There were plenty of idle young New Yorkers and
Bostonians too, hovering round Lucy and Jean,
overweighted by their faultless London coats and trousers
and fluent French. But they deceived nobody; they all
had that nimble brain, and that unconscious swagger of
importance and success which stamps the American in every
country. Prince Hugo, in his old brown suit, came and
went quietly among them.
"The genuine article!" Jean declared loudly. "There
is something royal in his hospitality! He lays all
Munich at Lucy's feet, as if it were his own estate, and
the museums and palaces were the furniture of his house.
That homely simplicity of his is tremendously fine, if
she could understand it!"
The homely genuineness had its effect even upon Lucy.
The carriage which he brought to drive them to Isar-anen
was scaly with age, but the crest upon it was the noblest
in Bavaria; in the cabinet of portraits of ancient
beauties in the royal palace he showed her indifferently
two or three of his aunts and grandmothers, and in the
historical picture of the anointing of the great
Charlemagne, one of his ancestors, stout and good-humored
as Hugo himself, supported the emperor.
"The pudgy little man," said Jean one day, somehow
belongs to the old world of knights and
crusaders--Sintram and his companions. He will make it
all real to Lucy when she marries him. He is like Ali
Baba, standing at the shut door of the cave full of
jewels and treasures with the key in his hand.
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