The Princess Elopes

THE PRINCESS ELOPES
by
HAROLD MACGRATH
Author of The Puppet Crown, The Grey Cloak, The Man on the Box
With Illustration by Harrison Fisher

[Frontispiece: Princess Hildegarde (Gretchen) playing the piano.]

New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers Copyright 1905 The
Bobbs-Merrill Company

TO MY WIFE

THE PRINCESS ELOPES
I
It is rather difficult in these days for a man who takes such scant
interest in foreign affairs--trust a whilom diplomat for that!--to follow
the continual geographical disturbances of European surfaces. Thus, I
can not distinctly recall the exact location of the Grand Duchy of
Barscheit or of the neighboring principality of Doppelkinn. It meets my
needs and purposes, however, to say that Berlin and Vienna were easily
accessible, and that a three hours' journey would bring you under the
shadow of the Carpathian Range, where, in my diplomatic days, I used
often to hunt the "bear that walks like a man."

Barscheit was known among her sister states as "the meddler," the
"maker of trouble," and the duke as "Old Grumpy"--Brummbär. To use
a familiar Yankee expression, Barscheit had a finger in every pie.
Whenever there was a political broth making, whether in Italy,
Germany or Austria, Barscheit would snatch up a ladle and start in. She
took care of her own affairs so easily that she had plenty of time to
concern herself with the affairs of her neighbors. This is not to advance
the opinion that Barscheit was wholly modern; far from it. The fault of
Barscheit may be traced back to a certain historical pillar of salt, easily
recalled by all those who attended Sunday-school. "Rubbering" is a
vulgar phrase, and I disdain to use it.
When a woman looks around it is invariably a portent of trouble; the
man forgets his important engagement, and runs amuck, knocking over
people, principles and principalities. If Aspasia had not observed
Pericles that memorable day; if there had not been an oblique slant to
Calypso's eyes as Ulysses passed her way; if the eager Delilah had not
offered favorable comment on Samson's ringlets; in fact, if all the
women in history and romance had gone about their affairs as they
should have done, what uninteresting reading history would be to-day!
Now, this is a story of a woman who looked around, and of a man who
did not keep his appointment on time; out of a grain of sand, a
mountain. Of course there might have been other causes, but with these
I'm not familiar.
This Duchy of Barscheit is worth looking into. Imagine a country with
telegraph and telephone and medieval customs, a country with electric
lights, railways, surface-cars, hotel elevators and ancient laws!
Something of the customs of the duchy must be told in the passing,
though, for my part, I am vigorously against explanatory passages in
stories of action. Barscheit bristled with militarism; the little man
always imitates the big one, but lacks the big man's excuses. Militarism
entered into and overshadowed the civic laws.
There were three things you might do without offense; you might bathe,
eat and sleep, only you must not sleep out loud. The citizen of
Barscheit was hemmed in by a set of laws which had their birth in the

dark dungeons of the Inquisition. They congealed the blood of a man
born and bred in a commercial country. If you broke a law, you were
relentlessly punished; there was no mercy. In America we make laws
and then hide them in dull-looking volumes which the public have
neither the time nor the inclination to read. In this duchy of mine it was
different; you ran into a law on every corner, in every park, in every
public building: little oblong signs, enameled, which told you that you
could not do something or other--"Forbidden!" The beauty of German
laws is that when you learn all the things that you can not do, you begin
to find out that the things you can do are not worth a hang in the doing.
As soon as a person learned to read he or she began life by reading
these laws. If you could not read, so much the worse for you; you had
to pay a guide who charged you almost as much as the full cost of the
fine.
The opposition political party in the United States is always howling
militarism, without the slightest idea of what militarism really is. One
side, please, in Barscheit, when an officer comes along, or take the
consequences. If you carelessly bumped into him, you were knocked
down. If you objected, you were arrested. If you struck back, ten to one
you received a beating with the flat of a saber. And never, never
mistake the soldiery for the police; that is to say, never