A Glimpse of Grandeur

Prince Humperdinck actually ran things. If there had been a Europe, he would have been the most powerful man in it. Even as it was, nobody within a thousand miles wanted to mess with him.

The Count was Prince Humperdinck's only confidant. His last name was Rugen, but no one needed to use it—he was the only Count in the country, the title having been bestowed by the Prince as a birthday present some years before, the happening taking place naturally, at one of the Countess's parties.

The Countess was considerably younger than her husband. All of her clothes came from Paris (this was after Paris) and she had superb taste. (This was after taste, too, but only just. And since it was such a new thing, and since the Countess was the only lady in all Florin to possess it, is it any wonder she was the leading hostess of the land?) Eventually, her passion for fabric and face paint caused her to settle permanently in Paris, where she ran the only salon of international consequence.

For now, she busied herself with simply sleeping on silk, eating on gold and being the single most feared and admired woman in Florinese history. If she had figure faults, her clothes concealed them; if her face was less than divine, it was hard to tell once she got done applying substances. (This was before glamour, but if it hadn't been for ladies like the Countess, there would never have been a need for its invention.)

In sum, the Rugens were Couple of the Week in Florin, and had been for many years…

This is me. All abridging remarks and other comments will be in red so you'll know. When I said at the start that I'd never read this book, that's true. My father read it to me, and I just quick skimmed along, crossing out whole sections when I did the abridging, leaving everything just as it was in the original Morgenstern.

This chapter is totally intact. My intrusion here is because of the way Morgenstern uses parentheses. The copy editor at Harcourt kept filling the margins of the galley proofs with questions: 'How can it be before Europe but after Paris?' And 'How is it possible this happens before glamour when glamour is an ancient concept? See "glamer" in the Oxford English Dictionary.' And eventually: I am going crazy. What am I to make of these parentheses? When does this book take place? I don't understand anything. Hellllppppp!!!' Denise, the copy editor, has done all my books since Boys and Girls Together and she had never been as emotional in the margins with me before.

I couldn't help her.

Either Morgenstern meant them seriously or he didn't. Or maybe he meant some of them seriously and some others he didn't. But he never said which were the seriously ones. Or maybe it was the author's way of telling the reader stylistically that 'this isn't real; it never happened.' That's what I think, in spite of the fact that if you read back into Florinese history, it did happen. The facts, anyway; no one can say about the actual motivations. All I can suggest to you is, if the parentheses bug you, don't read them.

"Quick—quick—come—" Buttercup's father stood in his farmhouse, staring out the window.

"Why?" This from the mother. She gave away nothing when it came to obedience.

The father made a quick finger point. "Look—"

"You look; you know how." Buttercup's parents did not have exactly what you might call a happy marriage. All they ever dreamed of was leaving each other.

Buttercup's father shrugged and went back to the window. "Ahhhh," he said after a while. And a little later, again, "Ahhhh."

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Buttercup's mother glanced up briefly from her cooking.

"Such riches," Buttercup's father said. "Glorious."

Buttercup's mother hesitated, then put her stew spoon down. (This was after stew, but so is everything. When the first man first clambered from the slime and made his first home on land, what he had for supper that first night was stew.)

"The heart swells at the magnificence," Buttercup's father muttered very loudly.

"What exactly is it, dumpling?" Buttercup's mother wanted to know.

"You look; you know how" was all he replied. (This was their thirty-third spat of the day—this was long after spats—and he was behind, thirteen to twenty, but he had made up a lot of distance since lunch, when it was seventeen to two against him.)

"Donkey," the mother said, and came over to the window. A moment later she was going "Ahhh" right along with him.

They stood there, the two of them, tiny and awed.

From setting the dinner table, Buttercup watched them.

"They must be going to meet Prince Humperdinck someplace," Buttercup's mother said.

The father nodded. "Hunting. That's what the Prince does."

"How lucky we are to have seen them pass by," Buttercup's mother said, and she took her husband's hand.

The old man nodded. "Now I can die."

She glanced at him. "Don't." Her tone was surprisingly tender, and probably she sensed how important he really was to her, because when he did die, two years further on, she went right after, and most of the people who knew her well agreed it was the sudden lack of opposition that undid her.

Buttercup came close and stood behind them, staring over them, and soon she was gasping too, because the Count and Countess and all their pages and soldiers and servants and courtiers and champions and carriages were passing by the cart track at the front of the farm.

The three stood in silence as the procession moved forward. Buttercup's father was a tiny mutt of a man who had always dreamed of living like the Count. He had once been two miles from where the Count and Prince had been hunting, and until this moment that had been the high point of his life. He was a terrible farmer, and not much of a husband either. There wasn't really much in this world he excelled at, and he could never quite figure out how he happened to sire his daughter, but he knew, deep down, that it must have been some kind of wonderful mistake, the nature of which he had no intention of investigating.