d and sanctioned by you yourselves? This
ceremony concluded I will answer the demands of the loyal subjects
whose interests alone I serve. For we obey that which is higher than
authority--the law, born in the Beginning--"

Prince Tabnit's voice might almost have taken his place in his
absence, it was so soft, so fine of texture, no more consciously
modulated than is the going of water or the way of a wing. It was
difficult to say whether his words or, so to say, their fine fabric
of voice, begot the silence that followed. But all eyes were turned
upon Olivia. And, Prince Tabnit noting this, before she might speak
he suddenly swept his flowing robes embroidered by a thousand
needles to a posture of humility before his sovereign.

"Your Majesty," he besought, "I pray your consent to the bestowal
upon my most unworthy self of the hand of your daughter, the
Princess Olivia."

King Otho leaned upon the arm of his carven throne. Against its
strange metal his hand was cameo-clear.

"For the king," he was remembering softly, "'the Pyrenees, or so he
fancied, ceased to exist.' For another 'the mountains of Daphne are
everywhere.' Each of us has his impossible dream to prove that he
is an impossible creature. Why not I? To be normal is the cry of all
the hobgoblins ... And what does the princess say?" he asked aloud.

"Her Highness has already given me the great happiness to plight me
her troth," said Prince Tabnit.

King Otho's eyebrows flickered from their parallel of repose.

"In Yaque or in America," he murmured, "the Americans do as the
Americans do. None of us is mentioned in Deuteronomy, but what is
the will of the princess?" the American Sovereign asked.

Mrs. Hastings, seated near the dais, heard; and as she turned, a
rhinestone side-comb slipped from her hair, tinkled over the jewels
of her corsage and shot into the lap of a member of the High
Council. He, never having seen a side-comb, fancied that it might be
an infernal machine which he had never seen either, and,
palpitating, flashed it to the guardian hand of Mr. Frothingham. At
the same moment:

"Ah, why, Otho," said Mrs. Hastings audibly, "we had two ancestors
at Bannockburn!"

"Bannockburn!" argued Mr. Augustus Frothingham, below the voice,
"Bannockburn. But what, my dear Mrs. Hastings, is Bannockburn beside
the Midianites and the Moabites and the Hittites and the Ammonites
and the Levites?"

In this genealogical moment the prince leaned toward Ol