THE cause of the uproar proved to be simple enough.

Emerging into the Bischofsplatz, from the street that I had followed, I found a great crowd gathered before the Marmorhof, shouting, “Death to Conrad!” and “Where is Mathilde?” with all the force of its collective lungs. The Marmorhof was the residence of Prince Conrad, brother to the reigning Grand Duke Otto—reigning, indeed, but now very old and ill, and like to die. The legitimate successor to the throne would have been Otto’s grand-daughter, Mathilde, the only surviving child of his eldest son, Franz-Victor, who had been dead these ten years. But the Grand Duke’s brother, Conrad, was covetous of her rights; covetous, and, as her friends alleged, unscrupulous. For a long while, it was said, Mathilde had been in terror of her life. Conrad was unscrupulous, and, were she but out of the way, Conrad would come to reign. Rumour, indeed, whispered that he had made three actual attempts to compass her death: two by poison, one by the dagger, each, thanks to some miracle, unsuccessful. But, a fortnight since, upon the first supervention of fatal symptoms in the malady of poor old Otto, Mathilde had mysteriously disappeared. Her whereabouts unknown, all X———was in commotion.

“She has fled and is in hiding,” surmised some people, “to escape the designs of her wicked uncle.”

“No,” retorted others, “but he, the wicked uncle himself, has kidnapped and sequestered her, perhaps even made away with her. Who can tell?”

As an inquiring stranger, the situation interested me, and, from the top of a convenient doorstep, I gazed now upon this deep-voiced Teutonic mob with a good deal of curiosity.

It must have numbered upwards of a thousand individuals, compact in its centre and near the palace, but scattering towards its edges; a sea of faces, of pale, frowning faces; a surging, troubled sea. Young men’s faces for the most part; many of them beardless. “Students from the University,” I guessed.

My own station was at the outskirts of the assemblage, the station of a casual spectator. Sharing my door-step with me were a couple of sharp-faced priests, two or three prettyish young girls—bareheaded, presumably escaped from some of the neighbouring shops—and a young man with a pointed black beard, rather long black hair, and a broad-brimmed, soft felt hat, who somehow looked as if he might be a member of that guild to which I myself belonged, the ancient and questionable company of artists.

To him I addressed myself for information.... “Students, I suppose?”

“Yes, their leaders are students. The students and the artisans of the town are of the princess’s party. The army, the clergy, and the country folk are for the prince.” He had discerned from my accent that I was a foreigner: whence, doubtless, the fulness of his answer.

“It seems a harmless mob enough,” I suggested. “They make a lot of noise, to be sure; but that breaks no bones.”

“There’s just the point,” said he. “The princess’s friends fight only with their throats. Otherwise the present complication might never have arisen.”

Meanwhile the multitude continued to shout its loudest; and for Conrad, on the whole, the quarter-hour must have been a bad one.

Presently, however, the call of a bugle wound in the distance, and drew nearer and nearer, till the bugler in person appeared, gorgeous in uniform, mounted upon a white horse, advancing slowly up the Bischofsplatz, towards the crowd, trumpeting with all his might.

“What is the meaning of that?” I asked.

“A signal to disperse,” answered my companion. “He looks like a major-general, doesn’t he? But he’s only a trumpet-sergeant, and he’s followed at a hundred yards by a battalion of infantry. His trumpet-blast is by way of warning. Disperse! Or, if you tarry, beware the soldiery!”

“His warning does not seem to pass unheeded,” I remarked.

“Oh, they’re a chicken-hearted lot, these friends of the princess,” he assented contemptuously.

Already the mob had begun to melt. In a few minutes only a few stragglers in knots here and there were left, amongst them my acquaintance and myself.

He was a handsome young fellow, with a thin dark face, bright brown eyes, and a voice so soft that if I had heard without seeing him, I should almost have supposed the speaker to be a woman.

“We, too, had better be off,” said he.

“And prove ourselves also chicken-hearted?” queried I.

“Oh, discretion is the better part of valour,” he returned.

“But I should like to see the arrival of the military,” I submitted.

“Ha! Like or not, I’m afraid you’ll have to now,” he cried. “Here they come.”

With a murmurous tramp, tramp, they were pouring into the Bischofsplatz from the side streets leading to it.

“We must take to our heels, said my young man.

“We were merely on-lookers,” said I.

“Conscious innocence,” laughed he. “Nevertheless, we had better run for it.”

