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Solution Manual for Systems Engineering and Analysis, 5/E 5th Edition Benjamin S.

Blanchard,

Solution Manual for Systems Engineering and


Analysis, 5/E 5th Edition Benjamin S. Blanchard,
Wolter J. Fabrycky
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For senior-level undergraduate and first and second year graduate
systems engineering and related courses. Systems Engineering and
Analysis, 5/e, provides a total life-cycle approach to systems and their
analysis.

This practical introduction to systems engineering and analysis provides


the concepts, methodologies, models, and tools needed to understand
and implement a total life-cycle approach to systems and their analysis.
The authors focus first on the process of bringing systems into
being―beginning with the identification of a need and extending that
need through requirements determination, functional analysis and
allocation, design synthesis, evaluation, and validation, operation and
support, phase-out, and disposal. Next, the authors discuss the
improvement of systems currently in being, showing that by employing
the iterative process of analysis, evaluation, feedback, and modification,
most systems in existence can be improved in their affordability,
effectiveness, and stakeholder satisfaction.

Systems Engineering and Analysis


Fifth Edition
Benjamin S. Blanchard
Wolter J. Fabrycky

This book is about systems. It concentrates on the engineering of


human-made systems and on systems analysis. In the first case,
emphasis is ont he process of bringing systems into being, beginning
with the identification of a need and extending through requirements
determination, functional analysis and allocation, design synthesis and
evaluation, validation, operation and support, and disposal. In the second
case, focus is on the improvement of systems already in being. By
employing the iterative process of analysis, evaluation, modification,
and feedback most systems now in existence can be improved in their
effectiveness, product quality, affordability, and stakeholder satisfaction.

Systems engineering may be defined and/or described as a


technologically based interdisciplinary process for bringing systems,
products, and structures (technical entities) into being. While the main
focus is nominally on the entities themselves, systems engineering offers
organizations a better strategy. Systems engineering is inherently
oriented to considering "the end before the beginning" and concentrates
on what the entities do before determining what the entities are.

