FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   669   670   671   672   673   674   675   676   677   678   679   680   681   682   683   684   685   686   687   688   689   690   691   692   693  
694   695   696   697   698   699   700   701   702   703   704   705   706   707   708   709   710   711   712   713   714   715   716   717   718   >>   >|  
o have it. Otterson looked over his shoulder to explain, despairingly: "The trouble with me is that when I do get a chance to talk English, there's such a flow of language it carries me away, and I don't know just where I'm landing." XXXIII. There were several kings and their kindred at Carlsbad that summer. One day the Duchess of Orleans drove over from Marienbad, attended by the Duke on his bicycle. After luncheon, they reappeared for a moment before mounting to her carriage with their Secretaries: two young French gentlemen whose dress and bearing better satisfied Mrs. March's exacting passion for an aristocratic air in their order. The Duke was fat and fair, as a Bourbon should be, and the Duchess fatter, though not so fair, as became a Hapsburg, but they were both more plebeian-looking than their retainers, who were slender as well as young, and as perfectly appointed as English tailors could imagine them. "It wouldn't do for the very highest sort of Highhotes," March declared, "to look their own consequence personally; they have to leave that, like everything else, to their inferiors." By a happy heterophemy of Mrs. March's the German Hoheit had now become Highhote, which was so much more descriptive that they had permanently adopted it, and found comfort to their republican pride in the mockery which it poured upon the feudal structure of society. They applied it with a certain compunction, however, to the King of Servia, who came a few days after the Duke and Duchess: he was such a young King, and of such a little country. They watched for him from the windows of the reading-room, while the crowd outside stood six deep on the three sides of the square before the hotel, and the two plain public carriages which brought the King and his suite drew tamely up at the portal, where the proprietor and some civic dignitaries received him. His moderated approach, so little like that of royalty on the stage, to which Americans are used, allowed Mrs. March to make sure of the pale, slight, insignificant, amiable-looking youth in spectacles as the sovereign she was ambuscading. Then no appeal to her principles could keep her from peeping through the reading-room door into the rotunda, where the King graciously but speedily dismissed the civic gentlemen and the proprietor, and vanished into the elevator. She was destined to see him so often afterwards that she scarcely took the trouble to time her dining and
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   669   670   671   672   673   674   675   676   677   678   679   680   681   682   683   684   685   686   687   688   689   690   691   692   693  
694   695   696   697   698   699   700   701   702   703   704   705   706   707   708   709   710   711   712   713   714   715   716   717   718   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Duchess
 

gentlemen

 

reading

 

proprietor

 

English

 

trouble

 
public
 

square

 

feudal

 

structure


society
 

applied

 

poured

 
adopted
 
comfort
 
republican
 

mockery

 
compunction
 

country

 

permanently


watched

 

windows

 

Servia

 

approach

 

peeping

 
rotunda
 

graciously

 
principles
 

ambuscading

 

sovereign


appeal

 

speedily

 

dismissed

 

scarcely

 
dining
 

vanished

 
elevator
 

destined

 

spectacles

 

dignitaries


received

 

moderated

 

portal

 
brought
 

tamely

 
descriptive
 
royalty
 

slight

 
insignificant
 
amiable