. A fairy tale, wasn't it?"

"The irrelevancy is only apparent. The story I mean is a story of real
life. Have you ever heard of the Duke of Zeln?"

"Zeln? Zeln?" he repeated, reflectively. "No, I don't think so."

She clapped her hands. "Really, you do it admirably. If I weren't
perfectly sure of my facts, I believe I should be taken in. Zeln, as any
history would tell you, as any old atlas would show you, was a little
independent duchy in the center of Germany."

"Poor dear thing! Like Jonah in the center of the whale," he murmured,
sympathetically.

"Hush. Don't interrupt. Zeln was a little independent German duchy, and
the Duke of Zeln was its sovereign. After the war with France it was
absorbed by Prussia. But the ducal family still rank as royal highness.
Of course, you've heard of the Leczinskis?"

"Lecz--what?" said he.

"Leczinski," she repeated.

"How do you spell it?"

"L-e-c-z-i-n-s-k-i."

"Good. Capital. You have a real gift for spelling," he exclaimed.

"Will you be quiet," she said, severely, "and answer my question? Are
you familiar with the name?"

"I should never venture to be familiar with a name I didn't know," he
asserted.

"Ah, you don't know it? You have never heard of Stanislas Leczinska, who
was king of Poland? Of Marie Leczinska, who married Louis VI?"

"Oh, to be sure. I remember. The lady whose portrait one sees at
Versailles."

"Quite so. Very well," she continued, "the last representative of the
Leczinskis, in the elder line, was the Princess Anna Leczinska, who, in
1858, married the Duke of Zeln. She was the daughter of John Leczinski,
Duke of Grodnia and Governor of Galicia, and of the Archduchess
Henrietta d'Este, a cousin of the Emperor of Austria. She was also a
great heiress, and an extremely handsome woman. But the Duke of Zeln was
a bad lot, a viveur, a gambler, a spendthrift. His wife, like a fool,
made her entire fortune over to him, and he proceeded to play ducks and
drakes with it. By the time their son was born he'd got rid of the last
farthing. Their son wasn't born till '63, five years after their
marriage. Well, and then, what do you suppose the Duke did?"

"Reformed, of course. The wicked husband always reforms when a child is
born, and there's no more money," he generalized.

"You know perfectly well what he did," said she. "He petitioned the
German Diet to annul the marriage. You see, having exhausted the dowry
of the Princess Anna, it occurred to hi