Instead of offering systems or system elements and products per se,


systems engineering focuses on designing, delivering, and sustaining
functionality, a capability, or a solution. This strategic thinking is now
being considered by forward-looking organizations in both the private
and public sectors. It is applicable to most types of technical systems
encompassing the domains of communication, defense, education,
healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and others. The advancement
and promulgation of this emerging strategy through education is the
primary aim of this textbook.
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pointed out as the Archbishop’s Palace, an episcopal habitation, reared on
the foundations of what had been a Roman camp.
“Sprung, your Excellencies, or our most learned Professors lie,”
explained the voluble landlord, “from the ruins of a temple where the Old
Slavonians used to sacrifice white cocks and new mead to Svantovid, their
god of War. God or no god, the gentleman had a sufficiently queer name, as
your Excellencies will agree; and as to white cocks, the broth of one is—
according to the old nurse-women of our principality—a certain remedy for
tetters. Heathen they were that drank sickly mead in preference to sound
wine!—but thanks be to Heaven and St. Procopius, who converted them,
we that are come down from those old sinners know better to-day; and the
vineyards of the Wid yield a liquor that has no equal in Bavaria.”
And the landlord proudly pointed to a third hill that cropped up
westwards; at the foot of which eminence a jade-green trout-river, spanned
by three bridges of white marble, rushed foaming between rocky banks that
were covered with vines, laden now with the glowing purple clusters from
which an excellent red wine was made by the vine-growers of the
principality.
Flasks of this sterling vintage figured upon the guest-table of the Inn of
“The Three Crowns,” when the newly-arrived travelers sat down to dine,
the occupants of the green chariot being served in their private apartment:
the Marshal’s agents, for humility or for the sake of freer elbow-play than is
licensed by strict good manners, preferring to eat at the common ordinary,
spread in the coffee-room, together with Madame’s maid and the Colonel’s
man.
Here, down both sides of a long table, were ranged perhaps a score of
decent citizens of the sterner sex, indicating the nature of their several
professions, trades, and occupations, in the fashion of their attire, as was the
custom then; and engaged in discussing what, for the ninety-nine per cent.
of Catholics among the company, was the single meal of the fasting-day.
Judge, then, how frigidly received by the faithful were Steyregg’s
Gargantuan praises of the fish, flesh, fowl, and pastry which were set before
himself and his partner, and of which both ate copiously, washing down
their meal with plentiful libations of the juice of the local vine.
The pickled sturgeon with mushrooms and cucumbers, to which
Madame’s tirewoman discreetly restricted herself, proved a mere whet to
the gross Baron’s huge appetite. Half a ham and the greater moiety of a
pasty of eggs and capons, hurled to the ravening wolf concealed behind his
dingy shirt-bosom, left him with a niche quite available for tartlets, and a
chink remaining for cream-cheese.
He said at length, piling a block of this delicacy on a rusk, bolting the
mouthful, and sending a generous draught of the strong red wine hissing on
the heels of it:
“Now, having fed, I may say my Nunc Dimittis. After such a meal”—he
produced and proceeded to use a battered silver toothpick—“I feel myself
the equal of Prince, Regent, or Archbishop, I care not which!”
A clean-shaven, fresh-faced, gray-haired citizen, clad in a long-tailed
coat and buckled knee-breeches of speckless gray-blue broadcloth, with a
starched and snowy shirt-frill jutting from his bosom and rasping his triple
chin, looked up from his dish of fricasseed eggs at this boast of von
Steyregg’s and said, a trifle sourly:
“The late Prince, sir, being with the departed, presumably has done with
eating and drinking, although our Regent, being of the Lutheran persuasion,
is at liberty to feed as freely upon the Vigil of the Assumption, as upon all
other prescribed fasting-days.... But of his Lordship, the Archbishop, I dare
to say that like any other respectable religious, he is, with his clergy, in
strict retreat at this moment; and if anything beyond pulse—or dry bread
and water—have passed his lips to-day, I will undertake to eat this book of
mine!”
He indicated, amidst some tokens of amusement manifested by other
abstainers at the table, a Missal that was propped up against the cruet at his
side; then wiped his lips, threw off a glass of water, whisked the napkin-end
from the bosom of his spotless waistcoat, and beckoned the waiter, asking
what was to pay? The man named fifty pfennigs, the client threw down a
mark and asked for change. But before the base metal could be transferred
