duchy--he had, indeed,
contrived to make himself unpopular with the electors, excessively
unpopular. I used to read piquant articles about his embroglio in an
American paper that devoted itself to matters of the sort. All sorts of
international difficulties were to arise if de Mersch were ejected.
There was some other obscure prince of a rival house, Prussian or
Russian, who had desires for the degree of royalty that sat so heavily
on de Mersch. Indeed, I think there were two rival princes, each waiting
with portmanteaux packed and manifestos in their breast pockets, ready
to pass de Mersch's frontiers.

The grievances of his subjects--so the Paris-American _Gazette_
said--were intimately connected with matters of finance, and de Mersch's
personal finances and his grand ducal were inextricably mixed up with
the wild-cat schemes with which he was seeking to make a fortune large
enough to enable him to laugh at half a dozen elective grand duchies.
Indeed, de Mersch's own portmanteau was reported to be packed against
the day when British support of his Greenland schemes would let him
afford to laugh at his cantankerous Diet.

The thing interested me so little that I never quite mastered the
details of it. I wished the man no good, but so long as he kept out of
my way I was not going to hate him actively. Finally the affairs of
Holstein-Launewitz ceased to occupy the papers--the thing was arranged
and the Russian and Prussian princes unpacked their portmanteaux, and, I
suppose, consigned their manifestos to the flames, or adapted them to
the needs of other principalities. De Mersch's affairs ceded their space
in the public prints to the topic of the dearness of money. Somebody,
somewhere, was said to be up to something. I used to try to read the
articles, to master the details, because I disliked finding a whole
field of thought of which I knew absolutely nothing. I used to read
about the great discount houses and other things that conveyed
absolutely nothing to my mind. I only gathered that the said great
houses were having a very bad time, and that everybody else was having a
very much worse.

One day, indeed, the matter was brought home to me by the receipt from
Polehampton of bills instead of my usual cheques. I had a good deal of
trouble in cashing the things; indeed, people seemed to look askance at
them. I consulted my aunt on the subject, at breakfast. It was the sort
of thing that interested the woman of busine