but the truth concerning his adventures in the wilds, and to feel that
the friends, at least, were predestined to look upon him as a fearless
liar, nothing more.

For twenty days he had travelled by caravan across the Persian uplands,
through Herat, and Meshed and Bokhara, striking off with his guide alone
toward the Sea of Aral and the eastern shores of the Caspian, thence
through the Ural foothills to the old Roman highway that led down into
the sweet green valleys of a land he had thought of as nothing more than
the creation of a hairbrained fictionist.

Somewhere out in the shimmering east he had learned, to his honest
amazement, that there was such a land as Graustark. At first he would
not believe. But the English bank in Meshed assured him that he would
come to it if he travelled long enough and far enough into the north and
west and if he were not afraid of the hardships that most men abhor. The
dying spirit of Romance flamed up in his heart; his blood grew quick
again and eager. He would not go home until he had sought out this land
of fair women and sweet tradition. And so he traversed the wild and
dangerous Tartar roads for days and days, like the knights of
Scheherazade in the times of old, and came at last to the gates of
Edelweiss.

Not until he sat down to a rare dinner in the historic Hotel Regengetz
was he able to realise that he was truly in that fabled, mythical land
of Graustark, quaint, grim little principality in the most secret pocket
of the earth's great mantle. This was the land of his dreams, the land
of his fancy; he had not even dared to hope that it actually existed.

And now, here he was, pinching himself to prove that he was awake,