“Unfortunate Humphry!” he muttered,--“What a secret he has entrusted me with! And yet why do I call him unfortunate? There should be nothing to regret--and yet--! Well! The mischief was done before poor Heinrich von Glauben was consulted; and if poor Heinrich were God and the Devil rolled into one strange Eternal Monster, he could not have prevented it! What is done, can never be undone!” CHAPTER V “IF I LOVED YOU!” A singular pomp is sometimes associated with the announcement that my Lord Pedigree, or Mister Nobody has ‘had the honour of dining’ with their Majesties the King and Queen. Outsiders read the thrilling line with awe and envy,--and many of them are foolish enough to wish that they also were Lords Pedigree or Misters Nobody. As a matter of sad and sober fact, however, a dinner with royal personages is an extremely dull affair. ‘Do not speak unless you are spoken to,’ is a rule which, however excellent and necessary in Court etiquette, is apt to utterly quench conversation, and render the brightest spirits dull and inert. The silent and solemn movements of the Court flunkeys,--the painful attitudes of those who are _not_ ‘spoken to’; the eager yet laboured smiles of those who _are_ ‘spoken to ‘;--the melancholy efforts at gaiety--the dread of trespassing on tabooed subjects--these things tend to make all but the most independent and unfettered minds shrink from such an ordeal as the ‘honour’ of dining with kings. It must, however, be conceded that the kings themselves are fully aware of the tediousness of their dinner parties, and would lighten the boredom if they could; but etiquette forbids. The particular monarch whose humours are the subject of this ‘plain unvarnished’ history would have liked nothing better than to be allowed to dine in simplicity and peace without his conversation being noted, and without having a flunkey at hand to watch every morsel of food go into his mouth. He would have liked to eat freely, talk freely, and conduct himself generally with the ease of a private gentleman.