And, with our fellow loiterers, we began ignominiously to run away. But before we had run far we were stopped by the voice of an officer.

“Halt! Halt! Halt, or we fire!”

As one man we halted. The officer rode up to us, and, with true military taciturnity, vouchsafed not a word either in question or explanation, but formed us in ranks of four abreast, and surrounded us with his men. Then he gave the command to march. We were, perhaps, two dozen captives, all told, and a good quarter of our number were women.

“What are we in for now?” I wondered aloud.

“Disgrace, decapitation, deprivation of civil rights, or, say, a night in the Castle of St. Michael, at the very least,” replied my friend, shrugging his shoulders.

“Ah, that will be romantic,” said I, feeling like one launched upon a life of adventure.

II

He was right We were marched across the town and into the courtyard of the Castle of St Michael. By the time we got there, and the heavy oaken gates were shut behind us, it was nearly dark.

“Here you pass the night,” announced our officer. “In the morning—humph, we will see.”

“Do you mean to say they are going to afford us no better accommodation than this?” I demanded.

“So it seems,” replied the dark young man. “Fortunately, however, the night is warm, the skies are clear, and to commune with the stars is reputed to be elevating for the spirit.”

Our officer had vanished into the castle, leaving us a corporal and three privates as a guard of honour. We, the prisoners, gathered together in the middle of the courtyard, and held a sort of impromptu indignation meeting. The women were especially eloquent in their complaints. Two of these I recognized as having been among my neighbours of the door-step, and we exchanged compassionate glances. The other four were oldish women, who wore caps and aprons, and looked like servants.

“Cooks,” whispered my comrade. “Some good burghers will be kept waiting for their suppers. Oh, what a lark!”

Our convention finally broke up with a resolution to the effect that, though we had been most shabbily treated, there was nothing to be done.

“We must suffer and be still. Let us make ourselves as comfortable as we can, and seek distraction in an interchange of ideas,” proposed my mate. He seated himself upon a barrel that lay lengthwise against the castle wall, and motioned to me to place myself beside him.

“You are English?” he inquired, in an abrupt German way.

“No, I am American.”

“Ah, it is the same thing. A tourist?”

“You think it is the same thing?” I questioned sadly. “You little know. But——yes, I am a tourist.”

“Have you been long in X———?”

“Three days.”

“For heaven’s sake, what have you found to keep you here three days?”

“I am a painter. The town is paintable.”

“Still life! Nature morte!” he cried. “It is the dullest little town in Christendom. But I’m glad you are a painter. I am a musician—a fiddler.”

“I suspected we were of the same ilk,” said I.

“Did you, though? That was shrewd. But I, too, seemed to scent a kindred soul.”

“Here is my card. If we’re not beheaded in the morning, I hope we may see more of each other,” I went on, warming up.

He took my card, and, by the light of a match struck for the occasion, read aloud, “Mr. Arthur Wainwright,” pronouncing the English name without difficulty. “I have no card, but my name is Sebastian Roch.”

“You speak English?” was my inference. “Oh, yes, I speak a kind of English,” he confessed, using the tongue in question. He had scarcely a trace of a foreign accent.

“You speak it uncommonly well.”

“Oh, I learned it as a child, and then I have relatives in England.”

“Do you suppose there would be any objection to our smoking?” I asked.

“Oh, no! let us smoke by all means.”

I offered him my cigarette case. Our cigarettes afire, we resumed our talk.

“Tell me, what in your opinion is the truth about Mathilde?” I began. “Is she in voluntary hiding, or is her uncle at the bottom of it?”

“Ah, that is too hard a riddle,” he protested. “I know nothing about it, and I have scarcely an opinion. But I may say very frankly that I am not of her partisans. She has no worse enemy than I.”

“What! Really? I’m surprised at that. I thought all the youth of X——— were devoted to her.”

“She’s a harmless enough person in her way, perhaps, and I have nothing positive to charge against her; only I don’t think she’s made of the stuff for a reigning monarch. She’s too giddy, too light-headed; she thinks too little of her dignity. Court ceremonial is infinitely tiresome to her; and the slow, dead life of X——— she fairly hates. Harmless, necessary X——— she has been known to call it. She was never meant to be the captain of this tiny ship of State; and with such a crew! You should see the ministers and courtiers! Dry bones and parchment, puffed up with tedious German eddigette! She was born a Bohemian, an artist, like you or me. I pity her, poor thing—I pity everyone whose destiny it is to inhabit this dreary Principality—but I can’t approve of her. She, too, by-the-by, plays the violin. My own thought is, beware of fiddling monarchs!”

