What Does It Matter? A Morality

What Does It Matter? A Morality Before the civil war, Pottibakia was a normal member of the Comity of Nations. She erected tariff walls, broke treaties, persecuted minorities, obstructed at conferences unless she was convinced there was no danger of a satisfactory solution; then she strained every nerve in the cause of peace.

She had an unknown warrior, a national salvo, commemorative postage-stamps, a characteristic peasantry, arterial roads; her emblem was a bee on a bonnet, her uniform plum-gray. In all this she was in line with her neighbours, and her capital city could easily be mistaken for Bucharest or Warsaw, and often was. Her president (for she was a republic) was Dr Bonifaz Schpiltz; Count Waghaghren (for she retained her aristocracy) being head of the police, and Mme Sonia Rodoconduco being Dr Schpiltz’s mistress (for he was only human).

Could it be this liaison which heralded the amazing change—a change which has led to the complete isolation of a sovereign state? Presidents so often have mistresses, it is part of the constitution they have inherited from Paris, and Dr Schpiltz was an ideal president, with a long thin brown beard flecked with gray, and a small protuberant stomach. Mme Rodoconduco, as an actress and a bad one, also filled her part. She was extravagant, high-minded and hysterical, and kept Bopp (for thus all the ladies called him) on tenterhooks lest she did anything temperamental. She lived in a lovely villa on the shores of Lake Lago.

Now Count Waghaghren desired the President’s downfall, and what the Count desired always came about, for he was powerful and unscrupulous.

He desired it for certain reasons of haute politique which have been obscured by subsequent events—perhaps he was a royalist, perhaps a traitor

or patriot, perhaps he was an emissary of that sinister worldwide Blue Elk organization which is said to hold its sessions in the Azores. It is hopeless to inquire. Enough that he decided, as part of his scheme, to sow dissension between husband and wife. Mme Schpiltz’s relatives were financiers, and a scandal was likely to start fluctuations on the exchange.

His plot was easily laid. He forged a letter from Mme Rodoconduco to Mme Schpiltz, inviting her to visit the lovely Villa Lago at a certain hour upon a certain day, he intercepted the reply of Mme Schpiltz accepting the invitation, and he arranged that the President and his mistress should be found in a compromising position at the moment of her call. All worked to perfection. The gendarme outside the villa omitted (under instructions) the national salvo when the President’s wife drove up, the servants (bribed) conducted her as if by mistake to the Aphrodite bedroom, and there she found her husband in a pair of peach-blush pyjamas supported by Mme Rodoconduco in a lilac negligée.

Mme Rodoconduco went into hysterics, hoping they would gain her the upper hand. She shrieked and raved, while Count Waghaghren’s microphone concealed under the lace pillows transmitted every tremor to his private cabinet. The President also played up. At first he pretended he was not there, then he rebuked his wife for interfering and his mistress for licentiousness, whereas he—he was a man, with a morality of his own. “I am a man, ha ha!” and he tried folding his arms. Smack! He got one over the ear from Mme Rodoconduco for that. All was going perfectly except for the lack of cooperation on the part of Mme Schpiltz, who had started on entering the room and had said “Bopp Bopp Bopp”, but had then said no more. She watched the lovers without animosity and without amusement, occasionally showing concern when they struck one another but not caring to intervene. When there was a pause she said rather shyly, “Madame—

madame, j’ai faim,” and since the only reply was a stare she added, “Vous m’avez invitée pour le goûter, n’est-ce-pas?”

“Certainly not, out of my house!” shrieked Mme Rodoconduco, but seeing a genuine look of disappointment on her visitor’s face she said, “Oh, very well, if you must eat you must.”

The servants now took Mme Schpiltz into another apartment, where goûter for two was already in evidence. She fell upon it, and Mme Rodoconduco followed her and sulkily did the honours. No allusion was made to the Aphrodite bedroom, the President had slipped away, and though the hostess was very nervous and therefore very rude she became easier in the presence of so much apathy, and they chatted on subjects of intellectual interest for quite a time.

The Count was unaccustomed to incidents without consequence and expected one lady or the other to come round to him in tears, or it might be the President himself asking him, as man to man, for advice in a little private difficulty. Then they would have fallen into his toils. But nothing happened. A few more officials and lackeys were in the know, but that was all. He must devise some other means of starting the ball rolling.

It may be remembered that there was a gendarme on duty that afternoon outside the Villa Lago. He, in the course of his usual dossier, reported that the President winked at him before driving away.

