Illyria and the Italian Alliance. Happy, happy Scythia-Pannonia- Transbalkania, to be fretted by small Illyria! All through the Dog Days and the Silly Season, not over-scrupulous editors would sell off an otherwise perhaps-unsalable edition by smearing a quarter of a page with, in large type, ILLYRIA AND THE ITALIAN ALLIANCE. There was somehow a feeling that Illyria ought not to have an alliance and that if Illyria nevertheless felt that it must have one, it bloody well ought to have one with Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania. And as Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania had never had an alliance with Italy, why should Illyria have one? The logic of this seemed irrefutable. At least in Bella. As for the King of Illyria, Kyryl II Mettodio, whose nose (admittedly rather long) had always been good for an affectionate jest in the Bellanese music halls, why, it was to be feared that His Adriatic Majesty’s veracity was now come to be questioned on the local musical stage; and that he was even occasionally nowadays being referred to there as King Pinocchio.
Tut-tut.
Eszterhazy gave the front page a glance which was reflexive rather than reflective and had half-folded it again; half he would throw it away, half he would tuck it under his arm for later; he took a half-step forward. He stopped. What. Why. Ah. There had been something on that damned page after all. Damn. Much better to have nothing but advertizements on the front page. For Sale, Fine Landau-Barouche. Otto Come Home All Is Forgiven. Philanthropic Gentleman Desires Make Loan to Young Woman in Good Health. — What had it been which had caught his eye ... aye, and stuck in like a piece of grit... ? Of course he could not say. Well... a sigh ... there was nothing for it; he sat down at a bench outside a rough tavern-cum-cookshop which catered to the needs of the coach-for-hire drivers. He was opening the paper when a not very clean apron stopped in front of him. Without looking up, Eszterhazy said, “The usual.” When he glanced up, the apron had gone. No waiter would sink pride and admit he did not remember a regular customer . .. which Eszterhazy was certainly not. Illyria and the — oh, blast and damn Illyria and the Italian Alliance!
The answer seemed to be, he was obliged finally to admit, that there were two somethings. And he would perhaps never be able to learn if he had noticed one before the other, perhaps the two had been read simultaneously; it did not matter. OUTRAGE AT THE SACRED GROVE was one. VERY IMPORTANT NEW INVENTION was the other. Someone, whilst putting an axe to a tree in the so-called Sacred Grove of the Olden-Time Goths at the headwaters of the Little River had had his head cloven by another axe. There was considerable unrest among the peasants. Huh. He had notes at home on the subject of the so-called Sacred Grove, etcetera, both from ancient and from modern writers. Hum. Well, he could cut this out and compare it and add it to the collection. As for the Very Important New Invention . . . :
The Gazette is able to inform its readers that a very important new invention has been perfected by a subject of the Triune Monarchy which will probably result in our country becoming a most prominent industrial consideration in the economy of Europe. Engineer H. V. Borits Brozz, a resident of the charming little suburb of Klejn Tinkeldorff, has perfected an engine which operates on water and air. The new engine does not require horse-power or steam. As neither wood nor coal is employed for fiiel. . .
Eszterhazy swore very silently. Every practitioner in stock trickery, every promoter of fake companies and worthless schemes, would be sure to get involved in this fine-tuned harmonic hobby-horse, mare’s nest, wild-goose chase, what-one-might-call-it. True — and fortunately — there were not many such in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. But that might leave a clearer field for those there were. At that moment the waiter, saying, “Two kopperkas, sir boss,” set something on the unclothed table. And Eszterhazy in a flash realized just how the Gazette had got hold of the story: De Metz was a friend of the musical critic of the Gazette and told it to him, and he in turn had passed it on to his editor. De Metz knew as much about engineering as Brozz did about music. The bee of Investment Possibility had entered his bonnet, and who could say how long it was going to buzz there? Perhaps forever. Certainly — in theory — the harmonic turbine had a potential. Certainly the compressed-air engine had a potential. In theory. So, in the time of Cardinal Richelieu, had the steam-boiler had a theoretical potential. It had since had two hundred years to develop from a toy suspected of sorcery into the immense engines which sped o’er Land and Ocean without rest. Even electricity had grown from a key on a kite in a rainstorm to something which now began, seemingly, to demonstrate a possible potential capable of perhaps rivaling steam.
What good is your new invention?
What good is a new-born baby?
But surely Engineer Brozz’s new model engine, for all its high-toned harmonic title, was now merely at the toy stage, doing nothing more than winding a cord which lifted and then lowered a very small weight. Would it have its century? If the idea got into the hands of scoundrel speculators might not the idea be driven from sight and thought, to lie buried in the Urn for its own several centuries? Well, perhaps that might be what it needed. Meanwhile there were after all and always many other new inventions.
What the waiter had set down was borsht. Cabbage-borsht.
Wasn’t bad. The usual. Ha!
But. . . where had he seen Brozz before?
The Scotch had not conquered the English nor had the English conquered the Scotch in order for one sovereign to become King of England and King of Scotland and — eventually — King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. What had brought it about was, firstly, the Scottish marriage of King Henry’s sister, and, secondly, the not-marriage of King Henry’s daughter: the Queen of Scots hath a bonny babe and I am but a barren stock. Neither had any wars at last united Scythia and Pannonia; the Pannonians at a certain point historical had no Crown-Prince? Well, neither had they any Salic Law: the then-Crown-Prince of Scythia was wedded to the then- Crown-Princess of Pannonia; both being tactful enough to die before their conjoint-grandchild, said grandchild became Sovereign of both Scythia and Pannonia — and what school-child anywhere did not know that the people of Scythia were (principally) Goths and that the people of Pannonia were (principally) Avars? What an occasion for the erasure of frontiers, the unification of armies, the abolition of customs and octrois! There were, however, also all those lesser, minor territories, of which the new Sovereign was
Prince of one and Duke of another ... in the Scythian Line of Descent. . . Grand Hetman here and Chief Boyar there ... in the Pannonian Line of Descent... and so on ... and so on. What to do about them, these not-quite- nations already becoming obsolete in an age where every political entity was felt to require a prime minister, a general staff, a set of postage stamps, a — What was done was perhaps cleverer than students of political science realized, for all these “Hegemonies,” as they were called, from Ritchli to Little Great Dombrovia to Hyperborea, and including Vlox-Majore and Vlox- Minore, were not absorbed by either Scythia or Pannonia, but were autonomously united to form Transbalkania.
The result, rather to the surprise of the gathering which assembled to form the (as it was popularly called forever) “the Big Union,” the result was an Empire . . .
And now the cheese of Poposhki, the smoked sturgeon of the Romanou, the brined-pork and the brawn of the Slovatchko Alps, appeared . . . un taxed!... on the market-stalls of Bella — Avar-Ister — Apolograd — and everywhere else in the fourth-largest empire in Europe. (The Turks were only fifth. Served them right.) Also the wheat of Scythia and the beef & mutton of the wide Pannonian plains. And, as Dr. Englebert Eszterhazy composed this paean in his own mind and looked at the ever-thronging streets of what, once a walled town, was now a world capital (yes, it was a small world), he considered the role which he himself would play. Which he had intended he should play and had designed (re-designed) his own life the better to play it. You can’t catch me, said —