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death of their Crown Prince, Hilary, upon the verge of his accession to the
throne, aroused more than genteel regret among the inhabitants of
SaxeKesselberg. It is indisputable that in diplomatic circles news of this
horrible occurrence was indirectly conceded in 1803 to smack of a direct
intervention of Providence. For to consider all the havoc dead Prince
Fribblesuch had been his sobriquetwould have created, Dei gratia, through
his pilotage of an important grandduchy (with an area of no less than
eightynine square miles) was less discomfortable now prediction was an
academic matter.
And so the editors of divers papers were the victims of a decorous anguish,
courtmourning was decreed, and that wreckage which passed for the mutilated
body of Prince Hilary was buried with every appropriate honor.
Within the week most people had forgotten him, for everybody was discussing
the execution of the Duc d'Enghein. And the aged unvenerable GrandDuke of
SaxeKesselberg died too in the same March; and afterward his other grandson,
Prince Augustus, reigned in the merry old debauchee's stead.
Prince Hilary was vastly pleased. His scheme for evading the tedious
responsibilities of sovereignty had been executed without a hitch; he was
officially dead; and, on the whole, standing bareheaded between a miller and
laundress, he had found his funeral ceremonies to be unimpeachably conducted.
He assumed the name of
Paul Vanderhoffen, selected at random from the novel he was reading when
his postchaise conveyed him past the frontier of SaxeKesselberg. Freed,
penniless, and thoroughly content, he set about amusing himselfp having a
world to frisk inand incidentally about the furnishing of his new friend Paul
Vanderhoffen with life's necessaries.
It was a little more than two years later that the goodnatured Earl of
Brudenel suggested to Lady John
Claridge that she could nowhere find a more eligible tutor for her son than
young Vanderhoffen.
The Certain Hour
A PRINCESS OF GRUB STREET
72
"Hasn't a shilling, ma'am, but one of the most popular men in London. His
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poetry book was subscribed for by the Prince Regent and half the notables of
the kingdom. Capital company at a dinnertablestutters, begad, like a
Whatyoumaycall'em, and keeps everybody in a roarand when he's had his whack
of claret, he sings his own songs to the piano, you know, and all that sort
of thing, and has quite put Tommy Moore's nose out of joint. Nobody knows
much about him, but that don't matter with these literary chaps, does it
now?
Goes everywhere, ma'amquite a favorite at Carlton Housea highly agreeable,
well informed man, I can assure youand probably hasn't a shilling to pay
the cabman. Deuced odd, ain't it? But Lord Lansdowne is trying to get him
a placespoke to me about a tutorship, ma'am, in fact, just to keep
Vanderhoffen going, until some registrarship or other falls vacant. Now, I
ain't clever and that sort of thing, but I quite agree with
Lansdowne that we practical men ought to look out for these clever
fellowssee that they don't starve in a garret, like poor What'shisname,
don't you know?"
Lady Claridge sweetly agreed with her future son inlaw. So it befell that
shortly after this conversa tion
Paul Vanderhoffen came to Leamington Manor, and through an entire summer
goaded young Percival
Claridge, then on the point of entering Cambridge, but pedagogically branded
as "deficient in mathematics,"
through many elaborate combinations of x and y and cosines and hyperbolas.
Lady John Claridge, mother to the pupil, approved of the new tutor. True,
he talked much and wildishly; but literary men had a name for eccentricity,
and, besides, Lady Claridge always dealt with the opinions of other people
as matters of illimitable unimportance. This baronet's lady, in short, was in
these days vouchsafing to the universe at large a fine and new benevolence,
now that her daughter was safely engaged to Lord
Brudenel, who, whatever his other virtues, was certainly a peer of England
and very rich. It seems irrelevant, and yet for the tale's sake is
noteworthy, that any room which harbored Lady John Claridge was through this
fact converted into an absolute monarchy.
And so, by the favor of Lady Claridge and destiny, the tutor stayed at
Leamington Manor all summer.
There was nothing in either the appearance or demeanor of the fiancee of
Lord Brudenel's title and superabundant wealth which any honest gentleman
could, hand upon his heart, describe as blatantly repulsive.
It may not be denied the tutor noted this. In fine, he fell in love with
Mildred Claridge after a thoroughgoing fashion such as Prince Fribble would
have found amusing. Prince Fribble would have smiled, shrugged, drawled,
"Eh, after all, the girl is handsome and deplorably coldblooded!" Paul
Vanderhoffen said, "I am not fit to live in the same world with her," and
wrote many verses in the prevailing Oriental style rich in allusions to
roses, and bulbuls, and gazelles, and peris, and minaretswhich he sold
rather profitably.
Meanwhile, far oversea, the reigning Duke of Saxe Kesselberg had been unwise
enough to quarrel with his
Chancellor, Georges Desmarets, an invaluable man whose only faults were
dishonesty and a too intimate acquaintance with the circumstances of Prince
Hilary's demise. As fruit of this indiscretion, an in considerable tutor at
Leamington Manorwhom Lady John Claridge regarded as a sort of upper
servantwas talking with a visitor.
The tutor, it appeared, preferred to talk with the former Chancellor of
SaxeKesselberg in the middle of an open field. The time was afternoon, the
season September, and the west was vaingloriously justifying the younger
man's analogy of a gigantic Spanish omelette. Meanwhile, the younger man
declaimed in a highpitched pleasant voice, wherein there was, as al ways, the
elusive suggestion of a stutter.
"I repeat to you," the tutor observed, "that no consideration will ever make
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