AROUND the little island of Ausserland the fishing-smacks hover all through the season. They rarely go out of sight; or, indeed, stand far off shore, for life is easy in Ausserland, and the famous Ausserland herrings, which give the island its prosperity, are oftenest to be caught in the broad reaches of shallow water that surround the island. Beyond these reaches there are fish, too; but out there the waters are more turbulent. And why should a fisherman risk his life and his beautiful brown duck sails in treacherous seas, when he has his herring-pond at his own door-step, so to speak. And they have a saying in Ausserland that if you are drowned you may go to heaven; but certainly not to Ausserland.

And who would want to leave Ausserland? Life is so easy there that it takes most of the inhabitants about ninety years to die—and even then you can hardly call it dying. Life’s pendulum only slows down day by day, and swings through an arc that imperceptibly diminishes as the years go on, until at last, without surprise, without shock, almost without regret, so gradual is the process, you perceive that it has stopped. And then the whole village, all in Sunday clothes, marches out to the little graveyard on the hill, and somebody’s great birchen beer-mug is hung on the living-room wall in memory of one who ate and drank and slept, and who is no more. There are rooms in those old houses in Ausserland where the wooden mugs hang in a double row, and the oldest of them was last touched by living lips in days when the dragon-ships of the Vikings ploughed that Northern sea.

Ausserland is a principality, and a part of a mighty empire; but except that it has to pay its taxes, and in return is guaranteed immunity from foreign invasion, it might just as well be an independent kingdom; or, rather, an independent state, for it is governed by Burgesses, elected by the people to administer laws made hundreds of years ago, and still quite good and suitable. If a man steals his neighbor’s goods, he is put in the pillory. But what should a man steal his neighbor’s goods for when he has all the goods that he wants of his own? The last time the pillory was used was for a shipwrecked Spanish sailor who refused to go to church on the ground of a rooted prejudice against the Protestant religion. And it must have been a singularly comfortable pillory, for somehow or other he managed to carve his name on it during the hour in which he stood there—his name and the date of the event, and there they are to this day: “Miguel Diaz jul 6 1743.” My own opinion is that they did not even let the top-piece down on him.

The men of Ausserland are not liable to conscription, and as no ships of war ever come to their odd corner of the sea, they know no more of the mighty struggles of their great empire than if they were half a world away. This is a part of the beautiful understanding which the Ausserlanders have established with their hereditary Prince and with the imperial government. The Prince lives at the court of the Emperor, and none of his line has seen Ausserland since his grandfather was there in the last century for a day’s visit. Yet his relations with his subjects are of a permanently pleasant nature. They pay him his taxes, of which he hands over the lion’s share to the government, keeping enough for himself to attire his plump person in beautiful uniforms and tight cavalry boots, and to cultivate the most beautiful port-wine nose in the whole court. The amount of the taxes has been settled long ago, and it is always exactly the same. The Ausserland fishermen are like a sort of deep-sea Dutchmen, independent, sturdy and shrewd. They know just how much they ought to pay; and they pay it, and not one soumarkee more or less. Ages ago the hereditary Princes discovered that if they put up the tax-rate, the herring fisheries promptly failed just in the necessary proportion to bring the assessment back to the old figure. When they lowered the rate the accommodating herring came back. It was a curious if not pleasing freak of nature to which they had to accustom themselves, for it never would have done to leave the market open to any other supply of herrings than the famous herrings of Ausserland. So that question settled itself.

Twice a year the finest of the broad-breasted fishing smacks sailed for the distant mainland, bearing heavy cargoes of dried fish, and beautiful seashells such as were to be found nowhere else. Twice a year they came back, bringing cloths and calicos, always of the same quality, color and pattern, for the fashions never change in Ausserland. They brought also drugs and medicines, school-books and pipes, tools and household utensils of the finer sort, more delicate than the Ausserland ironsmiths could fashion; brandy and cordials and wine in casks great and small, and the few other articles of commerce for which they were dependent upon the outer world; for the Ausserlanders supplied their own needs for the most part, spun their own linen, tanned their own leather, built their own boats, and generally “did” for themselves, as they say in New England. Then it was, and then only, that the newspapers came to Ausserland—a six-months’ collection of newspapers at each trip. And the Head Burgess read them for the whole town. The Head Burgess was always a man who had reached that period of thrift and prosperity at which it seemed futile to toil longer, and who was both willing and able to give his whole leisure to affairs of state. He it was who collected and forwarded the taxes, and who stood ready to punish offenders, should any one feel tempted to offend. The Head Burgess always grumbled a good deal, and talked much of the burdens of public life; but it was observant among even the unobservant Ausserlanders that the Head Burgess was usually the fattest man in town; and the post was much sought after because few Head Burgesses had been known to die under ninety-two or three years of age.

