Page:Knight's Quarterly Magazine series 1 volume 3 (August–November 1824).djvu/165

 contrived to fix himself under his princely incognito at the very house of Mr. Commissioner P, the father of his mistress; and the result is that he has actually married her with the entire approbation of her friends. Whether the sequel of the affair will correspond with its success hitherto, remains however to be seen. Certain it is, that for the present, until the prince’s pleasure can be taken, Mr. Von Holster has been committed to prison under the new law for abolishing bets of a certain description, and also for having presumed to personate the sovereign.”

Thus far the newspaper:—however, in a few days, all clouds hanging over the prospects of the young couple cleared away. Mr. Von Holster, in a dutiful petition to the prince, declared that he had not personated his serene highness. On the contrary, he had given himself out both before and after his entry into the town for no more than the Count Fitz-Hum: and it was they, the good people of that town, who had insisted on mistaking him for a prince; if they would kiss his hand, was it for him an humble individual of no pretensions arrogantly to refuse? If they would make addresses to him, was it for an inconsiderable person like himself rudely to refuse to listen or to answer, when the greatest kings (as was notorious) always attended and replied in the most gracious terms? On further inquiry, the whole circumstances were detailed to the prince, and amused him greatly; but, when the narrator came to the final article of the “rebellion,” (under which sounding title a friend of Von Holster’s had communicated to him a general plot amongst his creditors for seizing his person,) the good-natured prince laughed so immoderately that it was easy to see that no very severe punishment would follow. In fact, by his services to the late prince, Von H. had established some claims upon the gratitude of this, an acknowledgment which the prince generously made at this seasonable crisis. Such an acknowledgment from such a quarter, together with some other marks of favour to Von H., could not fail to pacify the “rebels” against that gentleman, and to reconcile Mr. Commissioner Pig to a marriage which he had already once approved of. His scruples had originally been vanquished in the wine-cellar, and there also it was, that upon hearing of the total extinction of the “rebellion,” he drowned all scruples for a second time.

The town of, has, however, still occasion to remember the blue landau, and the superb whiskers, from the jokes which they are now and then called on to parry upon that subject. Doctor B, in particular, the physician of that town, having originally offered 100 dollars to the man who should notify to him his appointment to the place of court physician, has been obliged solemnly to advertise in the gazette for the information of