The Prince of Graustark | Page 7

as a penny left over for the so-called sinking
fund.
A year of grace remained. The minister of finance had long since
recovered from the delusion that it would be easy to borrow from
England or France to pay the Russians, there being small prospect of a
renewal by the Czar even for a short period at a higher rate of interest.
The great nations of Europe made it plain to the little principality that
they would not put a finger in Russia's pie at this stage of the game.
Russia was ready to go to war with her great neighbour, Austria.
Diplomacy--caution, if you will,--made it imperative that other nations
should sit tight and look to their own knitting, so to say. Not one could
afford to be charged with befriending, even in a round-about way,
either of the angry grumblers.
It was only too well known in diplomatic circles that Russia coveted
the railroads of Graustark, as a means of throwing troops into a remote
and almost impregnable portion of Austria. If the debt were paid
promptly, it would be impossible, according to international law, for
the great White Bear to take over these roads and at least a portion of
the western border of the principality. Obviously, Austria would be
benefitted by the prompt lifting of the debt, but her own relations with
Russia were so strained that an offer to come to the rescue of Graustark
would be taken at once as an open affront and vigorously resented. Her

hands were tied.
The northern and western parts of Graustark were rich with productive
mines. The government had built railroads throughout these sections so
that the yield of coal and copper might be given an outlet to the world
at large. In making the loan, Russia had demanded these prosperous
sections as security for the vast sum advanced, and Graustark in an evil
hour had submitted, little suspecting the trick that Dame Nature was to
play in the end.
Private banking institutions in Europe refused to make loans under the
rather exasperating circumstances, preferring to take no chances.
Money was not cheap in these bitter days, neither in Europe nor
America. Caution was the watchword. A vast European war was not
improbable, despite the sincere efforts on the part of the various nations
to keep out of the controversy.
Nor was Mr. Blithers far from right in his shrewd surmise that Prince
Robin and his agents were not without hope in coming to America at
this particular time. Graustark had laid by barely half the amount
required to lift the debt to Russia. It was not beyond the bounds of
reason to expect her Prince to secure the remaining fifteen millions
through private sources in New York City.
Six weeks prior to his arrival in New York, the young Prince landed in
San Francisco. He had come by way of the Orient, accompanied by the
Chief of Staff of the Graustark Army, Count Quinnox,--hereditary
watch-dog to the royal family!--and a young lieutenant of the guard,
Boske Dank. Two men were they who would have given a thousand
lives in the service of their Prince. No less loyal was the body-servant
who looked after the personal wants of the eager young traveller, an
Englishman of the name of Hobbs. A very poor valet was he, but an
exceptionally capable person when it came to the checking of luggage
and the divining of railway time-tables. He had been an agent for
Cook's. It was quite impossible to miss a train that Hobbs suspected of
being the right one.
Prince Robin came unheralded and traversed the breadth of the

continent without attracting more than the attention that is bestowed
upon good-looking young men. Like his mother, nearly a quarter of a
century before, he travelled incognito. But where she had used the
somewhat emphatic name of Guggenslocker, he was known to the hotel
registers as "Mr. R. Schmidt and servant."
There was romance in the eager young soul of Prince Robin. He
revelled in the love story of his parents. The beautiful Princess Yetive
first saw Grenfell Lorry in an express train going eastward from Denver.
Their wonderful romance was born, so to speak, in a Pullman
compartment car, and it thrived so splendidly that it almost upset a
dynasty, for never--in all of nine centuries--had a ruler of Graustark
stooped to marriage with a commoner.
And so when the far-sighted ministry and House of Nobles in
Graustark set about to select a wife for their young ruler, they made
overtures to the Prince of Dawsbergen whose domain adjoined
Graustark on the south. The Crown Princess of Dawsbergen, then but
fifteen, was the unanimous choice of the amiable match-makers in
secret conclave. This was when Robin was seventeen and just over
being