Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/43

 elbows — at his big, wildly—littered writing-table, producing “copy,” to the accompaniment of endless cigarettes and endless glasses of tea. (Monterossan cigarettes are excellent, and Monterossan tea is always served in glasses.) The King has literary aspirations, and—like Frederick the Great-coaxes his muse in French. You will occasionally see a conte of his in the Nouvelle Review, signed by the artful pseudonym, Theodore Montrouge.

At one o’clock to-day I am to present myself at the Palace, and to be received by their Majesties in informal audience; and then I am to have the honour of lunching with them. If I were on the point of lunching with any other royal family in Europe But, thank goodness, I'm not; and I needn't pursue the distressing speculation. Queen Aneli and King Theodore are—for a multitude of reasons—a Queen and King apart.

You see, when he began life, Theodore IV was simply Prince Theodore Pavelovitch, the younger son of a nephew of the reigning Basile, Paul III; and nobody dimly dreamed that he would ever ascend the throne. So he went to Paris, and "made his studies" in the Latin Quarter, like any commoner.

In those days—as, I dare say, it still is in these—the Latin Quarter was crowded with students from the far south-east. Servians, Roumanians, Monterossans, grew, as it were, on every bush; we even had a sprinkling of Bulgarians and Montenegrins; and those of them who were not (more or less vaguely) princes, you could have numbered on your fingers. And, anyhow, in that democratic and self-sufficient seat of learning, titles count for little, and foreign countries are a matter of consummate ignorance and jaunty unconcern. The Duke of Plaza-Toro, should he venture in the classical Boul' Miche, would have to cede the pas