“You hint a Nero.”

“Pay a Nero crossed with a Haroun-al-Raschid. I fear her reign would be diversified by many a midnight escapade, like the merry Caliph’s, only without his intermixture of wrong-righting. She’d seek her own amusement solely; though to seek that in X———! you might as well seek for blood in a broomstick. Oh, she’d make no end of mischief. The devil hath no agent like a woman bored.”

“That’s rather true.” I agreed, laughing, “And Conrad? What of him?”

“Oh, Conrad’s a beast; a squint-eyed, calculating beast. But a beast might make a good enough Grand Duke; and anyhow, a beast is all that a beastly little Grand Duchy like this deserves. However, to tell you my secret feeling, I don’t believe he’ll have the chance to prove it. Mathilde, for all her ennui, is described as tenacious of her rights, and as a cleverish little body, too, down at bottom.. That is inconsistent, but there’s the woman of it. I can’t help suspecting, somehow, that unless he has really killed and buried her, she will contrive by hook or crook to come to her throne.”

That night was long, though we accomplished a lot of talking: cold it seemed, too, though we were in midsummer. I dozed a little, with the stone wall of the castle for my pillow, half-conscious all the while that Sebastian Roch was carrying on a bantering flirtation with the two young girls. At daybreak our guard was changed. At six o’clock we were visited by a dapper little lieutenant, who looked us over, asked our names and other personal questions, scratched his chin for a moment reflectively, and finally, with an air of inspiration, bade us begone. The gates were thrown open and we issued from our prison, free.

“It’s been almost a sensation,” said Sebastian Roch. “So one can experience almost a sensation, even in X———! Live and learn.”

“You are not a patriot,” said I.

“My dear sir, I am patriotism incarnate. Only I find my country dull. If that be treason, make the most of it. I could not love thee, dear, so well, loved I not dulness less. It is not every night of my life that I am arrested, and sit on a barrel smoking cigarettes with an enlightened foreigner. The English are not generally accounted a lively race, but by comparison with the inhabitants of X———they shine like diamonds.”

“I dare say,” I acquiesced. “But I’m not English—I’m American.”

“So I perceive from your accent,” answered he impertinently. “But as I told you once before, it amounts to the same thing. You wear your rue with a difference, that is all.”

“Speaking of sensations,” said I, “I would sell my birthright for a cup of coffee.”

“You’ll find no coffee-house awake at this hour,” said Sebastian.

“Then I’ll wake one up.”

“What! and provoke a violation of the law. By law they’re not allowed to open till seven o’clock.”

“Oh, laws be hanged! I must have a cup of coffee.”

“Really, you are delightful,” asserted Sebastian, putting his arm through mine.

Presently we came to a beer hall, at whose door I began to bang. My friend stood by, shaking with laughter, Which seemed to me disproportionate to the humour of the event.

“You are easily amused,” said I.

“Oh, no, far from it. But this is such a lark you know,” said he.

By and by, we were seated opposite each other at a table, sipping hot coffee.

As I looked at Sebastian Roch I observed a startling phenomenon. The apex of his right whisker had become detached from the skin, and was standing out half an inch aloof from his cheek! The sight sent a shiver down my spine. It was certainly most unnatural. His eyes were bright, his voice was soft, he spoke English like a man and a brother, and his character seemed whimsical and open; but his beard, his dashing, black, pointed beard—which I’m not sure I hadn’t been envying him a little—was eerie, and, instinctively I felt for my watch. It was safe in its place and so was my purse. Therefore, at the door of the Bierhaus, in due time, we bade each other a friendly good-bye, he promising to look me up one of these days at my hotel.

“I have enjoyed your society more than you can think,” he said. “Some of these days I will drop in and see you, À limproviste.”

III

That afternoon I again found myself in the Bischofsplatz, seated at one of the open-air tables of the cafÉ, when a man passed me, clad in the garb of a Franciscan monk. He had a pointed black beard, this monk, and a pair of flashing dark eyes; and, though he quickly drew his head into his cowl at our conjunction, I had no difficulty whatever in identifying him with my queerly-hirsute prison mate, Sebastian Roch.

“Dear me! he has become a monk. It must have been a swift conversion,” thought I, looking after him.

He marched straight across the Bischofsplatz and into the courtyard of the Marmorhof, where he was lost to view.

