Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 250: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

242 . HER ROYAL LOVER. sifts of different cities and provinces, was one of the only really rich and beautiful things that this little kingdom possessed. Succulent fruits arise‘in pyramids upon fresh green now. Around the royal table, the princesses, glittering with gems, enveloped in clouds of lace, are in court toilets; the princes in full dress. The red uniforms of the king’s officers predominate with their strik- ing colors. Itis a festival of men of all parties, of all nations, in a word, all the military and diplo- matic Thessaly. But let us make a little tour in the salon. See, here, at the side of the Princess of Pat- tenpouff, mother of the husband of the eldest Prin- cess of Thessaly, is seated one of those petty kings who, in these latter days, commence to arise in the Kast and who, let us hope, may disappear without too many barricades and bloodshed. The king, although a young and elegant bachelor, had already grown corpulent through the produc- tions of a good chef, brought, at a great expense, from Paris, which for this majesty, was a terrestrial paradise offering all the allurement of forbidden fruit. At each opportunity he left his own country and came to seek, incognito, a compensation for the deadly ‘fatigue which he experienced in his own capital, a hole with tortuous and badly-paved streets, and wherein the houris with almond-shaped eyes offered to his dlase senses less charms than our flaunting Parisians. | A little farther on, at one of the buffets, old Prince Stanislas of Grassan was to be seen, with his mor- ganatic wife, gorged with food, and whose immense gown could hardly contain her powerful frame. This imposing person, whose value had been great Gomichbooks.Gco m