As a rule, the Head Burgess read slowly and with deliberation. Of a June afternoon, when the fishermen came in from their day’s work, he would stroll leisurely down to the wharves, with his long pipe with the painted china bowl, and would give forth the news of the day to the fishermen.

“Three families,” he would say, “were frozen to death in Hamburg.”

“Ah, indeed!” some courteous listener would respond; “and when was that?”

“In February last,” the Head Burgess would reply; “it seems scandalous, does it not, that people should never learn to go in-doors and keep the fires lighted in Winter? Thank heaven, we have no such idiots here!”

For an Ausserlander can never understand what it means to be poor or needy. How can anybody want, he argues, while there are millions of herring in the sea, and they come along every year just at the same time?

In Spring, of course, the Head Burgess gave the Ausserlanders a budget of news that began with the preceding Summer. They listened to it politely, as they listened to the pastor’s sermons. Outside of the market-reports they had little interest in the world which ate their herrings. Still, they were a polite and intelligent people, and they were willing for once in a way to lend a courteous and attentive ear to the doings and sayings of people who were not happy enough to live in Ausserland. Thus it happened that they knew, several months after it occurred, of the death of the reigning Emperor and the accession to the throne of his son. The news was received with just the least shade of disapproval. The preceding Emperor had come to the throne a sick man, and had reigned but a short time. His father had reigned about as long as an Emperor can possibly reign, and they felt that he had done what was expected of him. They hoped that their Emperors were not going to get into the habit of reigning for a few months and then dying. It was annoying, they thought, to have to learn new names every few years.

So it is not remarkable that the new Emperor had been several months on his throne before the good people of Ausserland learned that he was a very peculiar young man, with a character of his own, and with a passion, that almost amounted to a mania, for re-establishing an ancient order of things that had well-nigh perished from the face of the earth. Nor is it to be wondered at that, considering all news of the court as frivolous and probably fictitious, they were utterly ignorant of a controversy that had divided the whole social system of the empire into two camps. Who could expect that in the cosy, well-furnished rooms of the weather-beaten old houses of Ausserland it should be known that there was a vast commotion in the Imperial court over the new cotillion introduced by the Lord Chamberlain? It was a charming cotillion, all agreed; the music was ravishing, and the figures were exquisitely original; but the third figure—ah, there was the trouble!—the third figure had not met with the approval of the matrons. The young girls and the very young married women all liked it; and the men were as a unit in its favor; but the more elderly ladies thought that it was indelicate, and that it afforded opportunities for objectionable familiarities. A hot war was raged between the two parties. The Emperor, of course, was arbiter. He hesitated long. He was a very young man, and he took himself very much in earnest. To him a matter of court punctilio had an importance scarcely second to that of the fate of nations. As soon as an objection was offered, he issued an edict proscribing the performance of

the dance of dubious propriety until such time as he should have made up his imperial mind as to its character. For three months its fate trembled in the balance. Then he decided that it should be and continue to be; and he issued a formal proclamation to that effect—the first formal proclamation of his reign. It was an opportunity for the re-introduction of ancient and ancestral methods which the young Emperor could not lose. The edict had gone forth in haste by word of mouth and by notice in the daily papers; but he resolved that the proclamation should go by special envoy to all the principalities that composed his powerful empire. Accordingly, an officer of high rank, specially despatched from the court, read his Imperial Majesty’s proclamation in every principality of the nation; and thereafter it was legitimate and proper to dance the third figure of the new Lord Chamberlain’s cotillion on all occasions of lordly festivities, and all the elderly ladies accepted the situation with a cheerful submissiveness, and set about using it for scandal-mongering purposes with promptitude and alacrity.