“Did you wink back?”

“Oh no, sir.”

The Count docked him a week’s pay, and an order went out to all ranks that when the President of the Republic winked at them they were to wink back.

The order had no effect because it was based on a misconception. It is true that the President had winked as he drove away, but only because some dust blew in his eye. His thoughts were with the ladies at their goûter, not of gendarmes at all. Defeated by the subsequent steadiness of his gaze, Count Waghaghren reissued the order in a more drastic form: all ranks were to wink without waiting. This again had no effect. We do not see what we

do not seek, and Dr Schpiltz, though a stickler for uniforms, was oblivious to all that passes inside them. It was his wife who enlightened him. “Oh Bopp, how the poor policemen’s eyes do twitch,” she remarked at a review.

His attention once drawn he observed that a twitch seemed to have become part of the national salvo. He did not like innovations about which he had not been consulted, and was about to issue a memorandum, when he noticed that the twitch was accompanied in some cases with a roguish smile. This put him on the right track. He had seen the same combination on the faces of little milliners and modistes of easy virtue, and he came to the only possible conclusion: the police were giving him the glad eye.

This called for a reprimand. But before drafting it he waited to make sure. There was no hurry—he could play cat and mouse if he liked, and he did get amusement at watching the forces of law and order playing futile tricks. He never winked back, oh no, he was always impassive and correct, besides, “I am a man, aha, no danger in that quarter for me!” and he pulled at his thin brown beard. His drives through his capital city became more vivid, and he began to contrast the methods of superior and subordinate ranks. The way in which a peasant lad, fresh inside his uniform, would be half afraid to move his eyelid, and yet move it as if he could have moved much more, was indescribably droll. He became more and more entertained by his discovery, which not even his wife shared now, for she had a mind like a sieve and completely forgot the whole matter.

One day he happened to take a short constitutional in the Victory Park.

This splendid park is a favourite resort of Pottibakians of all types, and it was his duty, as first citizen in the state, to walk there now and then.

“Look,” the people would say, “there is the President walking round the bandstand! He is holding a newspaper in his hand, just as if he were you or me! Marvellous!” But it was in a quieter part of the park that he suddenly encountered an incredibly good-looking mounted gendarme, and before he could stop himself had winked back. The man, who was very young, smiled

charmingly, and pretended to have trouble with his horse. This led to a short conversation. There was not time for much, since the Bessarabian Minister was expected, but it included some presidential patting of the horse’s neck, and a slight leaning forward on the part of its rider. “Mirko, Your Excellency, Mirko Bolnovitch. Yes.” Which was all very well, but where?

Not in the park, for God’s sake, and he could not risk more tension with his wife. It is the pride of the Republic to house its president in prehistoric discomfort, and No. 100, Browning Street does not even possess a tradesman’s entrance. The parlour is on the left of the door, the schoolroom on the right, and Mme Schpiltz or the young ladies see everyone who comes in. Not there, nor indeed anywhere. He withdrew hurriedly.

After his interview with the Bessarabian Minister he received a letter from Mme Rodoconduco. They had scarcely met since she boxed his ears, but it was tacitly understood that they were not to break. She wrote now on the deepest of black-edged paper, to make him part of the death of her brother, a realistic novelist to whom she was greatly attached. She must instantly repair to his estate, in case her nephews took a wrong view of the will. This, and the funeral, would detain her for at least a week, but as soon as she got back she much hoped to see her Bopp, and to apologize for her unfortunate warmth. On the whole not a bad letter. The woman wanted money—still, he had faced that long ago. She spoke of good taste and restraint—oh that she possessed them to the extent Mme Schpiltz did!—and she implied that though her mourning would be in good taste it could not be restrained. A ménage à trois: is it impossible when all three are rather exceptional? Finally she asked him a favour. All the servants at the Villa Lago had been dismissed owing to their treachery, and she wanted someone to keep an eye on the new set in her absence. Would he be so very good as to pay a surprise visit one afternoon—Friday, say?

He replied pleasantly, condoled, enclosed a cheque, said he would look in at the villa next Friday at 3.0 on the pretext of having a bathe, hoped too for

the possibilities of a ménage à trois. She replied to this from her family estate. His note had caught her just before starting, she said, she was deeply appreciative, also for the enclosure, though the loss of a brother could never be repaired, and if only Mme Schpiltz could feel it possible to receive her some time…. Then she spoke of the grief of the tenantry and the conduct of her nephews, correct hitherto, the arrangements in the little upland church, the hearse, the wreaths of Alpine flowers….

