his trousers, he took the street-car to his home, befitting his station
in life, a six-room apartment that was really a five-room apartment plus
a closet? Where was all that? Centuries had given their noblest powers,
generations had expended their artistic skill in filling the castle
requisitioned for His Excellency, the Commander-in-Chief of the ----th
Army, with the choicest treasure. Sun and time had done their best to
mellow the dazzle of the accumulated wealth till it shone in subdued
grandeur as through a delicate veil. Any man master in that house, who
mounted those broad steps and shouted his wishes in those aristocratic
rooms, necessarily felt like a king and could not take the war in any
other way than as a glorious fairy tale.

Indeed, was there ever a royal household that approached the miraculous
more closely? In the kitchen reigned a master of the culinary art, the
chef of the best hotel in the country, who in other circumstances would
not have been satisfied with double the wages of a general and was now
getting only a dollar a day. Yet he was using every bit of his skill. He
had never been so eager to please the palate of him whom he served. The
roast he prepared was the finest piece of meat to be selected from among
the two hundred oxen that daily gave up their lives to the army for the
fatherland. The men who served the roast on silver platters, wrought by
pupils of Benvenuto for the ancestors of the house, were generals of
their trade, who in peace times had had their clothes built in London,
and stood about tremblingly awaiting each sign from their master. And
this entire retinue, this whole princely household, functioned quite
automatically, and--entirely without cost! The master for whom every
one slaved never once had to perform that inevitable nuisance of putting
his hand in his pocket to draw out his purse. The gasoline circulated
inexhaustibly through the veins of the three motor cars, which lounged
day and night on the marble flagging of the courtyard. As by magic