from apron-pouch to pocket, von Steyregg, completely deserted by his
guardian Angel, tipped the wink to Köhler—who was diligently cramming
plum-pie with whipped cream—and rose up, stretching out an immense
protesting, mottled hand. His tear hung in his eye, his strawberry nose and
flabby mouth quivered with emotion:
“Take up that coin, sir, I beg of you! Nothing is to pay, for you, or any
other citizen of Widinitz who occupies a chair at this board together with
my companion and myself on this auspicious day. You have told me that
your Prince is no more; I say to you that, being dead, he cries from the tomb
—‘Resurgam!’ For in an heir of his blood and name he shall live again; the
youthful phœnix but waits the signal to emerge full-fledged from the
parental pyre of flaming spices.... What? Do you doubt! O! man of tepid
faith, I will prove it you! His Serene Highness is, at this moment, with Her
Excellency, deigning to partake of refreshment in the private room
overhead!”
“Wie? Was?” ejaculated the tradesman, staring at von Steyregg with
bulging eyes, as the big fist banged the table, and the cutlery and glasses
danced about, while the fifty pfennigs change leaped from the plate held by
the startled servitor, and ran into a corner and hid as cleverly as little coins
can. “Ach so!” the astonished man added, bringing down his eyebrows with
some difficulty. “What you tell us is very surprising, if it be true!”
“And all tales are not true!” put in the oracular barber, who had been
polishing off a plate of pickled sturgeon; while von Steyregg held forth.
“Decidedly,” added a bookbinder, who was lingering over a bowl of
cabbage-soup and black bread, “one is wise not to believe everything one
hears.”
“My friends, I state the fact, upon the honor of a Magyar nobleman!” von
Steyregg asseverated. He appealed to Köhler, who replied: “Undoubtedly,”
and went on munching, looking sharply this way and that out of his round
brown twinkling rat’s eyes. “You hear the eloquent testimony of my
associate,” the self-styled Baron went on. “You see these highly-respectable
persons,” he pointed with a flourish to the abashed valet and the blushing
maid, “who in their varying capacities have the honor to serve His Serene
Highness the Prince-Aspirant of Widinitz,—traveling incognito under the
style and cognomen of Colonel von Widinitz-Dunoisse,—and the noble and
lovely lady”—a cough momentarily checked the flood of the Steyreggian
eloquence, and then it rolled turbidly on again—“whom I mentioned just
now. They are here, as I have said, partaking, after the fatigues of their
journey, of marinaded trout, ragout of veal, salmi of grouse, and
quelquechoses. Your privileged eyes will behold them presently, when they
descend to distinguish your boulevards and promenades by taking the air
upon them.... To-morrow, when the Procession of the Feast takes place—in
preparation for which anniversary your streets are even now being strewn
with pine-branches and oak-leaves, your public and private buildings
adorned with banners and hung with lamps—your maidens are twining
garlands, your infants of both sexes learning hymns—to-morrow all
Widinitz will behold its hereditary Sovereign participating in the solemnity;
and draw, I trust, parallel between Gothic intolerance—I name no names!—
and noble, princely piety! Excuse me, my good sirs,” the Baron added, and
ostentatiously wiped his lachrymose eye, “I am not easily moved to
emotion, but the inward chords cannot but respond to the conception of a
spectacle so poignant and so memorable. You must pardon me this single
tear!”
A murmur of ambiguous meaning traveled round the table. The plump
tradesman whom von Steyregg had first addressed pushed back his chair
and rose, picked up his Missal, tucked it under his arm, took his soft felt hat
and thick, tasseled walking-cane from the waiter’s hands; and then said,
turning to the Magyar nobleman:
“Würdig Herr, you have paid for my dinner, and I am bound to be civil to
you. But this is a Catholic State all said and done; the Lutherans are the
peppercorns sprinkled through the salad, and if any other man than you had
told me that this gentleman could take part in Our Lady’s Procession,
having filled his belly full of fish, flesh, and fowl upon the Eve of the Feast,
I should have called him a liar! knowing that no person is permitted to take
part in the solemnity who is not in a state of grace. By that is understood
fasting, or at least abstinence, upon the Vigil, with confession, absolution,
penance duly discharged, and Communion crowning all; added, a proper
spirit of devotion to the most chaste Mother of God, Who, let me tell you! is
honored in this State. I might add that the recommendation of a priest is
usually required, and here in Widinitz the sanction of his Lordship the
Archbishop. But perhaps your principal has a dispensation which releases
him from these trifling obligations?”
Teeth showed, or bits of German boxwood strung on silver wires; or
gums that lacked even these substitutes, in the faces that were set about the