The Bessarabian affair still occupying him, he thought no more of Friday till his secretary reminded him. Then, punctually at 3.0, he drove up to the deserted villa. By chance his gendarme friend from the park was on guard.

He had hardly given him a thought from that moment to this, but now it was as if he had been thinking of him all the time. He wanted to greet him, but it was impossible with the new major-domo bowing and inquiring whether he had done right in Madame la Baronne’s absence to cover the sconces with brown holland. Turning away, he inspected the villa peevishly. He had never liked it less, and the Aphrodite bedroom was repellent. Was all this frou-frou and expense really necessary, as Sonia said it was, for love? She was always talking about love and sending in bills. He went out onto a balcony to get another glimpse of the mounted beauty, but the fellow looked in every direction but upwards, most exasperating, and the President dared not cough. Would Madame la Baronne desire the dining-room suite re-upholstered in banana beige? Yes, if he knew her, she would. Then he said he must re-examine the hydrangeas in the porch. The gendarme kept absolutely still, a model of Pottibakian manhood, not winking now, all glorious in plum-gray. How grandly he sat his horse! Cheerful chatter, meant to embrace him, brought no smile to the strong lips. Alarmed by the fluting quality in his own voice, Dr Schpiltz withdrew, sharper set than ever.

Now he would never know what happens when two men… and it might have been such a lesson with such a teacher…. Well, well, he must just have his bathe and go, perhaps all’s for the best.

Now the bathing-room at the Villa Lago is a veritable triumph of Lido art. Divans and gymnastic apparatus mingle inseparably. It is accessible from the house and also on the lake side, where great sliding doors give access to marble steps leading down to Mme Rodoconduco’s private beach.

The view is beyond all description—poets have hymned it: rhododendrons, azaleas, bougainvillaeas, the blue waters of the lake, and on the further side of it, just visible through the summer haze, the great rock of Praz, where the Pottibakians used to sacrifice their domestic animals before the introduction of Christianity. But the prospect gave the President no pleasure, not even when an aeroplane passed over it. Everything seemed worth just nothing at all. Holding up his swimming-suit he prepared to step into it, when there was the sound of crunched pebbles, and the gendarme rode round the corner of the little bay, dismounted, strode clanging up the steps, took a gauntlet off, and shook hands.

The President frowned—often a sign of joy in the middle-aged, and it was thus understood. “Your Excellency—at your service. Now…. My inspector has gone back to the city: he is a fool.” He pulled the sliding doors together and latched them. “Excuse me….” He hung up his spiked helmet next to Mme Rodoconduco’s hat. “Excuse me again….” He unbuckled his holster. Sitting down on a settee, which was so soft that it made him laugh, he took his gaiters and boots off. “Oh, I say, what a lovely room—better than the Victory Park.”

Dr Schpiltz could not speak. His mouth opened and shut like a bird’s.

“Have you thought of me since?”

“Ye… yes.”

“I don’t believe you. What is my name?”

The President could not remember.

“Mirko. Mirko Bolnovitch. Oh, I say!” He had noticed the parallel bars.

“That shall be my horse in here. Oh, I say!” He had seen the trapeze. Dr Schpiltz locked the door leading into the house. “I’ll do that, Your

Excellency, don’t you trouble.” And with a movement too rapid to follow he unlocked it. “Now I’m in your power.”

“I think I’m in yours,” said the President, admiring him more boldly.

“I’m only eighteen. Shall we see?”

“You come from beyond Praz, don’t you, Mirko?”

“Yes. How did you know? By my speech? Or by something else?” He continued to undress. The uniform lay neatly folded, official property. “My singlet.” He drew it over his head. “My shorts…”

“Well?”

“Well? Never content?” He stepped out of them smiling and sprang onto the trapeze. “Do you like me up here?”

“You are much too far off!”

“Oh, but come up here, Your Excellency, join me!”

“No, thank you, Mirko, not at my age!”

“See, it’s so easy, catch hold of whatever you like, only swinging.” The light filtered through high orange curtains onto loins and back. “It is cooler with no clothes on,” he said. It did not seem to be. “Now I have exercised all my muscles except…” He was sitting astride the parallel bars.

The President of the Republic approached his doom. Deftly, as he did so, was his pince-nez twitched off his nose. “Now you can’t see how ugly I am.”

