One Day

One Day

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Title: One Day A sequel to 'Three Weeks'
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: October 18, 2004 [EBook #13776]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ONE DAY
A SEQUEL TO "THREE WEEKS"
ANONYMOUS
Original Publication Date 1909, by The Macaulay Company
NEW YORK THE MACAULAY COMPANY 1912

THE SCHILLING PRESS NEW YORK

FOREWORD TO MY AMERICAN FRIENDS
Now after spending some very pleasant weeks in your interesting

country, I feel sure that this book will find many sympathetic readers in
America. Quite naturally it will be discussed; some, doubtless, will
censure it--and unjustly; others will believe with me that the tale
teaches a great moral lesson.
Born as the Boy was born, the end which Fate forced upon him, to me,
was inevitable. Each word and act of the three weeks of his parents'
love-idyl must reflect in the character and life of the child. Little by
little the baby King grew before my mental vision until I saw at last
there was no escape from his importunity and I allowed the insistent
Boy--masterful even from his inception--to shape himself at his own
sweet will. Thus he became the hero of my study.
This is not a book for children or fools--but for men and women who
can grasp the underlying principle of morality which has been
uppermost in my mind as I wrote. Those who can see beyond the
outburst of passion--the overmastering belief in the power of love to
justify all things, which the Boy inherited so naturally from his Queen
mother--will understand the forces against which the young Prince
must needs fight a losing battle. The transgression was unavoidable to
one whose very conception was beyond the law--the punishment was
equally inevitable.
In fairness to this book of mine--and to me--the great moral lesson I
have endeavored to teach must be considered in its entirety, and no
single episode be construed as the book's sole aim. The verdict on my
two years' work rests with you, dear Reader, but at least you may be
sure that I have only tried to show that those who sow the wind shall
reap the whirlwind.
--THE AUTHOR.

ONE DAY

CHAPTER I
The Prince tore the missive fiercely from its envelope, and scowled at
the mocking glint of the royal crown so heavily embossed at the top of
the paper. What a toy it was, he thought, to cost so much, and
eventually to mean so little! Roughly translated, the letter ran as
follows:

"Your Royal Highness will be gratified to learn that at last a
satisfactory alliance has been arranged between the Princess Elodie of
Austria and your royal self. It is the desire of both courts and councils
that the marriage shall be solemnized on the fifteenth of the May
following your twenty-first birthday, at which time the coronation
ceremony takes place that is to place the crown of the kingdom upon
the head of the son of our beloved and ever-to-be-regretted
Imperatorskoye. The Court and Council extend greetings and
congratulations upon the not far distant approach of both auspicious
events to your Royal Highness, which cannot fail to afford the utmost
satisfaction in every detail to the
ever-beautiful-and-never-to-be-sufficiently beloved Prince Paul.
"Imperator-to-be, we salute thee. We kiss thy feet."
The letter was sealed with the royal crest and signed by the Regent--the
Boy's uncle--the Grand Duke Peter, his mother's brother, who had been
his guardian and protector almost from his birth. The young prince
knew that his uncle loved him, knew that the Grand Duke desired
nothing on earth so much as the happiness of his beloved sister's only
son--and yet at this crisis of the Boy's life, even his uncle was as
powerless to help as was Paul Verdayne, the Englishman.
"The Princess Elodie!" he grumbled. "Who the devil is this Princess
Elodie, anyway? Austrian blood has no particular charm for me! They
might at least have told me something a little more definite about the
woman they have picked out to be the mother of my children. A man
usually likes to look an animal over before he purchases!"
Known to London society as Monsieur Zalenska, the Prince had come
up to town with the Verdaynes, and was apparently enjoying to the
utmost the frivolities of London life.
At a fashionable garden party he sat alone,