“All right. Have it your own way. You’re the authority here on kings. But don’t overdo it. That’s all I advise,” Henry said, finally. “I know everybody thinks I’m wrong nowadays,” he added, with a glance at Monkley and Sylvia. “But what about Condy’s Fluid?”
“What about it?” Monkley asked. “What do you want Condy’s for?”
“I don’t want it,” said Henry. “I simply passed the remark. Our friend here is the Prince de Condé. Well, I merely remark ‘What about Condy’s Fluid?’ I don’t want to start an argument, because, as I said, I’m always wrong nowadays, but I think if he wanted to be a prince he ought to have chosen a more recherché title, not gone routing about among patent medicines.”
The Prince de Condé looked inquiringly at Monkley.
“Don’t you bother about him, old chap. He’s gone off at the deep end.”
“I knew it,” Henry said. “I knew I should be wrong. That’s right, laugh away,” he added, bitterly, to Sylvia.
There followed a long explanation by the prince of Sylvia’s royal descent, which she could not understand at all. Monkley, however, seemed to be understanding it very well, so well that her father gave up being offended and loudly expressed his admiration for Jimmy’s grip of the subject.
“Now,” said Monkley, “the question is who are we going to touch?”
The prince asked if he had noticed at the reception a young man, a rather good-looking, fair young man with a white rose in his buttonhole. Monkley said that most of the young men he had seen in Stanmore Crescent would answer to that description, and the prince gave up trying to describe him except as the only son of a wealthy and distinguished painter—Sir Francis Hurndale. It seemed that young Godfrey Hurndale could always command the paternal purse; and the prince suggested that a letter should be sent to his father from the secretary of the de jure King of Spain and France, offering him the post of court painter on his accession. Monkley objected that a man who had made money out of painting would not be taken in by so transparent a fraud as that; and the prince explained that Sir Francis would only be amused, but that he would certainly pass the letter on to his son, who was an enthusiastic Legitimist; that the son would consult him, the Prince de Condé; and that afterward it lay with Monkley to make the most of the situation, bearing in mind that he, the prince, required a fair share of the profits in order to advance his great propaganda for a universal Platonic system of government.
“At present,” the prince proclaimed, becoming more and more sacerdotal as he spoke of his scheme—“at present I am a lay member of the Society of Jesus, which represents the Platonic tendency in modern thought. I am vowed to exterminate republicanism, anarchy, socialism, and to maintain the conservative instincts of humanity against—”