table. The Pagan Steyregg, flustered by wine and confused by theological
terminology, rushed upon his fate. Of course, he declared, his principal had
a dispensation and Madame also.... Every member of the party was
furnished with the requisite in case of need.... It was not customary for
persons moving in exalted social spheres to travel without, he begged leave
to inform the company. Whose entertainment was to be charged, he
emphatically insisted, upon His Serene Highness’s bill.
The table was vacated, the room emptied without any special
demonstration of gratitude on the part of those who had participated in His
Highness’s bounty. The guests dispersed, to tell their wives or
housekeepers, or to forget to do so, not one remaining save the portly
citizen with the finely-starched shirt-frill. He said, once safely outside the
coffee-room door, pausing to offer his snuff-box to the landlord, whom he
encountered on his way from the cellar, bearing a flask of Benedictine and a
bottle of special Kirschwasser:
“You have queer guests upstairs, or I have been listening to a lunatic
within there!”
The speaker, dusting the pungent brown powder from a first finger and
thumb, pointed the indicatory digit in the direction of the coffee-room. The
landlord said, holding the Kirsch between his eye and the light:
“Heretics, who come to witness our procession of The Assumption as
they might visit a theater-play. Well! one can only pray for their conversion,
and charge their impiety among the extras on the bill.”
His expression portended a total of appalling magnitude. He added:
“They give the surnames of von Widinitz-Dunoisse. He does, that is!
And we have learned enough since His late Serene Highness was gathered
to his fathers to know what rascally impudence tacks the two together.”
The citizen said, putting away his snuff-box, and flicking some of the
brown grains from his shirt-frill:
“His secretary, steward, pimp, or parasite—whatever the bigger of the
two rogues in there”—he signed with his chin towards the coffee-room
—“may be to your man upstairs, styles him the Prince-Aspirant, Serene
Highness, and what-not. One would say, to hear the braggart, that this son
of Napoleon’s old marauder had the King of Bavaria, the Federative
Council, and the General Assembly at his back!” He added: “As for the
lady who accompanies him, she is styled Excellency. One can only hope
she is his wife?”
“Meinherr, not so. Upon this point I may pronounce authoritatively.” The
landlord of “The Three Crowns” looked extremely wise. “Married Her
Excellency may be; that is extremely probable!... But it is not to the fellow
who will pay for this!”
“Ach, ach!” ejaculated the sleek citizen, shaking his scandalized head,
“this is truly deplorable!” He added, knowing an instant’s doubt of the
intuition of the innkeeper: “But how are you sure? May you not mistake?”
“Because,” said the host, whose chatter and round vacant face had
beguiled Henriette into believing him a simple child of Nature, “because the
Herr Colonel (who for all his fine figure and good looks is a mere
Duselfritz), because the Colonel—when Madame holds up her little finger
—obeys without questioning—that is why I am sure! The legal partner of a
man’s bosom may nag or cajole him; she does not issue orders or
commands. It is the mistress, not the wife, who gives herself such masterful
airs. Again, my Frau tells me that Madame’s nightcaps are of real
Valenciennes, with little moss-rosebuds set inside the frills; and, says my
dear one—no respectable married woman would, for a mere husband, thus
bedeck——”
“Prut—prut! it would be well, my good friend,” interrupted the
respectable tradesman hastily, “to remember that this is a peculiarly solemn
season, and——”
But the host went pounding on:
“Moreover, all the gold plate of Madame’s dressing-case is engraved ‘H.
de R——.’ But to my mind the thing that convinces most is that the Herr
Colonel (who is a Quatschkopf as well as a Duselfritz) should let her order
up this from the cellar just to taste!”—the speaker lovingly blew a cobweb
from the fat neck of the Kirsch bottle—“though Kirsch of fifty years old is
four thalers the bottle, and he has said to her how he hates the stuff! Would
any husband, even of a week or so, tolerate such prodigality in a wife?”
“Nu, nu!” said the portly citizen, completely convinced. “What should be
done,” he cried in great agitation, “to rid the town of such a scandal? Think!
My wits are upside down!”
He wrung his hands. The innkeeper, that simple child of Nature, rubbed
his nose with the knuckle of his thumb, and said:
“What if you, Meinherr, who supply the Palace with groceries and are so
highly respected, should drop a hint to his Lordship in writing? Retreat or
no retreat, I’ll bet you a flask of my best the Archbishop takes measures,
and promptly, too! Here, as it chances, is my cook’s errand-boy with his
basket. Look you, I will put a new-caught trout from the Wid inside it, and
your bit of paper under that. The Father Economus will be sure to spy it; the
rest we may confidently leave to Heaven!”

