“The Prince of Bohemia! and I’ve sent him to sleep on an iron chair-bed in a china closet!” cried the landlord.
Lord Ernest looked grave.
“I wouldn’t have done that if I had been you,” he said, shaking his head. “You must try and do better for him than that, my man.” Shortly afterwards the Viceregal party drove off, and then the landlord approached Pinsuti, and bowing to the ground, said,—
“I must humbly apologise to your Royal Highness for not having a suitable room for your Royal Highness in the morning; but now I’m proud to say that I have had prepared an apartment which will, I trust, give satisfaction.”
“What do you mean by Highnessing me, my good man?” asked Pinsuti.
“Ah,” said the landlord, smiling and bowing, “though it may please your Royal Highness to travel incognito, I trust I know what is due to your exalted station, sir.”
For the next two days Pinsuti was, he told me, treated with an amount of respect such as he had never before experienced. A waiter was specially told off to attend to him, and every time he passed the landlord the latter bowed in his best style.
It was, however, an American lady tourist who held an informal meeting in the drawingroom of the hotel, at which it was agreed that no one should be seated at the table d’hote until the Prince of Bohemia had entered and taken his place.
On the morning of his departure he found, waiting to take him to the railway station, a carriage drawn by four horses. Out to this he passed through lines of bowing tourists—especially Americans.
“It was all very nice, to be sure,” said Pinsuti, in concluding his narrative; “but the bill I had to pay was not so gratifying. However, one cannot be a Prince, even of Bohemia, without paying for it.”