"I take it sir, your decision is made beyond words of mine to change.
Of course, I could clap you into prison and cool your hot blood with
scant diet and chill stones, but, such would be scarce fitting for a
Dalberg. Neither is it fitting that a Prince of Valeria should fight
against a country with which I am at peace. Therefore, the day you
leave for America will see your name stricken from the rolls of our
House, your title revoked, and your return here prohibited by royal
decree. Do I make myself understood?"

So far as I have been able to learn, no one ever accused my
great-grandfather of an inability to understand plain speech, and old
Henry's was not obscure. Indeed, Hugo remembered it so well that he
made it a sort of preface in the Journal which he began some months
thereafter, and kept most carefully to the very last day of his life.
The Journal says he made no answer to his father save a low bow.

Two days later, as plain Hugo Dalberg, he departed for America. For
some time he was a volunteer Aide to General Washington. Later,
Congress commissioned him colonel of a regiment of horse; and, as such,
he served to the close of the war. When the Continental Army was
disbanded, he purchased a place upon the eastern shore of Maryland;
and, marrying into one of the aristocratic families of the
neighborhood, settled down to the life of a simple country gentleman.

He never went back to the land of his birth, nor, indeed, even to
Europe. And this, though, one day, there came to his mansion on the
Chesapeake the Valerian Minister to America and, with many bows and
genuflections, presented a letter from his brother Frederick,
announcing the death of their royal father and his own accession, and
offering to restore to Hugo his rank and estates if he would return to