Meanwhile the Marshal’s agents, having fed largely and drunk to


correspond, rang the bell, summoned the innkeeper, and issued orders. Then
von Steyregg mounted to the private room, scratched the door after the
manner of the confidential attendants of royal personages, and appeared,
contorted with bows, before the Colonel and Madame, hoping that the
entertainment set before them had not been utterly unworthy of personages
so exalted! “It is not, Your Serene Highness, as though you were at your
own Schloss over yonder,” he said, spreading his thick hands and shrugging
his big shoulders. “Ere long let us hope that Destiny and Your Serene
Highness’s lucky star will restore you to your own! Meanwhile, I have
ordered a barouche, with four outriders, being the best equipage the
establishment can furnish. It is but fitting that Your Highness should utilize
the earliest opportunity following your arrival to make a Royal Progress—I
would say, a little tour of inspection—embracing the chief objects of
interest in the town.”
Dunoisse, inwardly sickened by this prospect, made objections, but
Henriette overruled them all. That idea of a Royal Progress was pleasantly
titillating. The Eve in her snatched at the apple tendered by the serpent von
Steyregg. The barouche came lumbering to the front door before the dispute
ended in Madame’s favor; she glided away to “make herself beautiful,”
leaving a mollifying glance and smile behind with her vanquished
opponent. So, petulantly fuming, Dunoisse made ready to accompany her,
mentally thanking Heaven that the Staff uniform of ceremony (in which the
Baron suggested his victim should array himself) had been left behind in
the Rue de Bac.
If the four stout, long-maned, and amply-tailed nags attached to the
barouche had not proved pink-eyed and cream-colored; if the vehicle itself
had not been so conspicuously yellow; if the blue-and-scarlet livery of the
coachman and the brace of badly-matching footmen, who hung to the back-
straps and occupied the board behind, had been less tawdry and belaced
with grease; if the red-nosed elderly outriders had not been so obviously
bemused with potent liquor, and their beasts less spavined, broken-kneed
and cracked in wind, that so-called progress through the capital of his
ancestors’ hereditary principality might have proved less intolerable to the
unlucky scion of their race. But with Köhler and von Steyregg on the front
seat, both bare-headed and bare-toothed, oozing with respect and deference,
the Baron’s bosom heaving with loyal enthusiasm beneath the metal starfish
previously described; some luckless subject of mediæval justice newly
flayed, and paraded upon the hangman’s cart for the popular obloquy, might
have felt as raw and smarting as did Dunoisse.
A straggling cortège of beggars, spectacle-hunters, servant-maids in their
high crimped caps and silver breast-chains, loafers and idlers of both sexes
accompanied the yellow barouche. Vocal dogs and an Italian organ-grinder
with a pair of monkeys brought up the rear of this motley following. Every
now and then von Steyregg would plunge his hand into a stout linen bag,
which he nursed upon his knees, and scatter small change among these
gentry. You may imagine this largesse received with yells, cheers, and
scrambling. Black eyes and gory noses were distributed at each fresh
shower.
The Town Hall and the Museum, occupying an entire side of the Market
Place, the Church of the Pied Friars, and the Tower of the Clock with its
life-sized brazen woman spinning at the top of the weathercock, occupied
but passing notice from the distinguished visitors. The yellow barouche,
with its huzzaing tail of ragamuffins, breasted the State Street, while the
holiday strollers that thronged the sidewalks stood still to stare, and heads
were projected from upper windows. And reaching the Cathedral Square
that crowned the hilltop, the noble party alighted at the west porch of the
stately building and passed in.