“The beggar! He is one of Conrad’s spies,” I concluded: and I searched my memory, to recall if I had said anything that might compromise me in the course of our conversation.

A few hours later I sat down to my dinner in the coffee-room of the HÔtel de Rome, and was about to fall to at the good things before me, when I was arrested in the act by a noise of hurrying feet on the pavement without, and a tumult of excited voices. Something clearly was “up”; and, not to miss it, I hurried to the street-door of the inn.

There I discovered mine host and hostess, supported by the entire personnel of their establishment, agape with astonishment, as a loquacious citizen poured news into their ears.

“Otto is dead,” said he. “He died at six o’clock. And Conrad has been assassinated. It was between four and five this afternoon. A Franciscan monk presented himself at the Marmorhof, and demanded an audience of the prince. The guard, of course, refused him admittance; but he was determined, and at last the Prince’s Chamberlain gave him a hearing. The upshot was he wrote a word or two upon a slip of paper, sealed it with wax, and begged that it might be delivered to his Highness forthwith, swearing that it contained information of the utmost importance to his welfare. The chamberlain conveyed his paper to the prince, who, directly he had read it, uttered a great oath, and ordered that the monk be ushered into his presence, and that they be left alone together. More than an hour passed. At a little after six arrived the news of the death of the old duke. An officer entered the prince’s chamber, to report it to him. There, if you please, he found his Highness stretched out dead upon the floor, with a knife in his heart. The monk had vanished. They could find no trace whatever of his whereabouts. Also had vanished the paper he had sent in to the prince. But, what the police regard as an important clue, he had left another paper, twisted round the handle of the dagger, whereon was scrawled, in a disguised hand: ‘In the country of the blind, it may be, the one-eyed men are kings, but Conrad only squinted!’ And now the grand point of it all is this,—shut up in an inner apartment of the Marmorhof, they have found the Hereditary Grand Duchess Mathilde, alive and well. Conrad has been keeping her a prisoner there these two weeks.”

The tidings thus delivered proved to be correct. “The Duke is dead! Long live the Duchess!” cried the populace.

It was like a dear old-fashioned blood-and-thunder opera, and I was almost behind the scenes. But oh, that hypocritical young fiddler-monk, Sebastian Roch! Would he make good his promise, after this, to look me up? The police were said to be prosecuting a diligent endeavour to look him up, but with, as yet, indifferent success.

Of course, upon the accession of the new ruler, the print shops of the town displayed her Highness’s portraits for sale—photographs and chromo-lithographs; you paid your money and you took your choice. These represented her as a slight young woman, with a delicate, interesting face, a somewhat sarcastic mouth, a great abundance of yellowish hair, and in striking contrast to this, a pair of brilliant dark eyes—on the whole, a picturesque and pleasing, if not conventionally a handsome, person. I could not for the life of me have explained it, but there was something in her face that annoyed me with a sense of having seen it before, though I was sure I never had. In the course of a fortnight, however, I did see her—caught a flying glimpse of her as she drove through the Marktstrasse in her victoria, attended by all manner of pomp and circumstance. She lay back upon her cushions, looking pale and interesting, but sadly bored, and responded with a languid smile to the hat-lifting of her subjects. I stared at her intently, and again I experienced that exasperating sensation of having seen her somewhere—where?—when?—in what circumstances?—before.

IV

One night I was awakened from my slumbers by a violent banging at my door.

“Who’s there?” I demanded. “What’s the matter?”

“Open—open in the name of the law!” commanded a deep bass voice.

“Good heavens! what can the row be now?” I wondered.

“Open, or we break in the door,” cried the voice.

“You must really give me time to put something on,” I protested, and hurriedly wrapped myself in some clothes.

Then I opened the door.

A magnificently uniformed young officer stepped into the room, followed by three gendarmes with drawn sabres. The officer inclined his head slightly, and said: “Herr Veinricht, ich glaube?”

His was not the voice that I had heard through the door, gruff and trombone-like, but a much softer voice, and much higher in pitch. Somehow it did not seem altogether the voice of a stranger to me, and yet the face of a stranger his face emphatically was—a very florid face, surmounted by a growth of short red hair, and decorated by a bristling red moustache. His eyes were overhung by bushy red eyebrows, and, in the uncertain candlelight, I could not make out their colour.

“Yes, I am Herr Veinricht,” I admitted, resigning myself to this German version of my name.

“English?” he questioned curtly.

“No, not English—American.”

“Macht nichts! I arrest you in the name of the Grand Duchess.”