* * *

Early one Midsummer morning a strange fishing-smack was sighted from the Ausserland wharves far out at sea, beating up against an obstinate wind, and coming from the direction of the mainland. This in itself was enough to cause general comment and to stir the whole village with a thrill of interest; for strange vessels rarely came that way, except under stress of storm; and though the sea was running unusually high there had been no storm in many days. Besides, why should a vessel obviously unfitted for that sort of sailing, beat up against a wind that would take her to the mainland in half the time? Yet there she was, making for the island in long, laborious tacks. Everybody stopped work to look at her; but work was suspended and utterly thrown aside when she hoisted a pennant that, according to the nautical code, signified that she had on board an Envoy from his Imperial Majesty.

The whole town was astir in a moment. The shops and schools closed. The village band began to practice as it had never practiced before. The burgesses and other officials donned their garments of state. A committee was promptly appointed to prepare a public banquet worthy of the Emperor’s messenger. The children were sent collecting flowers, and were instructed how to strew them in his path. The bell-ringers gathered and arranged an elaborate

programme of chimes. The citizens got into their Sunday clothes, which were most wonderful clothes in their way; and the town-crier, who played the trumpet, got his instrument out and polished it up until it shone like gold. But the man who felt most of the burden of responsibility upon his shoulders was the Head Burgess. He got into his robes of office as quickly as his wife and his three daughters could array him, and then he hastened to the Rathhaus, or Town Hall, and there consulted the archives to find out from the records of his predecessors what it became him to do when his Majesty’s Envoy should announce his errand. He must make a speech, that was clear, for the honor of the Island. But what speech should he make? He could not compose one on the instant—in fact, he could not compose one at all. What had his forerunners done on like occasions? He looked over the record and found that three King’s Envoys had landed on the Island: one in 1699, to announce that the Island had been ceded by one kingdom to another; another in 1764, to inform the people that the great-grandmother of the hereditary Prince was dead; and another in 1848, to proclaim that the Islanders’ right of exemption from conscription was suspended. In not one of these cases, it should be remarked, did the message of King, Prince or Emperor, change the face of affairs on the Island in the smallest degree. The herring market remaining stable, the Ausserlanders cared no whit to whom they paid taxes; as to the death of the Prince’s great-grandmother, they simply remarked that it was a pity to die at the early age of eighty-seven; and when they were told that they would have to get up a draft and be conscripted into the army or navy, they just went fishing, and there the matter dropped. One is not an Ausserlander for nothing.

But the Head Burgess found that the same speech had been used on all three occasions. It was short, and he had little difficulty in committing it to memory, for it took the ship of his Majesty’s Envoy six good hours to get into port. This was the speech:

“Noble and Honorable, Well and High-Born Sir, the people of Ausserland desire through their representative, the Head Burgess, to affirm their unwavering loyalty to the most illustrious and high-born personage who condescends to assume the government of a loyal and independent populace, and to express the hope that Divine Providence may endow him with such power and capacity as properly befit a so-situated ruler.”

So heartily did the whole population throw itself into the work of preparing to receive the distinguished visitor, that everything had been in readiness a full hour, when, in the early afternoon, the fishing-smack finally made her landing. During this long hour, the whole town watched the struggles of the little boat with the baffling wind and waves. Everybody was in a state of delighted expectancy. An Emperor’s Envoy does not call on one every day, and his coming offered an excuse for merry-making such as the prosperous and easy-going people of Ausserland were only too willing to seize.

So, when the boat made fast to the wharf, the signal guns boomed, and the people cheered again and again, and threw their caps in the air when the King’s Envoy appeared from the cabin and returned the salute of the Head Burgess.

And, indeed, the King’s Envoy was a most satisfactory and gratifying spectacle of grandeur. He was so grand and so gorgeous generally that he might have been taken for the hereditary Prince, himself, had it not been well known that the color of the hereditary Prince’s nose was unchangeable—being what the ladies call a fast red—whereas, this gentleman’s face was as white as the Head Burgess’s frilled shirtfront. But his clothes! So splendid a uniform was never seen before. Some of it was of cobalt blue and some of it of Prussian blue, and some of it of white; and, all over, in every possible place, it was decorated with a gold lace and gold buttons and silken frogs and tassels, and every other device of beauty that ingenuity could suggest, with complete disregard of cost.

