she could save her country,
but in so doing her life was to be plunged into interminable darkness.
She did not love, nor did she respect Lorenz, who was not favorably
supplied with civilized intelligence. The proposition was laid before
the cabinet and the nobility by the Princess herself, who said that she
would be guided by any decision they might reach. The counsellors, to
a man, refused to sacrifice their girlish ruler, and the people
vociferously ratified the resolution. But the Princess would not allow
them to send an answer to Axphain until she could see a way clear to
save her people in some other manner. An embassy was sent to the Prince
of Dawsbergen. His domain touched Graustark on the south, and he ruled a
wild, turbulent class of mountaineers and herdsmen. This embassy sought
to secure an endorsement of the loan from Prince Gabriel sufficient to
meet the coming crisis. Gabriel, himself smitten by the charms of the
Princess, at once offered himself in marriage, agreeing to advance, in
case she accepted him, twenty million gavvos, at a rather high rate of
interest, for fifteen years. His love for her was so great that he
would pawn the entire principality for an answer that would make him the
happiest man on earth. Now, the troubled Princess abhorred Gabriel. Of
the two, Lorenz was much to be preferred. Gabriel flew into a rage upon
the receipt of this rebuff, and openly avowed his intention to make her
suffer. His infatuation became a mania, and, up to the very day on
which the Countess told the story, he persisted in his appeals to the
Princess. In person he had gone to her to plead his suit, on his knees,
grovelling at her feet. He went so far as to exclaim madly in the
presence of the alarmed but relentless object of his love that he would
win her or turn the whole earth into everything unpleasant.

So it was that the Princess of Graustark, erstwhile Miss Guggenslocker,
was being dragged through the most unhappy affairs that ever beset a
sovereign. Within a month she was to sign away two-thirds of her domain,
transforming multitudes of her beloved and loving people into subjects
of the hated Axphain, or to sell herself, body and soul, to a loathsome
bidder in the guise of a suitor. And, with all this confronting her, she
had come to the realization of a truth so sad and distracting; that
it was breaking her tortured heart. She was in love--but with no royal
prince! Of this, however, the Countess knew noth