ily. Their being here speaks for itself. Maasau is
going to take up people's attention shortly. The Grand Duke is in a
tight place, and there will be a flare-up sooner or later.'

'And you advise me to stop and see it through?' said Rallywood
meditatively from the window; then he lounged back to his chair. 'How
will it end?'

Counsellor shook the ash from his cigar.

'Selpdorf is the man of the hour,' he said.

On the autumn evening when these two men were talking at the club the
Duchy of Maasau was, in the opinion of Maasaun patriots, going as fast
as it could to the devil. With them, it may be added, the devil was
personified and bore the name of a neighbouring nation. The one person
who ignored this fact was the Grand Duke. With an inset, stubborn pride
he believed that his country must remain for ever, as the long centuries
had known her, Maasau the Free. This being the case, he felt himself at
liberty to spend his time in cursing the fate that had refused blue seas
and skies to wintry Revonde, thus depriving it of these sources of
revenue which depend upon climate, and which are enjoyed by places far
less naturally beautiful than the capital of Maasau.

The Duke, prematurely aged, by the manner of his life, made it his chief
business to devise schemes for raising money whereby he might carry on
the staling pleasures of his youth. Beyond this the administration of
public affairs was left entirely in the supple hands of the Chancellor,
M. Selpdorf, while the Duke, with those who surrounded him, plunged into
the newest excitement of the hour, for who knew what a day might bring
forth? The Court was like a stage lit by lurid light, on which the
actors laughed and loved, danced and fought to the music of a wild
finale, that whirled and maddened before the crash of the coming end.

Once upon a time Maasau was accounted of no particular importance or
value amongst its bigger neighbours; but of late, for various reasons,
its fortunes had become the subject of attention and discussion in at
least three foreign chancelleries, where old maps were being looked up
and new ones bought and painted different colours, according as seemed
most desirable by the bearded men, who sat in council to apportion the
marsh, rock, dune, and forest of which the now absorbingly interesting
pigmy State was composed.

In fact, Maasau, with its twenty miles or so of seaboard, containing one
excellent port _in esse_ and two others _in posse_