“Mirko, you ugly…” He tottered into the trap and it closed on him.

“Aie, you’re in too much of a hurry,” laughed the young man. “Come up and do exercises with me first. Business before pleasure.”

“I’d rather not, I shall fall, my dear boy.”

“Oh no you won’t, dearest boyest.”

Contrary to his better judgement, Dr Schpiltz now ascended the parallel bars. He became more and more involved. Heaven knew what he had to pass through, how he was twisted about and pinched. He felt like a baby monkey, scratched and mismanaged on the top of a lofty tree. The science

of the barrackroom, the passions of the stables, the primitive instincts of the peasantry, the accident of the parallel bars and Dr Schpiltz’s quaint physique—all combined into something quite out of the way, and as it did so the door opened and Mme Rodoconduco came into the room, followed by the Bessarabian Minister.

“We have here…” she was saying.

Neither of them heard her.

“We have here… we have…”

The Bessarabian Minister withdrew. Mirko, alerted, relaxed a grip and they fell off the bars onto a mattress. Mme Rodoconduco was so thunderstruck that she could not even scream. She remained in a sort of frenzied equilibrium, and when she did speak it was in ordinary tones. She said, “Bopp, oh Bopp, Bopp!”

He heard that, and raised a lamentable goatee. “You Jezebel! Why aren’t you at the funeral?” he hissed.

“Whose funeral?” cried she in flame-coloured taffeta, Titian-cut.

“Your brother’s.”

“Alekko’s? He’s alive.”

“How dare you contradict me? He’s dead. Oh, oh…. You’ve written to me about his funeral twice.”

“I never did, Bopp, never.” Distracted, she picked up a bath-towel and threw it over the pair. They looked better as a heap.

“Disgraceful! Incredible! And I wrote back and sent you a cheque for the mourning.”

“I have received no cheque,” she cried. “Here’s something gravely amiss.”

“Yes, all you think of is cheques! What are you here for now?”

“Why, your telephone call,” she replied with tears in her eyes. “You rang me up this morning to be here at 3.30 in case the Bessarabian Minister called.”

“I never rang you up. More lies.”

“You did, dear, you did really, I answered the call myself, and the Minister said you had rung him up also.”

“The Minister? Good God! When is he coming?”

“He has come and has gone.”

“Not—oh Sonia, not—”

“Yes, and his wife was with him, to see the view, and this is the view they saw. My villa. My Villa Lago. Well, this is the end of my career, such as it is. I can never go back to the stage.”

“I am likely never to leave it,” said Dr Schpiltz slowly. “I shall go down to history as the president who—oh, what can even the historians say? I shall resign tomorrow, but that will be the beginning, not the end. Could I get over the frontier? Would an aeroplane…? How ever did you open the door?”

“It was unlocked.”

“Unlocked? I locked it myself!”

“I think we must both be bewitched,” she said, shading her eyes. She was behaving wonderfully well, she was one of those women who behave alternately well and badly. The President began to be convinced of her sincerity and to feel ashamed.

“I know that I have been. What ever has possessed me? When I look round”—and he thrust his head out of the towel—“when I think what I was an hour ago, I begin to wonder, Sonia, whether those old fairytales you used to recite may not be true, whether men cannot be changed into beasts….”

“Ah!” she interrupted, catching sight of the spiked helmet hanging beside her hat, “I’ve seen the whole thing! We’ve got Waghaghren here!”

“Well, hardly,” he demurred.

“It’s one of his traps.”

“Trap? But how should he set one?”

“Who knows how or why the Count does things? We only know he does them. Now are you absolutely sure you locked the door into the villa?”

“Absolutely, because this lad—because he—” He broke off and cried,

“Mirko! You’re not here under orders, are you?”

Mirko lay on the mattress half a-dreaming, drowsy with delight. He had carried out the instructions of his superior officer, gratified a nice old gentleman and had a lovely time himself. He could not understand why, when the President’s question was repeated, he should get a kick. He laughed and made the reply on which the whole history of Pottibakia turns.

If he had said “Yes, I am here under orders,” or if, acting under orders, he had said “No,” his country would still be part of the Comity of Nations. But he made the reply which is now engraved on his statue. He said: “What does it matter?”

“You will soon learn whether it matters,” said the President. “Sonia, please ring the bell.” Mme Rodoconduco stopped him: “No, do not ring. We suffer too much from distant communications. I must question him myself, I see.” She raised her eyes to the trapeze. “You! You down on the floor, you have admitted to His Excellency that you are an agent provocateur?”