“Arrest me! Will you be good enough to inform me upon what charge?”

“Upon the charge of consorting with dangerous characters, and being an enemy to the tranquillity of the State. You will please to dress as quickly as possible. A carriage awaits you below.”

“Good Lord! they have somehow connected me with Sebastian Roch,” I groaned inwardly. And I began to put certain finishing touches to my toilet.

“No, no,” cried the officer. “You must put on your dress-suit. Can you be so ignorant of criminal etiquette as not to know that State prisoners are required to wear their dress-suits?”

“It seems an absurd regulation,” said I, “but I will put on my dress-suit.”

“We will await you outside your door; but let me warn you, should you attempt to escape through your window, you will be shot in a hundred places,” said the officer, and retired with his minions.

The whole population of the hotel were in the corridors through which I had presently to pass with my custodians, and they pressed after us to the street. A closed carriage stood there, with four horses attached, each “near” horse bearing a postilion.

Three other horses, saddled, were tied to posts about the hotel entrance. These the gendarmes mounted.

“Will you enter the carriage?” said the officer.

But my spirit rose in arms. “I insist upon knowing what I’m arrested for. I want to understand the definite nature of the charge against me.”

“I am not a magistrate. Will you kindly enter the carriage?”

“Oh, this is a downright outrage,” I declared, and entered the carriage.

The officer leaped in after me, the door was slammed to, the postilions yelled at their horses, off we drove, followed by the rhythmical clank-clank of the gendarmes.

“I should like to get at the meaning of all this, you know,” I informed my captor.

“My dear sir, you do not begin to appreciate the premises. One less ignorant of military fashions would have perceived from my coat long since that I am a provost-marshal.”

“Well, and what of that? I suppose you are none the less able to explain my position to me.”

“Position, sir! This is trifling. But I must caution you that whatever you say will be remembered, and, if incriminating, used against you.”

“It is a breach of international comity,” said I.

“Oh, we are the best of friends with England,” he said, lightly.

“But I am an American, I would have you to know.”

“Macht nichts!” said he.

“Macht nichts!” I echoed, angrily. “You think so! I shall bring the case to the notice of the United States Legation, and you shall see.”

“How? And precipitate a war between two friendly powers?”

“You laugh! but who laughs last laughs best, and I promise you the Grand Duchy of X———shall be made to pay for this pleasantry with a vengeance.”

“This is not the first time you have been arrested while in these dominions,” he said, sternly, “and I must remind you that lÈse-majestÉ is a hanging matter.”

“LÈse-majestÉ!” I repeated, half in scorn, half in terror.

“Ya wohl, mein Herr,” he answered. “But, after all, I am simply obeying orders,” he added, with an inflection almost apologetic.

Where had I heard of that curious soft voice before? A voice so soft that his German sounded almost like Italian.

Meanwhile we had driven across the town, past the walls, and into the open country.

“You are perhaps conducting me to the frontier?” I suggested, deriving some relief from the fancy.

“Oh, hardly so far as that, let us hope,” he answered, with what struck me as a suppressed chuckle.

“Far?” I cried. “Can you use the word in speaking of a pocket-handkerchief?”

“It is small, but it is picturesque, it is paintable,” said he. “And, what is more, by every syllable you utter against it you weave a strand into your halter, and drive a nail into your coffin. Suicide is imprudent, not to say immoral.”

“If I could meet you on equal terms,” I cried, “I would pay you for your derision with a good sound Anglo-Saxon thrashing.”

“Oh, tiger’s heart wrapped in a painter’s hide,” he retorted, laughing outright.

We drove on in silence for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer; then at last our horses’ hoofs resounded upon stone, and we drew up. My officer descended from the carriage; I followed him. We were standing under a massive archway lighted by a hanging lantern. Before a small door pierced in the stone wall fronting us a sentinel was posted, with his musket presented in salute.

The three gendarmes sprang from their saddles.

“Farewell, Herr Veinricht,” said the provost-marshal. “I have enjoyed our drive together more than I can tell you.” Then turning to his subordinates, “Conduct this gentleman to the Tower chamber,” he commanded.

One of the gendarmes preceding me, the other two coming behind, I was conveyed up a winding stone staircase, into a big octagonal-shaped room.

The room was lighted by innumerable candles set in sconces round the walls. It was comfortably, even richly furnished, and decorated with a considerable degree of taste. A warm-hued Persian carpet covered the stone floor; books, pictures, bibelots, were scattered discriminatingly about; and in one corner there stood a grand piano, open, with a violin and bow lying on it.

