an autocrat while giving Mr. Prohack to understand that Mr. Prohack knew
not the first elements of sartorial elegance. At intervals he gazed
abstractedly at the gold framed and crowned portraits that hung on the
walls and at the inscriptions similarly framed and crowned and hung, and
it was home in upon Mr. Prohack that the inscriptions in actual practice
referred to Mr. Melchizidek, and that this same Melchizidek, fawning
and masterful, had seen monarchs in their shirt sleeves and spoken to
princes with pins in his mouth, and made marks in white chalk between
the shoulder-blades of grand-dukes; and that revolutions and cataclysms
were nothing to Mr. Melchizidek.

When Mr. Melchizidek had decided by hypnotic suggestion and magic power
what Mr. Prohack desired in the way of stuffs and patterns, he led Mr.
Prohack mysteriously to a small chamber, and a scribe followed them
carrying pencil and paper, and Mr. Prohack removed, with assistance, his
shabby coat and his waistcoat, and Mr. Melchizidek measured him in
unexampled detail and precision, and the scribe, writing, intoned aloud
all Mr. Prohack's dimensions. And all the time Mr. Prohack was asking in
his heart: "How much will these clothes cost?" And he, once the Terror
of the departments, who would have held up the war to satisfy his
official inquisitiveness on a question of price,--he dared not ask how
much the clothes would cost. He felt that in that unique establishment
money was simply not mentioned,--it could never be more than the subject
of formal and stately correspondence.

During the latter part of the operation Mr. Prohack heard, outside in
the shop, the sharp sounds of an imperial and decisive voice, and he was
thereby well-nigh thunderstruck. And even Mr. Melchizidek seemed to be
similarly affected by the voice,--so much so that the intimate of
sovereigns unaffectedly hastened the business of enduing Mr. Prohack