CHAPTER I


The Prince tore the missive fiercely from its envelope, and scowled at
the mocking glint of the royal crown so heavily embossed at the top of
the paper. What a toy it was, he thought, to cost so much, and
eventually to mean so little! Roughly translated, the letter ran as
follows:

"Your Royal Highness will be gratified to learn that at last a
satisfactory alliance has been arranged between the Princess Elodie of
Austria and your royal self. It is the desire of both courts and
councils that the marriage shall be solemnized on the fifteenth of the
May following your twenty-first birthday, at which time the coronation
ceremony takes place that is to place the crown of the kingdom upon the
head of the son of our beloved and ever-to-be-regretted Imperatorskoye.
The Court and Council extend greetings and congratulations upon the not
far distant approach of both auspicious events to your Royal Highness,
which cannot fail to afford the utmost satisfaction in every detail to
the ever-beautiful-and-never-to-be-sufficiently beloved Prince Paul.

"Imperator-to-be, we salute thee. We kiss thy feet."

The letter was sealed with the royal crest and signed by the Regent--the
Boy's uncle--the Grand Duke Peter, his mother's brother, who had been
his guardian and protector almost from his birth. The young prince knew
that his uncle loved him, knew that the Grand Duke desired nothing on
earth so much as the happiness of his beloved sister's only son--and yet