CHAPTER I

THE SCEPTER WHICH WAS A STICK

The king sat in his private garden in the shade of a potted
orange tree, the leaves of which were splashed with brilliant
yellow. It was high noon of one of those last warm sighs of
passing summer which now and then lovingly steal in between the
chill breaths of September. The velvet hush of the mid-day hour
had fallen.

There was an endless horizon of turquoise blue, a zenith
pellucid as glass. The trees stood motionless; not a shadow
stirred, save that which was cast by the tremulous wings of a
black and purple butterfly, which, near to his Majesty, fell,
rose and sank again. From a drove of wild bees, swimming hither
and thither in quest of the final sweets of the year, came a low
murmurous hum, such as a man sometimes fancies he hears while
standing alone in the vast auditorium of a cathedral.

The king, from where he sat, could see the ivy-clad towers of
the archbishop's palace, where, in and about the narrow windows,
gray and white doves fluttered and plumed themselves. The garden
sloped gently downward till it merged into a beautiful lake
called the Werter See, which, stretching out several miles to
the west, in the heart of the thick-wooded hills, trembled like
a thin sheet of silver.

Toward the south, far away, lay the dim, uneven blue line of the
Thalian Alps, which separated the kingdom that was from the