“Oh, Mabel, come and hear about the prince. Do tell us more, Judge Giffen.”
The Judge consulted his paper.
“Um—ah—here it is. Um—ah—odd chap. Very chivalrous and—ah—romantic; eccentric; fond of wandering about, incognito, and entering humble people’s houses and—ah—making friends with them. Artistic. No love-affair suspected, but—ah—it seems he has never enjoyed ruling. Too sensitive. Been missing for months. The Court tried to—ah—hide the fact, but it is out now, and the whole world is aware that His Highness—wait a minute till I find the place, for it’s a fearful name. Ah—here it is. His Highness, Prince Adam Lapid, reigning Duke of Woodseweedsetisky”—he stumbled over it badly.
“Good gracious!” Mabel said.
“Ah—His Highness has abdicated and run away in disguise, leaving a letter. Ah—this is the letter. Listen”:
Dear Subjects, Councillors, and neighbouring Princes, including Her Highness Princess Olga of Damala-Binootshia, to whom processes of state have affianced me although I have never seen her. I herewith and hereby abdicate and renounce my hereditary right to the throne of Woodseweedsetisky. I am too sensitive to endure the criticisms aimed at royalty by heartless radicals. Recently I have received harsh words from a visiting, untitled stranger, whom I had employed in executing a beneficent and beautiful plan for my ungrateful subjects. It was not my fault that it was, later, found to be impossible to bring the water to the top of the mountain, where I had insisted that the fountain—a memorial to my father—be erected. Criticism of me on that account was unjust and cruel. It was not I who failed, but the water. I abdicate. I go to a place where there is no criticism. Farewell.
Adam Lapid.
“Well! What a....”
The Judge silenced the interrupting chorus. “A postscript.”
P. S. People who criticise me are ignorant. If they knew as much as I do they would act as I do. As for the visiting stranger—a person of no antecedents—who criticised me because of the fountain, I have put him in prison. Let him see whether his pointed criticisms are sharp enough to pick my prison locks. The top of the mountain was the proper place for the memorial fountain to my honoured father. It was not my fault that the water did not arrive there to spout. But when this stranger of humble birth said to me, “I told you water will not run uphill, even to oblige a prince,” I put him in the prison. Farewell.
“Now, that’s a remarkable tale, eh?”