“What it is?” he asked. He spoke in English; he had indeed spent many years in the study of French; his marks, when reluctantly wrested from the Department of Educational and Ecclesiastical Affairs, proved to be a straight, undeviating, uninflected D. The Scandian Parliament, in an absolute fury, had deprived him of his traditional right to dispense the marriages of those under thirty who lacked parental consent; but the Frorish Parliament, on the principle that “French is a language spoken in brothels,” refused to do any such thing.
“What is it? Well, there are really two national breakfasts. The first one is dark bread spread with goose-grease. The other is boiled blood-sausage with boiled potatoes. Eh?”
“Nay.”
“Oh, but Count Calmar. The blood-sausage is so delightfully strongsmelling. The boiled potatoes are served cold and have such a delicately blueish tinge. As for the goose-grease —”
“Surely, Cornet Eszterhazy, you jest.”
“Well, Count Calmar, yes I do.”
Count Calmar guffawed. Then he groaned and put the palms of his hands over his eyes. Eszterhazy went on to say, “Seriously, I would recommend a new-laid egg, a cup of strong, clean coffee of the Mocha- Java blend . . . toasted light bread spread with pure sweet butter and Scottish marmalade... and... perhaps... with the coffee... a spoonful of white rum. Eh?”
Count Calmar said, “Aye.”
Baron Borg uk Borg after a moment said, “The Count Calmar is desirous of informing himself of the social and political principles whereby your own country, Cornet Eszterhazy, is enabled to encompass so successfully, how shall I term it, populations non-homogenous in nature. This question naturally concerns us in our own Two Kingdoms.”
This statement so perfectly summed up, perhaps exactly, the desires of Count Calmar, that he said nothing whatsoever.
Cornet Eszterhazy said, “Hmm.” After a while he added, “When we have finished breakfast, we might go for a ride. Or a walk.”
Count Calmar said, “Aye!”
Cornet Eszterhazy next observed that one of his new-found friends’ servants seemed rather odd .. . “For a servant, I mean. Nothing against his character, of course. He wears an odd sort of cap, and —”
“Ah, that is Ole,” said Calmar, with an indulgent chuckle.
“His name is not really ‘Ole,’ only we call him so. I don’t recall his real name,” Borg said. “The cap is part of his national costume. He is a
Skraeling, a man of some importance among his own people —”
“Sings songs,” Calmar said, looking around rather wistfully . . . perhaps trying to find the social and political principles of his host- nation; perhaps for more white rum.
Eszterhazy, having but slightly breakfasted with the Equerries, had joined in eating the same items suggested for his guests. And drinking. He felt benign. Felt.. . also .. . interested. “A ... a Skraeling?”
Borg and Calmar nodded. Something faintly flickered nearby. Eszterhazy believed that Kopperkupp had also nodded. “Yes,” Borg said. “A people of unknown provenance, anciently if not aboriginally established in the northern parts of both our kingdoms; from having intermarried with the Scands and Frores they have lost much of a distinctive physiognomy while yet retaining some elements of their old traditions. Traditionally they are entitled to be represented at court; hence Ole being with us, ahem.”
“He supplies the Sovereign with, at each meal, an egg of an Arctic tern,” said Calmar.
Eszterhazy politely raised his brows; Borg said, “Of course this is not possible except when the Sovereign bi-annually visits their territories. Elsewise it has been commuted to a duck’s egg.”
“I see. . . . What else does the man do, then?”
“He blacks the boots,” said Borg, somewhat curtly.
It was arranged that Borg and Calmar (and, presumably, Kopperkupp) would make a very brief call at their Embassy — “To be sure,” the Frorish Nationalists said, “we must have our own Embassies some day. But first we must have our own Bureau of Weights and Measures!” — that Borg and Kopperkupp would remain for whatever business need be. And that Calmar would then/there meet the Equerry-Cornet. And that they two would go off. Somewhere. Somewhere (it was discreetly understood) respectable.
The political education . . . perhaps re-education ... of “Count Calmar” need not begin that very day. Perhaps the very next.
As the Northern visitors wished first to make some slight adjustments to their dress — a change of dress-coats, perhaps, the ribbons of an order — Eszterhazy would wait below, and meet them in the grand lobby. He watched them as they departed; watched the waiter arriving with more coffee; watched as a tall, thin man in tweeds arose from a nearby table and trotted — there was no other word — trotted over to Eszterhazy’s table and snatched up one of the egg-cups and held it close to his eye. “Extraordinary,” he said. “Extraordinary.” Then, suddenly aware that his conduct might just possibly be considered other than entirely ordinary, he turned to Eszterhazy and begged his pardon. This was granted.
“Sir,” the man said. “I am Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Oxbridge. Who would have expected to find this on a table of an hotel in the capital of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania!”
“But why so, Professor?” asked Eszterhazy, slightly put-out, and slightly amused. “We do not live on locusts here. I myself, generally speaking, eat an egg a day. At least one egg.”
The Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Oxbridge turned to him a face displaying the utmost astonishment. “But surely not the egg of an Arctic tern?” he asked.
Borg was not eager to relinquish Magnus, but was obliged to agree that the younger man did indeed require to stretch his legs and breathe fresh air after more than three days in a railroad carriage. Still, he did ask where ... “generally speaking” ... they planned on going. Eszterhazy acknowledged that this was a very fair question. He stroked his fair and as yet rather sparse moustache. “I had thought,” he said, “that we might commence with the Imperial Institute of Political and Social Economy.”
“Yes, yes!” — Borg.
“After a perhaps not over-tiring visit, hmm, next perhaps the Royal Ethnical and Ethical Museum. ...”
“Excellent!” — Borg.
“After that... well, although, alas, the Diet is not in session, still, a visit to the gallery will display the exquisite nicety with which the national and linguistic and political affiliations are delineated by means of a system of color-codes unique in Europe; the seats being upholstered — for example — in off-white for the Scythian Conservatives all the way through beige for the Hyperborean Monarchial Democrats —”
“Very good, very good!” — Borg.
“There was some rumpus once upon a time, with the Slovatchko Christian Socialists and the Pan-Imperial Unified Socialists each demanding red; however, this could not be granted, red being the traditional color of the Pannonian Ultra-Conservative Agrarians; and in the end, the Slovatchko Christian Socialists accepted puce and the P-I. U. Socialists, mauve. Perhaps this might interest Count Calmar?”
“Cornet, it cannot fail to do so.” — Borg. (Grimly)
Magnus, later, had fallen into a sullen silence, but by and by he began to look about with some interest at the passing scene and its presumably polyglot peoples. Just then the young Cornet lifted his light malacca walking-stick and gestured towards a stolid granite building across the street. “Imperial Institute of Political and Social Economy.” Magnus’s face fell at once, but his guide went on, brisky, “Well, so much for the Imperial Institute of Political and Social Economy; we have commenced with it. Now at the end of this alley, which leads towards the river, there is a place of public pleasure officially licensed under the name of The Pint of Port, the quantity which is sold there for three-tenths of a skilling... officially . . . actually the drink consists of the washings of expressed grape-hulls mixed with a small amount of low-grade potato- spirit, in consequence of which the place is commonly called The Pint of Piss. Its accommodations are rude, its ambience is coarse, its customers are very often totally depraved, and —”