cousin. Europe
did not seem to contain such a thing. Everybody was his cousin, except
two or three young women whom he was rude enough to call ugly. The
Kunitz princesses had been considered in their turn and set aside, for
they too were cousins; and it seemed as if one of the most splendid
thrones in Europe would either have to go queen-less or be sat upon by
somebody plain, when fate brought the Prince to a great public
ceremony in Kunitz, and he saw Priscilla and fell so violently in love
with her that if she had been fifty times his cousin he would still
have married her.

That same evening he signified his intention to the delighted Grand
Duke, who immediately fell to an irrelevant praising of God.

"Bosh," said the Prince, in the nearest equivalent his mother-tongue
provided.

This was very bad. Not, I mean, that the Prince should have said Bosh,
for he was so great that there was not a Grand Duke in Europe to whom
he might not have said it if he wanted to; but that Priscilla should
have been in imminent danger of marriage. Among Fritzing's many
preachings there had been one, often repeated in the strongest
possible language, that of all existing contemptibilities the very
most contemptible was for a woman to marry any one she did not love;
and the peroration, also extremely forcible, had been an announcement
that the prince did not exist who was fit to tie her shoestrings. This
Priscilla took to be an exaggeration, for she had no very great notion
of her shoestrings; but she did agree with the rest. The subject
however was an indifferent one, her father never yet having asked her
to marry anybody; and so long as he did not do so she need not, she
thought, waste time thinking about it. Now the peril was upon her,
suddenly, most unexpectedly, very menacingly. She knew there was no
hope from the moment she saw her father's face quite distorted by
delight. He took her hand and kissed it. To him she was already a
queen. As usual she gave him the impression of behaving exactly as he
could have wished. She certainly said very little, for she had long
ago learned the art of being silent; but her very silences were
somehow exquisite, and the Grand Duke thought her perfect. She gave
him to understand almost without words that it was a great surprise,
an immense honour, a huge compliment, but so sudden that she would be
grateful to both himself and the Prince if nothing more need be said
about it for a week or two--noth