Read Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia for Free Online Page B

call from Pantouflia."
    "And has Holy Church," asked the Duke of York, with anxiety, "given her sanction and her blessing to those instruments of an art, usually, in her wisdom, forbidden?"
    "Oh, never mind Holy Church, Harry!" said Prince Charles. "This is
business
. Besides, the English are Protestants."
    "I pray for their conversion daily," said the Duke of York.
    "The end justifies the means, you know," answered Prince Charles. "All's fair in love and war."
    "I should think so," said Ricardo, "especially against those brutes of Electors; they give trouble at home sometimes."
    "You, too, are plagued with an Elector?" asked Prince Charles.
    "
An
Elector? thousands of them!" answered Dick, who never could understand anything about politics.
    Prince Charles looked puzzled, but requested Dick to explain his great plan.
    They sat down on the grass, and Ricardo showed them how he meant to manage it, just as he had told Jaqueline. As he said, nothing could be simpler.
    "Let's start at once," he said, and, inducing Prince Charles to sit down on the magic carpet, he cried:
    "England! St. James's Palace!"
    But nothing happened!
    The carpet was not the right magic carpet, but the one which King Prigio had put in its place.
    "Get on! England, I said!" cried Dick.
    But there they remained, under the chestnut tree, sitting on the carpet above the flowery grass.
    {But there they remained: p99.jpg}
    Prince Charles leaped to his feet; his face like fire, his eyes glowing.
    "Enough of this fooling, sir!" he said. "It is easy, but cowardly, to mock at an unfortunate prince. Take your carpet and be off with you, out of the gardens, or your shoulders shall taste my club."
    "There has been some mistake," Ricardo said; "the wrong carpet has been brought by accident, or the carpet has lost its power."
    "In this sacred city, blessed by the presence of his Holiness the Pope, and the relics of so many martyrs and saints, magic may well cease to be potent," said the Duke of York.
    "Nonsense! You are an impostor, sir! Leave my presence!" cried Prince Charles, lifting his golf-club.
    Dick caught it out of his hand, and broke across his knee as fine a driver as ever came from Robertson's shop at St. Andrew's.
    "The quarrels of princes are not settled with clubs, sir! Draw and defend yourself!" he said, kicking off his boots and standing in his socks on the grass.
    Think of the horror of poor Jaqueline, who witnessed this terrible scene of passion from a fold in Prince Ricardo's dress! What could the girl do to save the life of two princes, the hopes of one nation, and of a respectable minority in another?
    In a moment Prince Charles's rapier was shining in the sunlight, and he fell on guard in the most elegant attitude, his left hand gracefully raised and curved.
    Dick drew his sword, but, as suddenly, threw it down again.
    "Hang it!" he exclaimed, "I can't hit you with
this
! This is the Sword of Sharpness; it would cut through your steel and your neck at a touch."
    He paused, and thought.
    "Let me beseech your Royal Highness," he said to the Duke of York, who was in a terrible taking, "to lend your blade to a hand not less royal than your own."
    "Give him it, Hal!" said Prince Charles, who was standing with the point of his sword on the ground, and the blade bent. "He seems to believe in his own nonsense."
    The duke yielded his sword; Dick took it, made a nourish, and rushed at Prince Charles.
    Now Ricardo had always neglected his fencing lessons. "Where's the good of it," he used to ask, "all that stamping, and posture-making, and ha- haing? The Sword of Sharpness is enough for
me
."
    But now he could not, in honour, use the Sword of Sharpness; so on he came, waving the rapier like a claymore, and made a slice at Prince Charles's head.
    The prince, very much surprised, parried in prime, riposted, and touched Dick on the hand.
    At this moment the Princess Jaqueline did what she should have thought of sooner. She flew out of Dick's coat, and stung old