"It's a sacrilege," he cried. "I believe that nothing short of extermination will reclaim this unhappy land. They are calling down the vengeance of heaven upon them."
They walked back to town with the foreign officer.
"He's a wonderful man, the Emperor," said he, in indifferent English. "How quickly he changed his clothes, and what a compliment it was!"
"A sort of lightning-change artist," said Cleary. "He could make his fortune at a continuous performance."
In the dark Sam blushed for his friend, but fortunately their companion did not understand the allusion.
"You should have seen him when he visited our Queen," he said. "She came to meet him in the uniform of a Tutonian hussar, breeches and all. You can imagine how he was touched by it. That very afternoon he called upon her dressed in the costume of one of our royal princesses with a long satin train. It made him wonderfully popular. Our Queen responded at once by making his infant daughters colonels of several of our regiments. One of them is colonel of mine," he added proudly.
"What would you do if you went to war with Tutonia, and one of the kids should order you to shoot on your own army?" asked Cleary. "It might be embarrassing."
But the foreigner did not understand this either.
"And to think that these Porsslanese dogs have received him with laughter!" said he.
At eleven o'clock on the same evening the Emperor was closeted with his aged field-marshal, von Balderdash, in a handsomely furnished sitting-room. A Turk's head had been set up in the middle of the room, and His Majesty, dressed in the uniform of a cavalry general, was engaged in making passes at it with a saber. He had already taken a ride on horseback with his staff. The field-marshal stood wearily leaning against the wall at the side of a desk piled up with papers.