WHEN his Rembrandts came, Grafton took the package to his hotel, opened it, assured himself that they were in good condition, sealed it, and left it with Candace Brothers. “I may telegraph you to forward it,” he said. But he did not tell them what was in it nor where he was going; they might betray him or forestall him, and so deprive him of the pleasure of a successful campaign in person and unaided.

He reached the town of Zweitenbourg at noon on a Monday, five days after his Spaniard. At half-past two he was in a walking suit and on his way to the Grand Ducal Palace, “The Castle,” to reconnoitre. It was July, and the air of that elevated valley was both warm and bracing. From the beautiful road hills and mountains could be seen on every side—the frontiers of the Grand Duchy.

It had once been almost a kingdom. It was now shrunk, through the bad political and matrimonial management of the reigning house, to less than two hundred and fifty square miles. But the Zweitenbourgians were proudly patriotic—they disdained mere size; they were all for quality, not quantity. Besides, they were as vague in general geography as the average human being; they thoroughly knew only the internal geography of Zweitenbourg. In their text-books the Grand Duchy posed as the central state of civilization. In their school histories its grand dukes cut a great figure. For example, it was their Grand Duke Godfrey who, slightly assisted by a Prussian general, BlÜcher, won the battle of Waterloo. Wellington comes in for a mere mention, as a sort of “among those present”—“a small force of English under a Lord Wellington,” so runs the account, “was defeated in the first day’s engagement and almost caused the rout of the Grand Duke Godfrey and his allies; but on the second day, after the English had been beaten, and when they were about to run, the Grand Duke and BlÜcher came up with the main army and Napoleon was overthrown.” In the Zweitenbourg atlases the map of each country was printed on a separate plate, and all were apparently of about the same size. And, finally, all Zweitenbourgians knew that their men were the bravest and their women the most beautiful in the world, and that all foreign nations were inhabited by peoples who were ignorant, foolish, and perfidious.

After two miles between garden-like farms, Grafton found himself at the entrance to what seemed a wilderness. There were two huge stone pillars, each capped with a grand-ducal crown. There were two great bronze gates with a large C under a crown in the centre of each. The gates were open, and between the pillars went the military road, clean, smooth, perfect, to plunge into the wilderness. Beside the entrance was an ivy-covered lodge, in front of it a soldier in the blue and white uniform of the Grand Duke’s Household Guards. He was marching up and down, his rifle at shoulder arms. As Grafton advanced he halted and shifted his rifle to a challenge.

“Show your passport,” he commanded, in a queer dialect of German.

“I have no passport,” replied Grafton.

The soldier looked at him stupidly. “But every foreigner has a passport,” he said.

“I have none.”

“Ah; very well.” The soldier shrugged his shoulders and resumed his march.

Grafton stood where he had halted. “May I go on?” he asked.

“Yes; why not?” said the soldier.

“But why did you ask for my passport?”

“It’s in the rules. Pass on or you may get into trouble. You know perfectly well that all are admitted to the park at this season.”“Then there is a closed season?”

“I don’t know,” said the soldier, crossly. “I never heard of one. It’s in the rules to admit every one from April until December. No one comes the rest of the year. But I don’t suppose he could be shut out if he did. There’s no rule which says so.”

“Then why these rules?”

The soldier gave the profoundly thoughtful frown of those incapable of thought. “I don’t know,” he said. “Soldiers must have rules. Everything must be done by rules, so that it will be done just as it used to be. We’ve had the same rules—oh, hundreds of years. Nothing must be changed. What’s new is bad, what’s old is good.”

Grafton trudged on into the wilderness. The road gradually swept into another road. He saw that it was a circle, a girdle, about a lake which was perhaps four miles long and two miles wide, blue as the sky and mirroring it to its smallest flake of snowy cloud. Opposite him, across the width of the lake, towered and spread The Castle, with turrets and battlements, a vast, irregular mantle of ivy draping part of its old gray front. He could see terraces and lawns of brilliant green, the gaudiness of flower-beds and flowering bushes, red and blue and purple and yellow. “Where Her Serene Highness lives,” he thought.

