he curtain rises,
and sleeps through till the end of the act."

"How dear!" said the girl, leaning forward to fix the nonagenarian with
her glasses, while many other glasses converged upon her. "Oh, wouldn't
you like to know him, Mr. March?"

"I should consider it a liberal education. They have brought these
things to a perfect system in Europe. There is nothing to make life
pass smoothly like inflexible constancy to an entirely simple custom.
My dear," he added to his wife, "I wish we'd seen this sage before. He'd
have helped us through a good many hours of unintelligible comedy. I'm
always coming as Burnamy's guest, after this."

The young fellow swelled with pleasure in his triumph, and casting
an eye about the theatre to cap it, he caught sight of that other
potentate. He whispered joyfully, "Ah! We've got two kings here
to-night," and he indicated in a box of their tier just across from that
where the King of Servia sat, the well-known face of the King of New
York.

"He isn't bad-looking," said March, handing his glass to General
Triscoe. "I've not seen many kings in exile; a matter of a few Carlist
princes and ex-sovereign dukes, and the good Henry V. of France, once,
when I was staying a month in Venice; but I don't think they any of them
looked the part better. I suppose he has his dream of recurring power
like the rest."

"Dream!" said General Triscoe with the glass at his eyes. "He's dead
sure of it."

"Oh, you don't really mean that!"

"I don't know why I should have changed my mind."

"Then it's as if we were in the presence of Charles II. just before he
was called back to England, or Napoleon in the last moments of Elba.
It's better than that. The thing is almost unique; it's a new situation
in history. Here's a sovereign who has no recognized function, no legal
status, no objective existence. He has no sort of public being, except
in the affection of his subjects. It took an upheaval little short of an
earthquake to unseat him. His rule, as we understand it, was bad for all
classes; the poor suffered more than the rich; the people have now had
three years of self-government; and yet this wonderful man has such
a hold upon the masses that he is going home to win the cause of
oppression at the head of the oppressed. When he's in power again, he
will be as subjective as ever, with the power of civic life and death,
and an idolatrous following perfectly ruthless in the execution of his
will."

"We