When William Came

they were desired to flourish.  Animals, on the other hand, accepted the world as it was and made the best of it, and children, at least nice children, uncontaminated by grown-up influences, lived in worlds of their own making.

Von Kwarl held no acknowledged official position in the country of his residence, but it was an open secret that those responsible for the real direction of affairs sought his counsel on nearly every step that they meditated, and that his counsel was very rarely disregarded.  Some of the shrewdest and most successful enactments of the ruling power were believed to have originated in the brain-cells of the bovine-fronted Stammgast of the Brandenburg Cafe.

Around the wood-panelled walls of the Cafe were set at intervals well-mounted heads of boar, elk, stag, roe-buck, and other game-beasts of a northern forest, while in between were carved armorial escutcheons of the principal cities of the lately expanded realm, Magdeburg, Manchester, Hamburg, Bremen, Bristol, and so forth.  Below these came shelves on which stood a wonderful array of stone beer-mugs, each decorated with some fantastic device or motto, and most of them pertaining individually and sacredly to some regular and unfailing customer.  In one particular corner of the highest shelf, greatly at his ease and in nowise to be disturbed, slept Wotan, the huge grey house-cat, dreaming doubtless of certain nimble and audacious mice down in the cellar three floors below, whose nimbleness and audacity were as precious to him as the forwardness of the birds is to a skilled gun on a grouse moor.  Once every day Wotan came marching in stately fashion across the polished floor, halted mid-way to resume an unfinished toilet operation, and then proceeded to pay his leisurely respects to his friend von Kwarl.  The latter was said to be prouder of this daily demonstration of esteem than of his many coveted orders of merit.  Several of his friends and acquaintances shared with him the distinction of having achieved the Black Eagle, but not one of them had ever succeeded in obtaining the slightest recognition of their existence from Wotan.

The daily greeting had been exchanged and the proud grey beast had marched away to the music of a slumberous purr.  The Kreuz Zeitung and the Times underwent a final scrutiny and were pushed aside, and von Kwarl glanced aimlessly out at the July sunshine bathing the walls and windows of the Piccadilly Hotel.  Herr Rebinok, the plump little Pomeranian banker, stepped across the floor, almost as noiselessly as Wotan had done, though with considerably less grace, and some half-minute later was engaged in sliding pawns and knights and bishops to and fro on the chess-board in a series of lightning moves bewildering to look on.  Neither he nor his opponent played with the skill that they severally brought to bear on banking and statecraft, nor did they conduct their game with the politeness that they punctiliously observed in other affairs of life.  A running fire of contemptuous remarks and aggressive satire accompanied each move, and the mere record of the conversation would have given an uninitiated onlooker the puzzling impression that an easy and crushing victory was assured to both the players.

“Aha, he is puzzled.  Poor man, he doesn’t know what to do . . .  Oho, he thinks he will move there, does he?  Much good that will do him. . . .  Never have I seen such a mess as he is in . . . he cannot do anything, he is absolutely helpless, helpless.”

“Ah, you take my bishop, do you?  Much I care for that.  Nothing.  See, I give you check.  Ah, now he is in a fright!  He doesn’t know where to go.  What a mess he is in . . . ”

So the game proceeded, with a brisk exchange of pieces and incivilities and a fluctuation of fortunes, till the little banker lost his queen as the result of an incautious move, and, after several woebegone contortions of his shoulders and hands, declined further contest.  A sleek-headed piccolo rushed forward to remove the board, and the erstwhile combatants resumed the courteous dignity that they discarded in their chess-playing moments.

“Have you seen the Germania to-day?” asked Herr Rebinok, as soon as the boy had receded to a respectful distance.

“No,” said von Kwarl, “I never see the Germania.  I count on you to tell me if there is anything noteworthy in it.”

“It has an article to-day headed, ‘Occupation or Assimilation,’” said the banker.  “It is of some importance, and well written.  It is very pessimistic.”

“Catholic papers are always pessimistic about the things of this world,” said von Kwarl, “just as they are unduly optimistic about the things of the next world.  What line does it take?”

“It says that our conquest of Britain can only result in a temporary occupation, with a ‘notice to quit’ always hanging over our heads; that we can never hope to assimilate the people of these islands in our Empire as a sort of maritime Saxony or Bavaria, all the teaching of history is against it; Saxony and Bavaria are part of the Empire because of their past history.  England is being bound into the Empire in spite of her past history; and so forth.”

“The writer of the article has not studied history very deeply,” said von Kwarl.  “The impossible thing that he speaks of has been done before, and done in these very islands, too.  The Norman Conquest became an assimilation in comparatively few generations.”

“Ah, in those days, yes,” said the banker, “but the conditions were altogether different.  There was not the rapid transmission of news and the means of keeping the public mind instructed in what was happening; in fact, one can scarcely say that the public mind was there to instruct.  There was not the same strong bond of brotherhood between men of the same nation that exists now.  Northumberland was almost as foreign to Devon or Kent as Normandy was.  And the Church in those days was a great international factor, and the Crusades bound men together fighting under one leader for a common