After this had been received by Dorothy with proper thanks and placed on the table with the other presents, the visitors from Hiland and Loland were escorted to their rooms by the High Chamberlain.
They had no sooner departed than the band before the palace began to play again, announcing more arrivals, and as these were doubtless from foreign parts the High Chamberlain hurried back to receive them in his most official manner.
"I particularly remember that the Chamberlain, or old Grimm or somebody, said how horrible it was, when they came up at her call, to see a girl holding spring flowers and bending over that--that bloody collapse.
They had the girl most ruthlessly searched; for, to tell the truth, she was a little suspect, though the niece and ward of the wicked old Chamberlain, Paul Arnhold.
For this and only this he had bought the traitor and butchered the hero, for this he had long questioned and cross-questioned the false Chamberlain, until he had come to the conclusion that, touching his ignorance, the renegade really told the truth.
"I'm going to have another look at that portrait of the Chamberlain, the Arnhold who betrayed his brethren," answered the priest.
Why, I don't believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the
Chamberlain's nephew has"; and she got up from her chair and went into the house.
Then the princess thought to betray her as before, and agreed to what she asked: but when the prince went to his chamber he asked the
chamberlain why the wind had whistled so in the night.
As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought me in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rush-light of those virtuous days - an object like the ghost of a walking-cane, which instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing could ever be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary confinement at the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with round holes that made a staringly wide-awake pattern on the walls.
It came into my head that he must have occupied this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to assure myself that there were no red marks about; then opened the door to look out into the passages, and cheer myself with the companionship of a distant light, near which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing.
He knew not on whom to vent his grief and wrath, until fortunately bethinking himself of the lord
chamberlain who had brought him home, he struck off his pension and his head together.
The general came into the same opinion; so that for a long time there was a majority against you; but his majesty resolving, if possible, to spare your life, at last brought off the
chamberlain.
The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten
Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish.
And the
chamberlains walked along still more uprightly, holding up the train which was not there at all.
NEXT year marks the 80th anniversary of the death of one of the UK's most famous Prime Ministers - Birmingham's own Neville
Chamberlain.
Chamberlain was the MP for Birmingham Edgbaston when he died in November 1940, six months after he resigned as Prime Minister.
