Ignats Louis stared stubbornly at an ostrich egg in one of the cabinets. “Sec? Yield, Yield, Yield,” he said. “We shall be little more than a mere petty chieftain if this keeps up. Where has it not yet been yielded?” His first minister informed him that it had not yet been yielded to San Marino, Paraguay, and Mt. Athos. “Besides Turkey, of course.” But this merely made the Old Man grumpier. Mt. Athos! The very last time the Proxy Claim had been invoked was in a dispute over the placing of a faldstool in the Pannonian Phalanastary at Mt. Athos . . . and had the monks been grateful? Not a bit! “Won’t yield. Sorry We yielded to the King of Greece.”
The P.M. silently sighed. Then he played his last card. (A threat of resignation was no card at alclass="underline" each time he tried to play it the Monarch said, Good.) “I am authorized to inform Your Royal and Imperial Majesty that if Your Royal and Imperial Majesty will yield what is after all a mere pretense, and has been since 1381, the Sultan will bestow upon your Royal and Imperial Majesty the style and title of Despot of Ephesus, it being clearly understood that the title is purely of a despotic, I mean, of a titular character and no longer annually entitles its holder to a caravan of figs, a she-elephant, a eunuch barber-surgeon, or any other of its formal perquisites, including flaying and impalement. Though the Sultan might yield somewhat on the figs. . . .”
Silence. “Despot of Ephesus, hey.”
“Yes, Sire.”
More silence. Then: “The King of Greece won’t like that, will he?” This time the Premier did not conceal his sigh. “No, Sire.”
“Heh heh. Take the wax out of his moustache! Hey? Where’s the ticket?” The P.M. bent down just the slightest bit and indicated the parchment assumpsit which, red seals, ribbons, and all, had been in plain sight atop the writing-board on the Monarch’s knee all the while; the Monarch dipped the short-trimmed quill into the purple ink, and scribbled IL RI (Ignats Louis, Rex, Imperator), called, “Page!” and stood up. The page presented the Premier with a sanding-box, the Premier sanded the signature, the Monarch said There went a thousand years of history down the goo-hole, the Premier said that it was merely 836 years and that the claim had always been dubious and (growing a trifle confused) that Little Byzantia was worth a mass.
“News to me the Turks say mass,” observed the Monarch, pouncing. The P.M. winced: good. Still IL RI felt grumpy over his yielded point and phantom crown, little though he could imagine himself riding his Whitey horse into Yildiz Kiosk and proclaiming, “Stamboul is my wash- pot, over the Sweet Waters of Asia do I cast my shoe!” Well, he was entitled to do something to amuse himself, wasn’t he? “Page,” said he, “get over to that clever young fellow Engli who used to be Equerry here, Dr. Eszterhazy he calls himself now, and tell him that Uncle Iggy will see him tonight, usual time and place; exit the Despot of Ephesus, shejss- drekka/” Out he went.
The Prime Minister looked after him with opened mouth. Then he looked down at the page. The page looked back at him, his rosy face perfectly blank. “ I will see Your Excellency to the door,” said he. He saw His Excellency to the door, closed the door, then turned two cartwheels without disturbing a single bibelot, and then, as sober as before, he went to change from court dress into street clothes.
All was quiet in front of the hotel in the little square at the bottom of the Street of the Defeat of Bonaparte (commonly called Bonaparte Street). It was a rare alley, even, which had no name in Bella, capital of the Triune Monarchy, and this was a rare square, for it had no name at all; the hotel was a private hotel; its owner was one Schweitz, a Swiss, a man for whom the word “discreet” was inadequate. Engelbert Eszterhazy was then engaged in his preliminary studies for the degree of Doctor of Science (a process subsequently completed in Geneva); he had bought the house at Number 33, Turkling Street, and was slowly having it rebuilt according to his plans. For the present, Eszterhazy had rooms in Schweitz’s hotel, and on a certain evening at an hour between early and late Eszterhazy had a few guests. By now it had been a while said of him that he was hopelessly eccentric but damnably clever and so best not crossed — on the sideboard tonight, for example, was a collation catered by Colewort — who was he? — he specialized in serving up snacks after the funerals of the upper sort of cartmen, that’s who he was — on the sideboard tonight was cheese, head-cheese, fruit-cheese, fruit, two sorts of simple cake — if you wanted French kickshaws you could choose to hire a “French” caterer, and Eszterhazy did not choose to — beer, lemonade, and the standard Panno- nian wine called bullblood.
A lull in the talk. Another guest entered. “Ah! Uncle Iggy! Welcome, welcome! You are just in time!” Eszterhazy announced, “Tonight we are perhaps going to summon up some familiar spirits. Perhaps some unfamiliar ones. Madame Dombrovski has been so very kind as to agree to see if entities not bound to earthly vessels will tonight be moved to employ her as a medium.”
Madame Dombrovski asked that no one be so formal as to call her so. “Pliz, pliz,” she begged, extending her ample arms (she had once been prima coloratura at the Zagreb Opera, where, it is well-known, no thin coloratura has ever appeared); “Pliz. Seemply Katinka Ivanovna. Een You-Rope, eat ease vary furmal, bot I hahv leaved een America, whar ease vary <?»w-furmal. Not so, Pard? she asked one of the guests; he nodded and, rising, was perhaps about to speak; but Katinka Ivanovna went on. “Pair-hops the spear-eats wheel feel moved, as Dr. Eszterhazy hos sayed. Pair-hops nought. Moderne science hos provide us weeth the planchette, een America we call eat the wee-jee board. Sometimes the spear-eats appear and spik via the planchette. Bot sometimes they peak a human beink. Who con say wheech? Whale, we most see.” Beaming, she began to roll acigarette. Touches of pink petticoat peeped here and there from above and under her frothy blue dress: Katinka Ivanovna was clearly not one of your fanatically neat dressers . . . perhaps that New World informality of which she spoke had accompanied her back to the Old World. Her abundant hair was red, that is, to state it a shade more precisely, henna. Perhaps it was naturally, if unusually, her own hair color; perhaps she had made the Pilgrimage to Mecca. Perhaps not.
Who else was present? Well, there was a rather small and pudgy man to whose clothes and shoes the word glossy could not have been applied, or, at any rate, not without grave risk of terminological inexactitude; perhaps just as well, for their gloss could not but have suffered under the rain of food fragments produced by his rapid eating — shall we say “guzzling”? yes we shall — at the sideboard: and all the while he rolled his prominent eyes around and around at the company. This was Professor Gronk, in whose scientific mind and work Dr. Eszterhazy was vastly interested. Professor Gronk had been well-known at one time for his having courageously piloted eleven balloons out of, and twelve balloons into, Paris during the Siege. Or, vice versa. The Prussians had referred to him, perhaps a bit sourly, as der verfluchte blockaderunner; “blockade- runner” is a word which does not translate easily into Prussian, but they had done the best they could and dropped the hyphen. Their new Colonial Service in Africa was reputed to be busily working on the many, many possibilities of the word hottentotenpoteniaten. Subsequently Professor Gronk had applied himself to coal-tar derivatives in Montpelier and steam-plows in Silesia, alas sans spectacular success, but his past as ballonist was always with him and his head remained, so to speak, in the clouds.