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Updated: May 9, 2025
I found assembled round her tea-table a merry party, including Donna Antonia, unmindful of her father's agonies, and one Johnny Carr, who deserves mention as being the only honest man in Aureataland. I speak, of course, of the place as I found it. He was a young Englishman, what they call a "cadet," of a good family, shipped off with a couple of thousand pounds to make his fortune.
Then, remembering that the debt was, as it seemed, for some reason a common interest to the signorina and myself, I apologized to it, and fell asleep. The flight of time brought no alleviation to the troubles of Aureataland. If an individual hard up is a pathetic sight, a nation hard up is an alarming spectacle; and Aureataland was very hard up. I suppose somebody had some money.
The major had proposed the army, and they had drunk deep to their noble selves. A young man of weak expression and quavering legs had proposed "The commerce of Aureataland," coupled with the name of Mr. John Martin, in laudatory but incoherent terms, and I was on my legs replying. Oh, that speech of mine! For discursiveness, for repetition, for sheer inanity, I suppose it has never been equaled.
It is true that the state was still in its infancy, being an offshoot from another and larger realm, and having obtained the boon of freedom and self-government only as recently as 1871, after a series of political convulsions of a violent character, which may be studied with advantage in the well-known history of "The Making of Aureataland," by a learned professor of the Jeremiah P. Jecks University in the United States of America.
Without a word the colonel sprang on his horse; I imitated him, and we galloped as hard as we could, everyone making way before our furious charge. Alas! we were too late. As we drew rein on the quay we saw, half a mile out to sea and sailing before a stiff breeze, Johnny Carr's little yacht, with the Aureataland flag floating defiantly at her masthead.
You have $300,000; those you will hand over to me, receiving in return Government six per cent. bonds for that amount, I will then hand back to you $65,000; 45,000 you will retain as security for your interest. In the event of any failure on the part of Aureataland to meet her obligations honorably, you will pay the interest on the whole 300,000 out of that sum.
At "Mon Repos" I soon became an habitual, and, I was fain to think, a welcome, guest. Mrs. Carrington, who entertained a deep distrust of the manners and excesses of Aureataland, was good enough to consider me eminently respectable, while the signorina was graciousness itself.
I further bound him to my fortunes by obtaining for him a rise of salary from the directors, "in consequence of the favorable report of his conduct received from Mr. Martin." Peaceful as matters seemed, I was not altogether at ease. To begin with the new loan did not apparently at all improve the financial position of Aureataland.
After a moment's pause the colonel began: "The last thing we should desire, gentlemen," he said, "is to resort to force. But the time for explanation is short. The people of Aureataland have at last risen against the tyranny they have so long endured. General Whittingham has proved a traitor to the cause of freedom; he won his position in the name of liberty; he has used it to destroy liberty.
I did not, of course, return to England on leaving Aureataland. I had no desire to explain in person to the directors all the facts with which they will now be in a position to acquaint themselves.
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