Propping his chin on his fists, Mirko answered: “Gracious lady, I am. But His Excellency acts provokingly too. When I netted him in the park I thought to myself, ‘This will mean fun.’ And I am a peasant, and we peasants never think a little fun matters. You and His Excellency and the head of the police know better, but we peasants have a proverb: ‘Poking doesn’t count.’”

“And pray what does that mean?”

“Oh, never mind, Sonia, don’t question him. You belong to such different worlds.”

“You should know what poking means, lady, if half the tales about you are true. Anyhow, it is a religious story. It is about the Last Judgement.”

“We are freethinkers, religion means nothing to us,” said the President, but Mirko continued:

“At the Last Judgement the Pottibakians were in a terrible fright, because they had all done something which all three of us have done and hope to do again. There they were going up in a long line, the nobility like you going first, the people of my sort waiting far behind. We waited and waited and presently heard a loud cheering up at the Gate. So we sent a messenger to find out what had happened, and he came back shouting all down the line,

‘Hooray! Hooray! Poking doesn’t count.’ And why should it? Do you understand now?”

“I understand that you are the lowest of the low, or the Count would not employ you,” said she. “Will you be so good as to insert that remark of mine into your report?”

“No need, gracious lady, a microphone is already installed.”

“Where?” gasped the President.

“These new servants would know. That major-domo is a government electrician.”

“Then has all I said been heard?”

“Yes, and all the strange noises you made. Still, what does it matter? It was fun. Oh, some things matter, of course, the crops, and the vintage matters very much, and our glorious Army, Navy and Air Force, and fighting for our friends, and baiting the Jews, but isn’t that all? Why, in my village where everyone knows one another and the priest is worst…. Why, when my uncle needed a goat…”

But here the door opened again and Mme Schpiltz entered the room.

Dressed in alpaca and a home-made toque, she presented an equal contrast to her husband’s bath-towel, to Mme Rodoconduco’s Venetian splendours, and to the naked gendarme. As on her previous visit, she was greeted with torrents of talk and knew not how to reply. “Madame, madame,” wailed her hostess, “we are ruined,” and beneath her full-bosomed lamentations could

be heard the President’s plaintive pipe: “Oh Charlotte, I have been fatally indiscreet. Why did you come?”

“Because you telephoned to me.”

“I telephoned to you? Never!”

“But what has happened? You have only been bathing.”

“Madame, madame, do not ask him further, it is something too awful, something he could never explain, something which even I… and which you with your fine old-world outlook, your nobility, your strictness of standard…. Oh madame… and in my villa too, after all your previous goodness to me… my Villa Lago…. But you have influence in high financial circles, use it at once before it is too late, let us fly to a cottage à trois before the Count—what am I saying? The Count not only heard but he hears! Count Waghaghren!” She whirled her arms in every direction.

“Somewhere, a microphone!”

“But I like the wireless so much as long as I have something to do at the same time,” said Mme Schpiltz.

“Charlotte! We have reason to believe that a microphone has been secretly installed here, and that the Count can hear everything in his private cabinet.”

“But why shouldn’t he hear everything? I think that’s such a nice idea.

He is such a clever man, I knew his poor grandmother well. I remember him saying when he was quite a tiny tot, ‘Me want to hear evvyfing,’ and we saying ‘No, baby dear, baby can’t ever do that,’ but he knew and we didn’t, for thanks to this wonderful invention he can. How like him!”

“He has probably installed television too.”

“How like him again! He always used to say, ‘Me peepy-weep,’ and now he can. Really I do think science…. But can no one tell me what has happened?”

“I could,” said Mirko.

“Charlotte, don’t speak to that man! I forbid it!”

“Excuse me, Bopp, I shall speak to him; besides, judging by those clothes over on the divan, he seems to be a policeman, and so the proper person.

Well, my man?”

“Lady, do you in God’s name know what poking is?”

“But of course. There would be no babies without it. But naturally.”

“Thank heaven for that! Well, His Excellency wanted to poke me but did not know how, so I showed him.”

“And is that the whole story?”

“Yes.”

“Young man, you didn’t hurt my husband with rough jokes, I hope?”

“Only in ways he enjoyed.”

“And are you yourself satisfied?”

“Not yet. I want to show him again.”