And then His Serene Highness, Herr Graf Maximilian von Bummelberg, of Schloss Bummelfels in the Schwarzwald, stepped on the wharf and graciously introduced himself to the representative of the people, who grasped him warmly by the hand with a cordiality untempered by awe; and the people shouted again as they saw the two great men together; and not one suspected the anguish hidden by that martial outside. For, of course, as such things will happen, the Envoy selected to carry the Emperor’s proclamation to this marine principality was a man who had never been to sea in his life, and who never would have made a sailor if he had been kept at sea until he was pickled. And for eighteen hours the unfortunate messenger of good tidings had been tossed about in the dark, close, malodorous little cabin of a fishing-smack on the breast of a chopping sea, beating up against a strong head wind. And, oh! had he not been sick? Sick, sick, sick, and then again sick—so sick, indeed, that he had had to hide his gorgeous clothes under a sailor’s dirty tarpaulin. This made him feel sicker yet; but, though in the course of the trip he lost his respect for mankind, including himself, for royalty, for religion, for life and for death, he still retained a vital spark of respect for his beautiful clothes. He stood motionless upon the wharf and returned the compliments of the Head Burgess in a husky voice that sounded in his own ears strange and far off. The Herr Graf Maximilian von Bummelberg, of Schloss Bummelfels in the Schwarzwald, Envoy of his Imperial Majesty, was waiting for the ground to steady itself, for it was behaving as it had never behaved before, to his knowledge. It rolled and it heaved, it flew up and it nearly hit him in the face, then it slipped away from under him and rocked back again sidewise. Never having been on an island before, the King’s Envoy might have thought that the land was really afloat if he had not seen that the wine in the silver cup which the Burgess was presenting to him was swinging around like everything else without spilling a drop.

Things began to settle a little after the Envoy had drunk the wine, and when he had found that there was actually a carriage to take him to the Town Hall, he brightened up wonderfully. He was much pleased to see also that the Town Hall was solidly built of brick, and that it was to a stone balcony that he was led to read his proclamation to the people. Grasping the balustrade firmly with one hand, he read to the surging crowd before him—he had heard of surging crowds before, but now he saw one that really did surge—the message of his Imperial Master. The proclamation was exceedingly brief, except for the recital of the titles of the Emperor. The body of the document ran as follows:

“I announce to my faithful, loyal and devoted subjects of the honorable principality of Ausserland, that hereafter, by my favor and pleasure, the use of the Third Figure in the Cotillion is graciously granted to them without further restriction. Done, under my hand and seal, this first day of July, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-two.”

That was all. The people listened attentively and cheered enthusiastically. Then the Envoy handed the proclamation and his credentials to the Head Burgess, with a bow and a flourish, and signified his intention of returning at once by the way he had come. Nor could any entreaties prevail upon him even to stay to

the banquet already spread. He told the Burgesses, with many compliments and assurances of his lofty esteem, that he had another principality to notify before six o’clock the next morning, and that the business of his Imperial Master admitted of not so much as a moment’s delay. The truth of the matter, however, he kept to himself. For one thing, he could not have gazed upon food without disastrous results. For another, he was experiencing an emotion which in any other than a military breast would have been fear. He had but one wish in the world, and that was to get back to the mainland, the breeze being in his favor going back and promising a quicker passage. Indeed it was with difficulty that he repressed a mad desire to ask the Head Burgess whether the island ever fetched loose and floated further out, or sank to the bottom. However, he maintained his dignity to the last; and, a half an hour later, as the people watched the fishing-smack with the Imperial ensign sail forth upon the dancing sea, bearing the Herr Graf Maximilian von Bummelberg, of Schloss Bummelfels in the Schwarzwald, they all agreed that, for a short visit, he made a very satisfactory King’s Envoy.

But they could banquet very well without assistance from Envoys or anybody, and they sat them down in the great hall of the Rathhaus, and they fell upon the smoked herring and the fresh herring, and the pickled herring, and the smoked goose-breast and the potato salad, and all the rest of the good things, and they drank great tankards of home-made beer, and great flagons of imported Rhenish wine; and, after that, they smoked long pipes and chatted contentedly, mainly about the herring-market.

