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.