“For that you will have to wait. Thank you.” She dismissed him and turned to the others. “Well, there we are at last. I thought that someone had been hurt, and it’s simply that two people—yes, one doesn’t talk about these things of course, but really—what do they matter?”

“Ah!” cried Mirko, “here is someone at last who says what I do. What does it matter?” And he shouted out the cry which was soon to rend the nation asunder, shouted it with such force and, as it happened, so close to the microphone that Count Waghaghren fell senseless.

“What does it matter? Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,”

said Mme Rodoconduco, examining her fingernails.

“It’s the only way,” pronounced the President. “It’s essential to a stable society. But no government has ever thought of it, and we’ve learned it too late.”

They were not too late, because the Count remained unconscious for the rest of the day. A master plotter, he left no one to carry on his plans, and by the time he came to himself the famous Manifesto had been drafted and

affixed to the principal public buildings in the capital. Its wording was as follows:

Fellow Citizens! Since all of you are interested in the private lives of the great, we desire to inform you that we have all three of us had carnal intercourse with the President of the Republic, and are hoping to repeat it.

Charlotte Schpiltz (housewife)

Sonia Rodoconduco (artiste)

Mirko Bolnovitch (gendarme)

There was some discussion as to the wording of the Manifesto. Mme Rodoconduco wanted some reference to the overmastering and ennobling power of love, Mirko something more popular. Both were overruled. The Manifesto appeared in the evening papers, and led to questions both in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The Ministry could not answer the questions and resigned. The President then drove down in state and addressed both houses. He began by paying a glowing tribute to Count Waghaghren, whose organization had now reached such a pitch that not only the private actions of each citizen but even his or her thoughts would soon be recorded automatically. “I intend therefore,” he went on, “to form a Ministry of all the Morals, which can alone survive such scrutiny, and as soon as it is in office its first duty will be to depose me. Once deposed, I shall be liable to arrest and to prosecution under our Criminal Code, the most admirable, as we often agreed, in Eastern Europe. Or it may be that I shall not be prosecuted at all, but dealt with summarily, like one of the signatories to the Manifesto, who has been sent for six years to the mines, on the charge of deserting his horse. The other two signatories are at large for the moment, but should not long remain so.”

The scenes at the conclusion of his speech were indescribable, particularly in the Senate, where old men got up and poured out their confessions for hours, and could not be stopped. The Chamber of Deputies kept a stiffer upper lip, and there were cries of “Flogging’s too good!” and faint counter-cries of “Flog me!” No one dared to take office, owing to the

President’s unmeasured eulogy of the police, and he continued to govern as dictator until the outbreak of the civil war.

He is now dictator again, but since all the states, led by Bessarabia, have broken off diplomatic relations it is extremely difficult to get Pottibakian news. Visas are refused, and the international express traverses the territory behind frosted glass. Now and then a postcard of the Bolnovitch Monument falls out of an aeroplane, but unlike most patriotic people the Pottibakians appear to be self-contained. They till the earth and have become artistic, and are said to have developed a fine literature which deals very little with sex. This is puzzling, as is the indissolubility of marriage—a measure for which the Church has vainly striven elsewhere. Gratified by her triumph, she is now heart and soul with the nation, and the Archimandrite of Praz has reinterpreted certain passages of scripture, or has pronounced them corrupt.

Much here is obscure, links in the argument have been denied to us, nor, since we cannot have access to the novels of Alekko, can we trace the steps by which natural impulses were converted into national assets. There seem, however, to have been three stages: first the Pottibakians were ashamed of doing what they liked, then they were aggressive over it, and now they do as they like. There I must leave them. We shall hear little of them in the future, for the surrounding powers dare not make war. They hold—and perhaps rightly—that the country has become so infectious that if it were annexed it would merely get larger.

And what of the Count? Some rumours have come through. He fought in the civil war, was taken prisoner, and his punishment had to be decided.

Mirko wanted him sent to the mines, Sonia flogged, the President banished, but Mme Schpiltz was the cruellest of all. “Poor man, I can’t see what he has done,” she said. “Do let him keep on doing it.” Her advice was taken, and the Count was reinstated in his former office, which has been renamed the Lunatic Asylum, and of which he is the sole inmate. Here he sits all alone amid the latest apparatus, hearing, seeing, tasting and smelling

through his fellow citizens, and indexing the results. On public holidays his private cabinet (now his cell) is thrown open, and is visited by an endless queue of smiling Pottibakians, who try to imagine the old days when that sort of thing mattered, and emerge laughing.

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