“Great Scott and damn!” said the King. “Do you think I want to marry her. No, my friend, there is nothing I desire less except to follow poor Otto. I do not want to marry the girl. To be married to her would make me bored, but it would make me much more bored to die.”
“The thing for you to do,” said Gorman, “is to stay where you are. Don’t go on board your navy. Donovan has asked you to stay at the palace. You’ll be safe here. We won’t even ask the admiral to dinner if you’d rather we didn’t.”
“It will be dull, dull as the water of a ditch,” said the King mournfully.
“You needn’t stay here for ever,” said Gorman. “There’ll be an English ship back in a short time and you can go home in her. Madame will be waiting for you all right.”
“Poor Corinne!” said the King. “I left her in Paris. Steinwitz said so, and he spoke for the Emperor. ‘You go to marry,’ he said, ‘therefore Madame must stay.’”
“From his point of view he was right there,” said Gorman, “and it’s just as well that Madame did not come with you. Donovan is a broad-minded man; but you couldn’t expect him to put up you and Madame in the palace. It would be trying him rather high.”
“Ah,” said the King. “Poor Corinne! She will be desolate.”
“Well,” said Gorman, “you’d better come along now and see Donovan. He ought to be down here to receive you, of course. But these Americans—I’m sure you’ll understand—they’re not accustomed to kings.”
“Say no more,” said the King, “not a word. I go to pay my respects. I bow. I abase myself. I am a king. It is true. But I have no money, only a little, a very little left. He is not a king, but he has money. Gorman, I am not a Bourbon. I am able to learn and forget. He who can write a cheque is a greater man than he who can confer the Order of the Pink Vulture of Megalia. I have learned that. Also I can forget, forget that I am a king.”
We must do Konrad Karl justice. No king was ever more willing to forget his rank than he was. The real trouble with him was that he seldom remembered it.