“You are right; I will marry myself,” said Duke Deodonato.
“But, sir, three weeks! The hand of a princess cannot be requested and granted in—”
“Then find me somebody else,” said Deodonato; “and pray leave me. I would be alone;” and Duke Deodonato waved his hand to the door.
Outside the door the President said to the Doctor,
“I could wish, sir, that you had not convinced his Highness.”
“My lord,” rejoined the Doctor, “truth is my only preoccupation.”
“Sir,” said the President, “are you married?”
“My lord,” answered the Doctor, “I am not.”
“I thought not,” said the President, as he folded up the decree, and put it in his pocket.
It is useless to deny that Duke Deodonato’s decree caused considerable disturbance in the Duchy. In the first place, the Crown lawyers raised a puzzle of law. Did the word ‘man’ as used in the decree, include woman’?