clear, John the Priest, in other words. Now he knew who had conducted the clandestine communion service in the chapel; the exotic, divine liturgy, or mass.

“We are waiting for you, Engelbert,” someone called from the carriage.

“Been there a long time,” that family? Yes, they had. They had indeed been there a long time. A very long time indeed. A “descendant of His Reverence”? To be sure. Celebrated the divine liturgy clandestinely, offered guests the liberty of his kingdom, did he? Of course. To be sure. He was entitled. And stillhe and his men stood guard against the Mongols. John the Priest. Yes.

Or, put in a very slightly different way, Prester John.

Been there a long time, had they?

Yes, a very long time.

Indeed.

“I am coming now,” called Eszterhazy.