Not for years had Dunoisse set foot across the threshold of the House of
God; the cult of devotion and worship, the high belief in glorious things
unseen, the fulfillment of the obligations of the Catholic faith, had long
ceased to be indispensable or even necessary to the man; he looked back
upon the piety and fervor of his boyhood with a wonder that was largely
mingled with contempt. Now, as he mechanically dipped two fingers in the
miniature font that was supported by a sculptured shield bearing the casque
with the panache, surmounted by the sable heron of Widinitz, made the
Sign of the Cross, and bent the knee before the solemn splendors of the
High Altar—gleaming upon the vision from the distant end of the huge
echoing nave—he glanced at Henriette in wonder at the contained and
modest reverence of her demeanor; and, seeing her sink down gracefully
amidst her whispering flounces and bow her lovely head as though in
adoration, felt the muscles of his lips twitch with the ironical desire to
smile.
“Wonderful!” he thought, more nearly approaching to a critical analysis
of her than he had ever permitted himself. “Whether she believes or not, she
never dispenses with the outward observance of religion! She is an enigma,
a problem to baffle Œdipus! One would say she and not the son of my
mother had Carmel in the blood!”
For how strangely amorous license and devotional fervor commingled in
the nature of this woman, who should know better than this man....
How often, waking in the perfumed, darkened chamber from the deep,
dreamless slumber that falls on the indulged and satiate senses, had not
Dunoisse found himself alone, and realized, with a creeping chill of awe
mingled with repugnance, that she was kneeling, a white-robed figure
veiled in shadowy hair, before the ivory Crucifix that hung above the prie-
dieu, praying....
Ah! with what abandonment of sighs and sobs, and tears!... Ere she
would rise, traverse the velvet carpet silently as some pale moonray, and
glide, mysteriously smiling, into her lover’s arms.
“Why should I not pray?” she had said to him once. “After all, Christ
died for sinners, and I am a sinner.... And even devils believe, they say. It is
only men who deny!”
Dunoisse had long joined the ranks of the deniers. He had determined
that for him yonder shining, jeweled tabernacle should thenceforth house no
Unspeakable Mystery, shelter no Heavenly Guest. Nothing beyond an
amiable superstition, an innocent, exquisite myth, embodying a profound
religious truth for two hundred and sixty millions of Christians; modified or
rejected by the Lutheran, Reformed, and Presbyterian Churches; ignored by
Confucianist, Taoist, and Buddhist, abhorred by the Hindu, the
Mohammedan, and the Jew, should henceforth be enshrined there. He had
come to the conclusion that it was better so.
The light of faith had been quenched in the man’s heart by his own
deliberate act of will. He had said to his soul, unwitting that he had thus
spoken:
“If I believed, could I continue to live as I am doing, storing up sharp
retribution, dreadful expiation, inconceivable anguish for the world to
come? Not so! Therefore I will forget such words as Death and Judgment.
For these poignant, embittered, passing joys, I am content to barter the hope
of eternal bliss.”
And yet, upon those rare occasions when, as now, Dunoisse found
himself in the House of his Maker, the still air, fragrant with the incense of
the most recent Sacrifice, oppressed him, and the very silence seemed
eloquent as a voice of Divine reproach....
For you may slough your skin of State-patronized, easy-going
Protestantism as easily as you can change your political convictions, and
presently, with Modern Buddhism, or Spiritualism, or Platonism, Christian
Science, Agnosticism, Mormonism, or Hedonism, be covered and clad
anew, but Catholicism penetrates the bones, and permeates the very
marrow. You cannot pluck that forth; it is rooted in the fibers of the soul.