He decided to walk as far as The Castle; next day he would drive and perhaps pay his respects to Baron Zeppstein. He was impressed by the loneliness of the park, apparently an untouched wilderness except the road. The birds were singing. Now and then there would be a crash and he would see a deer making off, or a whir and a scurrying flapping, and he would get a glimpse of some wild bird in panic-stricken flight. As he came nearer to The Castle the signs of habitation were numerous, but still not a human being. At last he was close to the walls, looking up at them.

He could see nothing but the perfect order of the shrubbery to indicate that any one had been there recently. The huge gates—solid doors rather than gates—were closed. The sun was shining, the waters of the lake glistened, the foliage was fresh and vivid, the soft, strong air blew in a gentle breeze. But there was a profound hush, as if the grim old fortress-palace, and all within and around it, had long been locked in a magic sleep.

A sense of uncanniness was creeping over him in spite of his incredulous American mind. He was startled by a trumpet blast which seemed to come from the depth of the woods to the left. Standing in the middle of the road, he turned. He had just time to jump aside.

Out of the woods, by a cross-road he had not noted, swept a gorgeous cavalcade. As he looked he felt more strongly than ever like a time-wanderer who had been, in a twinkling, borne backward several centuries. First to pass him at a mad gallop were six soldiers on tall black chargers. They and their horses were trapped in the blue and white of the Household Guards. Corselets and plumed helmets and chains clashed and rattled and flashed as they flew past. A few yards behind them, at the same furious pace, came a graceful, long-bodied carriage of strange coloring and design, drawn by eight black horses with postilions. On a curious foot-board at the back of the carriage stood two footmen in a mediÆval livery. They were hanging on by straps. Behind the carriage came six more black-horsed cavalrymen of the Household Guards.

As Grafton gaped through the dust in the wake of this ancient spectacle it halted before The Castle’s gates so abruptly that every horse reared to its haunches. But immediately all was quiet, motionless. One of the cavalrymen put a trumpet to his lips and sent a blast echoing and re-echoing like a peal of fairy laughter to and fro over the lake. As if there were enchantment in that blast, the great weather and battle scarred doors of The Castle swung noiselessly back. Out came eight men in mediÆval costumes, each bearing a long, slender, brazen trumpet. Four went to either side of the entrance. They put the trumpets to their lips and sounded a fanfare.

Grafton’s expectation was at excitement pitch. What did this gorgeous revival of mediÆvalism presage? what dazzling apparition was about to greet his ravished eyes?

Now appeared a man in mediÆval court costume, resplendent in velvet and lace and silver braid. He was walking backward, bowing low at each step, his velvet, beplumed hat in his hand. And then the central figure—His Royal Highness Casimir of Traubenheim, Grand Duke of Zweitenbourg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Margrave of Plaut, Prince of Wiesser, of Dinn, of Feltenheim, Count in Brausch and in Ranau. He was a sallow, cross-looking little man, with thin shoulders, legs, and arms, and a great paunch of a stomach, dilated and sagged from overfeeding. He was dressed in a baggy tweed suit and a straight-brimmed top-hat. He seated himself in the carriage.

“What an anticlimax!” thought Grafton. But there was a second and briefer flourish of the trumpets, and then appeared the Duchess Erica, in a white cloth dress and a big white hat and carrying a white parasol. Grafton felt like applauding. “The spectacle is looking up,” he said. He was near enough to note that her sweet face was discontented, impatient, almost sad. She seated herself beside the Grand Duke. The mounted trumpeter blew, the cavalrymen in front wheeled and struck spurs into their horses, the whole procession was instant whirling away—it was gone. Grafton glanced at The Castle doors; they were closed again and the trumpeters and the courtier had disappeared. The dust settled, the magic sleep descended.

Grafton might have thought himself the victim of an illusion had he not seen, far away across the lake, a cloud of dust, and in front of it the gaudy cavalcade and the grand-ducal carriage, the shine of blue and silver and polished steel rushing along as if fleeing from a fiend. And after a few minutes it came towards The Castle again from the other direction. The horses were dripping, their coats streaked with foam. At the entrance there were the same startling halt, the same mysterious opening of doors, the same stage-like assembling of trumpeters, the same flourishes. The Grand Duke and his niece and the attendants disappeared, the procession fled into the woods; there was silence and ancient repose once more.

Grafton set out on the return walk, trying to force himself to stop thinking of Her Serene Highness and to resume thinking of her uncle and his Spaniard. He had not gone far when a court-officer issued from a by-path. He paused to get a good look at this romantic figure, and presently recognized beneath the enfoldings of finery his commonplace, voluble acquaintance of the Paris picture-shop, Baron Zeppstein.

