in love with the charming Countess. He was, to be perfectly candid, very
much interested in her and very much distressed by the fact that she was
bound to a venerable reprobate who dared not put his foot on Graustark
soil because once he had defiled it atrociously.

But of the Countess and her visits to Edelweiss, more anon--with the
indulgence of the reader.

At present we are permitted to attend a meeting of the cabinet, which
sits occasionally in solemn collectiveness just off the throne room
within the tapestried walls of a dark little antechamber, known to the
outside world as the "Room of Wrangles." It is ten o'clock of the
morning on which the Prince is to review the troops from the fortress.
The question under discussion relates to the loan of 5,000,000 gavvos,
before mentioned. At the head of the long table, perched upon an
augmentary pile of law books surmounted by a little red cushion, sits
the Prince, almost lost in the hugh old walnut chair of his forefathers.
Down the table sit the ten ministers of the departments of state, all of
them loving the handsome little fellow on the necessary pile of
statutes, but all of them more or less indifferent to his significant
yawns and perplexed frowns.

The Prince was a sturdy, curly-haired lad, with big brown eyes and a
lamentably noticeable scratch on his nose--acquired in less stately but
more profitable pursuits. (It seems that he had peeled his nose while
sliding to second base in a certain American game that he was teaching
the juvenile aristocracy how to play.) His wavy hair was brown and
rebellious. No end of royal nursing could keep it looking sleek and
proper. He had the merit of being a very bad little boy at times; that
is why he was loved by every one. Although it was considered next to