Dunoisse followed his Fate up the great echoing nave of the Cathedral,
ushered by the gyrating von Steyregg. Penitents of both sexes, waiting their
turn in lengthy rows outside the occupied confessionals, glanced up from
their beads, as, in a whisper that rattled amidst the carved rafters of the lofty
roof, the agent announced:
“Here lie Your Serene Highness’s illustrious forefathers!” And
ostentatiously dried his sympathetic tear with a vast flapping handkerchief
of Isabella hue.
Certainly the sacred fane was populous with departed von Widinitz, from
Albertus I., First of the Line, and his spouse, the chaste Philippina; to
Ludovicus, the latest departed, whose Bathildis had predeceased him by a
generation or two.
You saw them represented from life-size to the quarter-bust, in brass,
bronze, lead, marble, porphyry, granite, alabaster—every conceivable
medium known to sepulchral Art. And to Dunoisse’s peculiar torment,
those tricksy sprites, von Steyregg and Köhler, united in discovering
between the cast or sculptured countenances of these worthies and the
moody visage of their harassed descendant resemblances of the striking
kind. To hear the knaves appeal to one another—warrant, justify, and
approve the claim of a thirteenth-century nose to its modern reproduction—
to witness them scouring aisles or rummaging chapels in full cry after a
chin, or mouth, or ear, or forehead; to see them run the elusive feature from
metal or stone to living earth; and congratulate one another on the fortunate
issue of the chase; would have provoked a smile on the countenance of a
Trappist. Their sacrifice laughed even whilst he writhed.
The ceremony of leaving cards upon the Archbishop of Widinitz
followed. A trap-mouthed, blue-shaven ecclesiastic of the humbler sort,
who wore a bunch of keys at the girdle of his well-darned cassock, opened
the oaken, iron-studded door, and took the proffered oblongs of pasteboard
without enthusiasm, intimating that His Lordship did not receive strangers
upon days of solemn retreat. With this janitor von Steyregg parleyed vainly,
maintaining a brisk exchange of arguments at the top of the Palace
doorsteps, whilst his principals waited at the bottom in the yellow barouche.
A sportive Fate at this juncture breaks the thread of the narrative with a
Pantomime Interlude. For as, more in sorrow than in anger at the obstinacy
of the janitor, the Baron shook off his tear upon the inhospitable threshold,
and turned upon his heel—a little white-headed, berry-brown urchin—a
bare-legged messenger, arrayed in a tattered shirt and the upper half of a
pair of adult breeches, carrying a reed-basket in which reposed a fine, fat,
silvery trout, newly-caught and tempting,—dived between the legs that so
strikingly resembled balusters, and dodged into the Palace with a flourish of
dirty heels.
If a portly Magyar of noble rank, in the act of rolling down a steepish
flight of limestone steps, could possibly be regarded as a mirth-provoking
object, one might be tempted to smile as von Steyregg, recording each
revolution upon his person with grievous bumps and bruises, performed the
horizontal descent. Henriette screamed, Köhler beat his bosom, the tag-rag
and bobtail roared with glee, while Dunoisse, compelled to share in their
amusement despite the sickness at his heart, jumped out of the carriage and
picked up the groaning Baron, restored him his battered curly-brimmed hat,
the comb, hairbrush, and piece of soap which had escaped from his coat-
tails in the course of transit, thrust him into the vehicle, and bade the
coachman return to “The Three Crowns.”
LVIII
What the Father Economus said when he found the grocer’s billet under
the red-spotted trout we may not hear. How the Archbishop received the
warning must be equally a matter of conjecture. Hasten on to the smarting
conclusion of the Day of Disgrace that dawned so fairly, that shone so
brightly, that promised such a harvest to those who failed to mark how upon
the southwest horizon huge formless ramparts of blue black cumuli were
steadily building, while faint mutterings of distant thunder presaged the
breaking of the storm....
The four adventurers had supped together upon the best the inn could
furnish. Now, seated at ease about the relics of the banquet, in the dining-
room of the private suite occupied by His Serene Highness and Her
Excellency, they discussed the Plan of Campaign. Fragrant vapors of
choicest Habanas enhaloed them, by permission of Her Excellency, who
held between her exquisite lips a Turkish cigarette. And as they smoked and
talked, the contents of a capacious China Bowl of Maraschino Punch
(compounded by Köhler, who was a clever hand at such delicious
chemistry) sank lower, inch by inch....
You may picture Steyregg, revived by much food and a great deal of
