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.