“Why, how d’ye do, Baron Zeppstein!” he called out.

The Baron looked at him superciliously, then collapsed into cordiality. “Meester Grafton!” he exclaimed. “It is a pleasure—a joyful surprise. I did not know you at first.”

“Nor I you,” said Grafton. “I seem to be the only modern thing here—except the old gentleman who took that quiet jog around the lake a few minutes ago.”

“His Royal Highness,” corrected the Baron, pompously. “He takes a drive every afternoon.”

“A good show,” said Grafton. “But I think I’d tire of it. I’d rather look at it than be in it. I should say that he earned his salary.”

The Baron laughed vaguely. “You Americans do not understand our ways,” he said. “You are so practical—so busy. You have no time for tradition and beauty and ceremony.”

“No; we’re a common lot,” said Grafton. “We’d think this sort of thing was a joke if it happened outside of a circus. But it’s a very serious business, isn’t it?” His face was grave.

“It is; it is, indeed,” said Zeppstein, his shallow old face taking on a look of melancholy importance. “But we must do our public duty; we must accept the cares of high station. And His Royal Highness—ah, how he suffers! We others have our relaxations—we get away to our families. But His Royal Highness—this is his vacation. And, mein Gott, he yawns and curses all day long. Yes, it is trying to be near the great of earth, but not so trying as to be great.”

“He looks ill-tempered,” said Grafton, sympathetically.

“But think what he suffers. Imagine! Usually he must wear a heavy, tight uniform and a steel helmet; he says it has given him the headache almost every day for twenty-seven years. But the dignity of the nation must be maintained.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Grafton. “And when is the best time to see him? I’m going to call on him.”

Zeppstein looked at the American as if he thought him insane. “But, my dear sir,” he said, deprecatingly, “you don’t understand. You will have to wait until His Royal Highness’s vacation is over. Then you must go to your minister and he will lay your wish before the Grand Chamberlain. And if possible your name will be placed on the list for one of the levees—there are five each winter.”

“Oh, I don’t want to see the Grand Duke in his official capacity; it’s a little private matter—about a picture.”

“But the Grand Duke has no other capacity. He is head of the state; he is the state every hour of every day, except when he’s abroad. Then he often graciously condescends to be a mere gentleman.”

“But I can’t wait. You ought to be able to arrange it. You’ve got influence.”

“Yes.” Baron Zeppstein was flattered. “But, unfortunately, none is permitted to speak to His Royal Highness unless he has commanded it—that is, no one but his son, the Inheriting Grand Duke, and his niece, the Duchess Erica, and the Grand Chamberlain. And—I am, just at present, at outs with them. Her Serene Highness is most intractable—one of the new school of wild young princesses who are cutting loose from everything in these degenerate days.”

“She certainly doesn’t look tame.”“I had the honor of escorting her to Paris when I went for His Royal Highness’s picture,” Zeppstein continued. “It was a painful experience. And instead of sustaining me, His Royal Highness—but it was most humiliating.”

“Excellent,” said Grafton. “I can be of service to you. I own a Rembrandt which I wish to let the Grand Duke have at a bargain. I’m certain he’ll be most anxious to get it once he hears of it. Now, if you should be of assistance to him in getting it, he would be grateful, wouldn’t he?”

Zeppstein became thoughtful. “Not grateful,” he said. “It isn’t in His Royal Highness to be grateful. But it might make him think me useful. What do you propose?”

“I don’t know; I can’t tell yet. Keep quiet until I’ve looked over the ground and made my plans.”

“I am at your service,” said Zeppstein. “You would weep to hear how the Grand Chamberlain and his faction have humiliated me. They make me the butt of their jokes at dinner to amuse His Royal Highness. They—”

“You shall be revenged,” said Grafton, shaking hands with him and hurrying away.

From the moment he recognized old Zeppstein until he left him he had been fighting to restrain himself from leading the talk to Erica. He now caught himself regretting it. He stopped short. “Ridiculous!” he exclaimed. “What an idiot I am to let such ideas into my head. It must be in the air here. I’m getting as romantic as—as—as she looks.” And he walked on, her face and her voice haunting him.