Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/272

Coin, Postage-stamp, and Arms of the Prince of Liechtenstein

to have to pay toll to one or another, or to many, of the castle barons, predecessors of the customs-gatherers of to-day, and one is moved to admiration for the business sense of those hard-headed men, who went about their affairs in pot-hats of steel, and jackets and trousers of iron, and with swords in their hands instead of umbrellas. For they refrained from taking, as a rule, more than should serve as a stimulating reminder, and so managed the affair as to seem to be giving protection, for a small proportional fee, instead of taking too much and thus putting an end to traffic and to the appearance of the golden eggs. It need not be minced that living upon their neighbors was the general law of life in those olden times.

Shrines are placed at frequent intervals throughout the villages and along the roads; and on a cliff not far from Vaduz castle is a black and weather-beaten cross, bearing a simple little inscription, begging the passer-by to pause for a moment to offer a prayer for a "jungling"—a young man—who long since fell there and was killed. Well, thus his name is kept in lengthening remembrance, and with him has been satisfied that desire, felt by everybody, to be kept in mind, long and honorably, after death; for he fell suddenly into a degree of remembrance toward which most men climb in vain.

Although Vaduz is one of the capitals of Europe, there is little of life on the streets after the coming of nightfall. Here and there a dog barks. Here and there a man goes hurryingly homeward. Here and there shine lights from cottage windows. The street lights of electricity seem only a whimsical jest.

It is Lilliput ruled by its Gulliver. And although, on account of the fiscal arrangement, Austrian coins and stamps are generally used, the Prince's personal pride in his possession has led him to have his own stamps and coins as well, bearing his name and face and title.

And there is another touch to add to the unreality of it all. Coming to Vaduz only at infrequent intervals, and busied as he is at his private estates or at Vienna—for, besides being Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein, he bears an Austrian title by virtue of which he is a member of the Austrian House of Lords,—he can at any time call up his principality by long-distance telephone! Never was such a principality, even in the most capricious imagination.

And that one-time army! Following the war with Prussia, the unscarred veterans were not permitted to bear their arms and uniforms home, to be handed down in glory to their descendants. The trappings and equipment were taken up by the government, and are in a lofty room of the Vaduz castle, adjoining the Roman tower—mementos of the slightest military power in juxtaposition to a ruin of the greatest. There hangs the banner of Liechtenstein, in its colors of red and blue. There, stiffly arranged in rows, are the eighty helmets of leather, brass-embossed. There are the eighty muskets. There are the sword of the captain and the trumpeter's brass horn.