clear to save her people in some other manner. An embassy was
sent to the Prince of Dawsbergen. His domain touched Graustark
on the south, and he ruled a wild, turbulent class of
mountaineers and herdsmen. This embassy sought to secure an
endorsement of the loan from Prince Gabriel sufficient to meet
the coming crisis. Gabriel, himself smitten by the charms of the
Princess, at once offered himself in marriage, agreeing to
advance, in case she accepted him, twenty million gavvos, at a
rather high rate of interest, for fifteen years. His love for
her was so great that he would pawn the entire principality for
an answer that would make him the happiest man on earth. Now,
the troubled Princess abhorred Gabriel. Of the two, Lorenz was
much to be preferred. Gabriel flew into a rage upon the receipt
of this rebuff, and openly avowed his intention to make her
suffer. His infatuation became a mania, and, up to the very day
on which the Countess told the story, he persisted in his appeals
to the Princess. In person he had gone to her to plead his suit,
on his knees, grovelling at her feet. He went so far as to
exclaim madly in the presence of the alarmed but relentless
object of his love that he would win her or turn the whole earth
into everything unpleasant.

So it was that the Princess of Graustark, erstwhile Miss
Guggenslocker, was being dragged through the most unhappy affairs
that ever beset a sovereign. Within a month she was to sign away
two-thirds of her domain, transforming multitudes of her beloved
and loving people into subjects of the hated Axphain, or to sell
herself, body and soul, to a loathsome bidder in the guise of a
suitor. And, with all this confronting her, she had come to the
realization of a truth so sad and distracting; that it was