The Wit and Humor of America Volume X Part 5

"That thing in your lap."

"My fan?"

"I expect you'd call it a fan."

"For goodness' sake, what would _you_ call it?" cried she.

"I should call it a fan."

She gave another little laugh. "You have a nice instinct for the _mot juste_," she informed him.

"Oh, no," he disclaimed, modestly. "But I can call a fan a fan, when I think it won't shock the sensibilities of my hearer."

"If the Countess only receives tremendous swells," said she, "you must remember that Victor Field belongs to the Aristocracy of Talent."

"Oh, _quant a ca_, so, from the Wohenhoffens' point of view, do the barber and the horse-leech. In this house, the Aristocracy of Talent dines with the butler."

"Is the Countess such a sn.o.b?" she asked.

"No; she's an Austrian. They draw the line so absurdly tight in Austria."

"Well, then, you leave me no alternative," she argued, "but to conclude that Victor Field is a tremendous swell. Didn't you notice, I bobbed him a curtsey?"

"I took the curtsey as a tribute to my Oriental magnificence," he confessed. "Field doesn't sound like an especially patrician name. I'd give anything to discover who you are. Can't you be induced to tell me?

I'll bribe, entreat, threaten--I'll do anything you think might persuade you."

"I'll tell you at once, if you'll own up that you're Victor Field," said she.

"Oh, I'll own up that I'm Queen Elizabeth if you'll tell me who you are.

The end justifies the means."

"Then you _are_ Victor Field?" she pursued him eagerly.

"If you don't mind suborning perjury, why should I mind committing it?"

he reflected. "Yes. And now, who are you?"

"No; I must have an unequivocal avowal," she stipulated. "Are you or are you not Victor Field?"

"Let us put it at this," he proposed, "that I'm a good serviceable imitation; an excellent subst.i.tute when the genuine article is not procurable."

"Of course, your real name isn't anything like Victor Field," she declared, pensively.

"I never said it was. But I admire the way in which you give with one hand and take back with the other."

"Your real name--" she began. "Wait a moment--Yes, now I have it. Your real name--It's rather long. You don't think it will bore you?"

"Oh, if it's really my real name, I daresay I'm hardened to it," said he.

"Your real name is Louis Charles Ferdinand Stanislas John Joseph Emmanuel Maria Anna."

"Mercy upon me," he cried, "what a name! You ought to have broken it to me in instalments. And it's all Christian name at that. Can't you spare me just a little rag of a surname, for decency's sake?" he pleaded.

"The surnames of royalties don't matter, Monseigneur," she said, with a flourish.

"Royalties? What? Dear me, here's rapid promotion! I am royal now! And a moment ago I was a little penny-a-liner in London."

"_L'un n'empeche pas l'autre._ Have you never heard the story of the Invisible Prince?" she asked.

"I adore irrelevancy," said he. "I seem to have read something about an invisible prince, when I was young. 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 a.s.serted.

"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 Archd.u.c.h.ess 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 pet.i.tioned the German Diet to annul the marriage. You see, having exhausted the dowry of the Princess Anna, it occurred to him that if she could only be got out of the way, he might marry another heiress, and have the spending of another fortune."

"Clever dodge," he observed. "Did it come off?"

"It came off, all too well. He based his pet.i.tion on the ground that the marriage had never been--I forget what the technical term is. Anyhow, he pretended that the princess had never been his wife except in name, and that the child couldn't possibly be his. The Emperor of Austria stood by his connection, like the royal gentleman he is; used every sc.r.a.p of influence he possessed to help her. But the duke, who was a Protestant (the princess was of course a Catholic), the duke persuaded all the Protestant States in the Diet to vote in his favour. The Emperor of Austria was powerless, the Pope was powerless. And the Diet annulled the marriage."