have some
regard for appearances if they wish to keep their positions. It is
painfully necessary to avoid open and flagrant scandal. Madame
Corinne was a lady who showed wherever she was. It was impossible to
conceal her. Konrad Karl did not even try.

Some time in 1912 or 1913 he arrived, still accompanied by Madame,
in London. His reputation, and hers, had preceded him. English
society did not receive him warmly. He occupied a suite of rooms at
Beaufort's, the expensive and luxurious hotel which is the London home
of foreign royalties and American millionaires. Kings, I suppose, can
hold out longer than ordinary men without paying their bills. Konrad
Karl was in low water financially. His private fortune was small.
Madame Corinne had no money of her own, though she had jewels. Perhaps
Mr. Beaufort--if the proprietor of the hotel is indeed a Mr.
Beaufort--makes enough money out of the millionaires to enable him to
entertain impecunious kings.

My friend Gorman made the acquaintance of Konrad Karl early in 1913.
Gorman is a man who lives comfortably, very much more comfortably than
he could if he had no resources except the beggarly L400 a year which
his country pays him as a reward for his popularity with the people of
Upper Offaly. He makes money in various ways. His journalistic work
brings him in a few hundreds a year. Enterprises of a commercial or
financial kind add very considerably to his income. In 1913 he was
interested in the Near Eastern Winegrowers' Association, a limited
liability company which aimed at making money by persuading the
British public to drink Greek wine. He heard of Konrad Karl, and at
once invited that monarch to become one of the directors of the
company. Konrad Karl was not a Greek, and his country did not produce
wine which any one except a Megalian could drink. His value to Gorman
lay in the fact that there was not another limited liability company
in all England which had a King on its Board of Directors.

One of the least objectionable of the wines which Gorman's company
sold was put on the market as Vino Regalis. The advertisements hinted
without actually stating that the King had succeeded in carrying off a
thousand dozen bottles of this wine out of the royal cellars when he
fled from his subjects in Megalia. The bottles in which Vino Regalis
was sold had yards of gold foil wrapped round their necks. They were
in their way quite as splendid and obtrusive as Madame Corinne was in