"Let the fatherland tremble!" bellowed General Count von Dungheim. "Naxos declares war!"
"Look sharp!" shouted Admiral Lauterlaus, "or we'll have Andorra invading us."
"And Monaco, too!" growled Bummelzug. "Gott in Himmel! If Naxos defies us through her Duchess we're as good as lost!"
"I tell you!" shrieked Secretary Gizzler, "that it's no laughing matter! That girl is the Duchess of Naxos! And the other—her sister—look well at her, gentlemen!—she is Duchess of Tenedos!"
"That belongs to my country!" cried Eddin Bey, laughing, "the island of Tenedos. I sincerely hope the Cyclades are not in revolt! But if they are I'm very glad so charming a lady is to own one of them."
But his attempt at a good natured diversion made no impression on the huns; and Gizzler, venomous and quivering, held the floor and kept his weak, vicious eyes on Thusis.
"It was the Ægean League that exiled the King and Queen of Greece!" he said. "She made that league!—that woman standing there—Thusis, Duchess of Naxos!"
"It isn't a Duchy!" cried the queen, choking with fury; "it's a Greek Island!"
"It's a Venetian Duchy and belongs to Italy, madame," I said calmly—having read up on it in the Encyclopedia since I had fallen in love with one of its inhabitants.
At that the queen turned on me like a fury.