My gendarmes bowed themselves out, shutting the door behind them with an ominous clangour.

“If this is my dungeon cell,” I thought, “I shall not be so uncomfortable, after all. But how preposterous of them to force me to wear my dress-suit.”

I threw myself into an easy-chair, buried my face in my hands, and tried to reflect upon my situation.

I can’t tell how much time may have passed in this way; perhaps twenty minutes or half an hour. Then, suddenly, I was disturbed by the sound of a light little cough behind me, a discreet little “ahem.” I looked up quickly. A lady had entered the apartment, and was standing in the middle of it, smiling in contemplation of my desperate attitude.

“Good heavens!” I gasped, but not audibly, as her face grew clear to my startled sight. “The Grand Duchess her self!”

“I am glad to see you, Mr. Wainwright,” her Highness began, in English. “X——— is a dull little place—oh, believe me, the dullest of its size in Christendom—and they tell me you are an amusing man. I trust they tell the truth.”

Of course the reader has foreseen it from the outset; otherwise why should I be detaining him with this anecdote? But upon me it came as a thunderbolt; and in my emotion I forgot myself, and exclaimed aloud, “Sebastian Roch!” The face of the Grand Duchess had haunted me with a sense of familiarity; the voice of my redheaded officer in the carriage had seemed not strange to me; but now that I saw the face, and heard the voice, at one and the same time, all was clear—“Sebastian Roch!”

“You said——?” the gracious lady questioned, arching her eyes.

“Nothing, madame. I was about to thank your Highness for her kindness, but——”

“But your mind wandered, and you made some irrelevant military observation about a bastion rock. It is, perhaps, aphasia.”

“Very probably,” I assented.

“But you are a man of honour, are you not?”

“I hope so.”

“The English generally are. You can keep a State secret, especially when you happen to have learned it by a sort of accident, can you not?”

“I am a tomb for such things, madame.”

“That is well. And besides, you must consider that not all homicide is murder. Sometimes one is driven to kill in self-defence.”

“I have not a doubt of that.”

“I am only sorry it should, all have happened before you saw him. His squint was a rarity; it would have pleased your sense of humour. X———is the dullest little principality,” she went on, “oh, but dull, dull, dull! I am sometimes forced in despair to perpetrate little jokes. Yet you have actually stopped here five weeks. It must be as they say, that the English people take their pleasures sadly. You are a painter, I am told.”

“Yes, your Highness; I make a shift at painting.”

“And I at fiddling. But I lack a discriminating audience. I think you had better paint my portrait. I will play my fiddle to you. Between whiles we will talk. On occasions, I may tell you, I smoke cigarettes; one must have some excitement. We will try to enliven things a little. Do you think we shall succeed?”

“Oh, I should not despair of doing so.”

“That is nice of you. I have a most ridiculous High Chancellor; you might draw caricatures of him. And my First Lady of the Chamber has a preposterous lisp. I do hope I shall be amused.”

As she spoke, she extended her left hand towards me; I took it, and was about to give it a friendly shake.

“No, no, not that,” said she. “Oh, I forgot, you are an American, and the ABC of court etiquette is Sanskrit to you. Must I tell you what to do?”

To cut a long story short, I thought my lines had fallen unto me in extremely pleasant places; and so, indeed, they had—for a while. I passed a merry summer at the Court of X———, alternating between the Residenz in town, and the Schloss beyond the walls. I made a good many preliminary studies for the princess’s portrait, whilst she played her violin; and between times, as she had promised, we talked, practised court etiquette, smoked cigarettes, and laughed at scandal. But when I began upon the final canvas, I at least had to become a little sober. I wanted to make a masterpiece of it. We had two or three sittings, during which I worked away in grim silence, and the Grand Duchess yawned.

Then one night I was again roused from the middle of my slumbers, taken in custody by a colonel of dragoons, conducted to a closed carriage, and driven abroad through the darkness. When our carriage came to a standstill we found ourselves in the Austrian village of Z————, beyond the X——— frontier There Colonel von Schlangewurtzel bade me good-bye. At the same time he handed me a letter. I hastened to tear it open. Upon a sheet of court paper, in a pretty feminine hand, I read these words.

“You promised to amuse me. But it seems you take your droll British art au grand sÉrieux. We have better portrait-painters among our natives; and you will find models cheap and plentiful at Z————.

“Farewell!”

THE END