Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/66

 when the summons first reached him. "We'll have to travel in state, with a full suite; and the whole shot must be paid from our private purse. There's no expecting a penny for such a purpose from the Soviete."

"I hope," exclaimed the Queen, looking up from a letter she was writing, "I hope you don't for a moment intend to go?"

"We must go," answered the King. "There's no getting out of it."

"Nonsense!" said she. "We'll send a representative."

"I only wish we could," sighed the King. "But unfortunately this is an occasion when etiquette requires that we should attend in person."

"Oh, bother etiquette," said she. "Etiquette was made for slaves. We'll send your Cousin Peter. One must find some use for one's Cousin Peters."

"Yes; but this is a business, alas, in which one's Cousin Peter won't go down. I'm very sorry to say we'll have to attend in person."

"Nonsense!" she repeated. "Attend in person! How can you think of such a thing? We'd be bored and fatigued to death. It will be unspeakable. Nothing but dull, stodgy, suffocating German pomposity and bad taste. Oh, je m'y connais! Red cloth, and military bands, and interminable banquets, and noise, and confusion, and speeches (oh, the speeches!), until you're ready to drop. And besides, we'd be herded with a crowd of ninth-rate princelings and petty dukes, who smell of beer and cabbage and brilliantine. We'd be relegated to the fifth or sixth rank, behind people who are all of them really our inferiors. Do you suppose I mean to let myself be patronised by a lot of stupid Hohenzollerns and Grätzhoffens? No, indeed! You can send your cousin Peter."

"Ah,