The Royal audience chamber of the Grand Babylon,
if people only knew it, is one of the sights of London, but it is
never shown, and if you ask the hotel servants about its wonders
they will tell you only foolish facts concerning it, as that the
Turkey carpet costs fifty pounds to clean, and that one of the great
vases is cracked across the pedestal, owing to the rough treatment
accorded to it during a riotous game of Blind Man's Buff, played
one night by four young Princesses, a Balkan King, and his
aides-de-camp.
In one of the window recesses of this magnificent apartment, on a
certain afternoon in late July, stood Prince Aribert of Posen. He
was faultlessly dressed in the conventional frock-coat of English
civilization, with a gardenia in his button-hole, and the
indispensable crease down the front of the trousers. He seemed to
be fairly amused, and also to expect someone, for at frequent
intervals he looked rapidly over his shoulder in the direction of the
door behind the Royal chair. At last a little wizened, stooping old
man, with a distinctly German cast of countenance, appeared
through the door, and laid some papers on a small table by the side
of the chair.
'Ah, Hans, my old friend!' said Aribert, approaching the old man. 'I
must have a little talk with you about one or two matters. How do
you find His Royal Highness?'
The old man saluted, military fashion.
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