"If you doubt my confession, messire my grandson, you have only to look into the next mirror. It is precisely on this account that we have ventured to dispel your slumbers. For to me you bear a striking resemblance. You have the family face." Now Jurgen considered the lineaments of King Smoit of Glathion. "Really," said Jurgen, "of course it is very flattering to be told that your appearance is regal. I do not at all know what to say in reply to the implied compliment, without seeming uncivil. I would never for a moment question that you were much admired in your day, sir, and no doubt very justly so. None the less--well, my nose, now, from such glimpses of it as mirrors have hitherto afforded, does not appear to be a snub-nose." "Ah, but appearances are proverbially deceitful," observed King Smoit. "And about the left hand corner," protested Queen Sylvia Tereu, "I detect a distinct resemblance." "Now I may seem unduly obtuse," said Jurgen, "for I am a little obtuse. It is a habit with me, a very bad habit formed in early infancy, and I have never been able to break myself of it. And so I have not any notion at what you two are aiming." Replied the ghost of King Smoit: "I will explain. Just sixty-three years ago to-night I murdered my ninth wife in circumstances of peculiar brutality, as you with rather questionable taste have mentioned." Then Jurgen was somewhat abashed, and felt that it did not become him, who had so recently cut off the head of his own wife, to assume the airs of a precisian. "Of course," says Jurgen, more broad-mindedly, "these little family differences are always apt to occur in married life." "So be it! Though, by the so-and-sos of Ursula's eleven thousand traveling companions, there was a time wherein I would not have brooked such criticism. Ah, well, that time is overpast, and I am a bloodless thing that the wind sweeps at the wind's will through lands in which but yesterday King Smoit was dreaded. So I let that which has been be." "Well, that seems reasonable," said Jurgen, "and to be a trifle rhetorical is the privilege of grandfathers. Therefore I entreat you, sir, to continue."