“Because I’m called the king’s jester, Your Majesty, they think I’m a fool,” said the little man, readjusting the feather in his cap. “But I’m not the fool that I look, am I, Schwartzburg?” Here the dwarf winked gayly at the king. Then his anger seemed to return. “Gott im Himmel!” he cried, “they gave me the lie, me, Cousin Fritz, who could tell the truth in Latin and Greek at the age of six. It’s an outrage, your majesty.”
“But what was the cause of all this?” asked the king, beginning to look bored and casting uneasy glances at Bennett, upon whom the royal curse had not had the intended effect.
“The cause, your majesty?” repeated the dwarf. “Cause enough. They said I lied when I told them that four of a kind beat a full house. Think of that, Herr Bennett. They took my money—and I held four aces.”
CHAPTER III.
“Bennett ’82 cannot be explained by any known law,” a Yale professor had once remarked. “He may astonish the world by his genius, or end a short career as a tramp. The splendor of his inherent possibilities emphasizes the dangers that surround such a temperament as his.”
Ten years had passed since Bennett had been graduated, not without honors, from Yale, but he had not as yet fulfilled the professor’s prophecy. He had not made the world ring with his name; neither had he sunk to the level of a knight of the road. There still remained a chance, however, that the foresight of the professor would be vindicated. Bennett was now thirty-two years of age. He had assiduously cultivated the gifts that had led the Yale professor to ascribe to him the peculiarities and possibilities that appertain to genius. Bennett had become an accomplished linguist, a poet, a musician, a diplomatist, and a schemer. But he had neglected the means and methods that lead to permanent success, and his love of adventure had served to make him more of a tramp than a celebrity. The returns from his genius must still be marked “scattering.”
The erratic nature of the man was well illustrated by his invasion of the kingdom of Hesse-Heilfels. One evening in Berlin he had listened to a description of King Rudolph’s picturesque domain. The eccentricities of that petty monarch had aroused Bennett’s curiosity, and he had determined to make a study at close quarters of a royal establishment that still retained many of the peculiarities of mediæval monarchies.
Bennett had been fortunate enough to find luck as his ally upon entering the confines of Hesse-Heilfels. At the very first inn in the kingdom in which he had laid aside his knapsack, he had learned that King Rudolph was suffering from a severe indisposition that had baffled the skill of the court physicians. It did not take Bennett long to come to the conclusion that the reigning Schwartzburger was suffering from inflammatory rheumatism, an affection that Bennett numbered among his family heirlooms. “Litchfield County may be short on romance, but it is long on rheumatism,” he said to himself. “I think I can cure King Rudolph.”