Page:Frank Stockton - Vizier of the two-horned Alexander.djvu/226

THE VIZIER OF THE about almost everything she proposed to do. In a word, I was in love with her and wanted to marry her."

"Thee certainly had lofty notions; but don't think I object," said Mrs. Crowder. "It is Chinese and Tartars I don't like."

"It might seem at first sight," he continued, "that I was aiming above me, but the more I reflected the more firmly I believed that it would be very good for the lady, as well as for me. In the first place, she had no reason to expect a matrimonial union worthy of her. Adalbert she had every reason to despise, and there was no one else belonging to the riotous aristocratic factions of Italy who could make her happy or give her a suitable position. In all her native land there was not a prince to whom she would not have to stoop in order to marry him.

"But to me she need not stoop. No man on earth possessed a more noble lineage. I was of the house of Shem, a royal priest after the order of Melchizedek, and King of Salem! No line of imperial ancestry could claim precedence of that."