The Princess would name a date, and a formal meeting would
take place; after which everything usually buzzed along pretty
smoothly. But in the case of King Merolchazzar's courtship of the
Princess of the Outer Isles there had been a regrettable hitch. She had
acknowledged the gifts, saying that they were just what she had wanted
and how had he guessed, and had added that, as regarded a meeting, she
would let him know later. Since that day no word had come from her, and
a gloomy spirit prevailed in the capital. At the Courtiers' Club, the
meeting-place of the aristocracy of Oom, five to one in _pazazas_
was freely offered against Merolchazzar's chances, but found no takers;
while in the taverns of the common people, where less conservative odds
were always to be had, you could get a snappy hundred to eight. "For in
good sooth," writes a chronicler of the time on a half-brick and a
couple of paving-stones which have survived to this day, "it did indeed
begin to appear as though our beloved monarch, the son of the sun and
the nephew of the moon, had been handed the bitter fruit of the
citron.
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