They had reached this stage in the proceedings before it occurred to any one in the company to broach the comparatively uninteresting subject of the Imperial proclamation, and then somebody said in a casual way that he did not think he had quite caught the sense of it. Soon it appeared that no one else had. The Head Burgess was puzzled. “I have just copied it into the Town Archives,” he said; “but, upon my soul, I never thought of considering the sense of it.” So the document was taken from the ponderous safe of the Rathhaus and passed around among the goodly company, each one of whom read it slowly through and smoked solemnly over it. The Head Burgess was appealed to for the meaning of the word “cotillion.” He had to confess that he did not exactly know. He believed, however, that it was a custom-house word, and had reference to the gauging of proof spirits. Then the Doctor was asked his opinion. He said, somewhat uneasily, that he thought it was one of the new chemicals recently derived from coal tar; but, with all due respect to his Imperial Majesty, he took no stock in such new-fangled nonsense, and castor-oil would be good enough for his patients while he lived. The School-Master would know, some one suggested; but the School-Master had gone home early, being in expectation of an addition to his family. The Dominie took a hand in the discussion, and calling attention to the word figure, opined that it belonged to some branch of astronomy hitherto under the ban of the universities on account of its tendency to unsettle the minds of young men and promote the growth of infidelity. He lamented the atheistical tendency of modern times, and shook his head gravely as he said he hoped that the young Emperor would not be led astray.

Many suggestions were made; so many, indeed, that, it being plainly impossible to arrive at a consensus of opinion, the subject was dropped; and, wrapped in great clouds of tobacco smoke, the conversation made its way back to the herring fisheries.

But, later in the night, as the Head Burgess and the Doctor strolled slowly homeward, smoking their pipes in the calm moonlight, the question came up again, and they were earnestly discussing it in deep, sonorous tones when they came in front of the house of the School-Master, and saw by a light in the window of his study that he was still waiting the pleasure of Mrs. School-Master. They rapped with their pipes on the door-post, giving the signal that had often called their old friend forth to late card-parties at the tavern, and in a couple of minutes—for no one hurries in Ausserland—he appeared at the door in his old green dressing-gown and with his long-stemmed pipe in his mouth.

Now, the School-Master was not only a man of profound learning, but a man of rapid mental processes. He had heard from his open window the discussion as his two friends slowly came down the street; and, in point of fact, his professional instinct had led him to note the mystic word when it dropped from the Envoy’s lips. This it was, rather than domestic expectations, that had kept him awake so late. And in the time that elapsed between the arrival of his friends and his appearance at the door, he had prepared himself to meet the situation.

He listened solemnly to the question with the tolerant interest of a man of science, and he answered it without hesitation, in the imposing tone of perfect knowledge.

“A cotillion,” he said, decisively, “is the one-billionth part of a minus million in quaternions, and is used by surveyors to determine the logarithm of the cube root. That is, its use has hitherto been forbidden to the government surveyors on account of the uncertainty of the formula. That, however, has been finally determined by Prof. Lipsius, of Munich, and hereafter it may be applied to delicate calculations in determining the altitude of mountains too lofty for ascent. Gentlemen, I should like to ask you in to take a night-cap with me, but, under the circumstances, you understand.... Doctor, I don’t think we shall need you to-night. Good-evening, friends.”

The Doctor and the Head Burgess ruminated over this new acquisition to their stock of knowledge as they strolled on down the street. At last the latter broke the silence and said, in a tone in which conviction struggled with sleepiness:

“Doctor, I have often thought what a hard life those poor devils on the mainland must have with their impassable mountains, and their railroads that kill and mangle you if they get a millionth part of a cube root out of the way, and the boundary-lines they are everlastingly quarreling about. Why, here in Ausserland, see how simple it all is! We never have any trouble about our boundary-lines. Where the land stops the water begins, and where the land begins the water stops; and that’s all there is to it!”

And with these words, as the last puff of his pipe rose heavenward, the Burgess dismissed the matter from his mind, and the Emperor’s proclamation legitimizing the Third Figure of the Cotillion vanished from his memory—and from that of all Ausserland—passing into oblivion with those that had told of Ausserland’s change of nationality, of the conscription of her exempt citizens, and of the death of the great-grandmother of the hereditary Prince.