liquor; his cuts and scratches plastered with diachylum, the Alpine summit
of his bald occiput adorned by a compassionate chambermaid with patches
of brown-paper steeped in vinegar, retained in place by a linen bandage of
turban-shape, reading from a folio sheet of coarsely printed rag-paper,
blackened with ancient Gothic capitals (and filched from where it had
fluttered, held by a pin, upon one of the notice-boards exposed in the porch
of the Cathedral), the Programme for the following day.
“We begin,” he boomed, after much preliminary throat-scraping, “by
Your Serene Highness’s permission—if the Herr Attorney-Oath-
Commissioner will snuff the candles I shall be able to see better!—we begin
with Deputations from the various Trades-bands and Companies of Handi-
craftsmen carrying banners.... Follow....”
The gross man expanded his chest, and rolled out:
“The Charity-Children of both sexes, the boys carrying green branches,
the girls bouquets of flowers. Succeed....
“Confraternities of Sodalists, male and female, headed by Persons on
Horseback in Roman and Silesian costumes, representing St. Lawrence with
his gridiron and St. Hyacinth with his ax.
“A triumphal Car, with a Tableau of St. Helena in Roman Imperial Habit,
instructing St. Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, where to Dig for the Relic of
the True Cross....
“The Four Mendicant Orders of Religious of both sexes, with tapers.
“The Boys of the Dominican Orphanage bearing tapers.
“The Girls of the Carmelite School strewing flowers.
“The Image of Our Lady of the Assumption, attended by Sisters of the
Order of the Immaculate Heart.”
Dunoisse started in his chair. A burning heat raced through him, and yet
he shivered, oppressed by a deadly sickness of the soul.
“The Secular Clergy,” read von Steyregg, and cleared his throat. “The
Archbishop and Chapter. The Sacred Canopy, borne by six Noble Officers
of the Garrison in Full Uniform.”...
Dunoisse, with an ashen face, rose up at the foot of the table.... It had
been revealed to him as by a lightning-flash, over what a bottomless abyss
he hung.... Henriette appeared to notice nothing.... von Steyregg pursued:
“In this unhappy document, Madame, I have suggested an alteration. As
here provided, the Mayor and Corporation, the Garrison—in uniform of
review—with the towns-people, peasants, children, and beggars were to
have brought up the rear of the procession. But my amendment (forwarded
in writing to the Archbishop, since that prelate has rudely closed his doors
against us), is, that His Lordship and the Chapter should be followed by—
grant but a moment!—I will set it down....”
He sucked a black-lead pencil, scrawled on the wide margin of the
official programme, and read as he scrawled:
“His Serene Highness, Hector-Marie-Aymont, Prince-Aspirant of
Widinitz, carrying a taper, and attended by the Wohlgeboren Herr Attorney-
and-Oath-Commissioner Ottilus Köhler, and the Hochwohlgeboren Herr
Baron, Rodobald Siegfridus Theodore von Steyregg, Knight of the Most
Pious Order of Saint Emmerich.” He added, blowing like a seal, and
mopping his great moist countenance with a crumpled table-napkin:
“Take the word of a Magyar nobleman, Your Serenity, that taper of yours
will have cooked the Regent Luitpold’s goose for him, all being said and
done!”
But His Serene Highness, who had dropped heavily back into the chair,
was leaning upon his folded arms, staring with an air of deep abstraction at
the polished surface of the dessert-covered mahogany, and might have
heard or not.
“Dull dog that you are, my Prince!” said von Steyregg mentally, “this
charming Eve of yours is worth a million of you. Were she Princess-
Aspirant of this phlegmatic State, it would be a hop, skip and jump into the
saddle. With you, had you not a Steyregg at your elbow—Ps’sst!—the
whole adventure would fizzle off like a damp squib—I would bet my head
on it! Now, what picture you are gaping at—with your eyes fixed and your
jaw dropping—I would give this glass of punch to know.”
He tossed it off with a flourish and a wink at his rat-faced confederate.
The flourish, the wink, were lost upon Dunoisse.

For as a hanging man may see, in the last struggles of asphyxia, the
dreadful details of the crime that led to his execution limned in lifelike
action and color on the swirling fire-shot blackness, so rose before the
mental vision of the son of Marie-Bathilde a picture of the Cathedral, with
the great procession of the morrow—headed by the white-robed bearer of
the Crucifix, amidst wafts of incense and intoned Litanies, rolling down the
nave of the Cathedral and out through its west door upon the streets.
Ah! was Henriette deaf, that she did not hear the chanting voices, and the
slow, measured tread of the lay folk, and religious, and the pattering
footsteps of the children, as, with reverent demeanor and hushed, rapt faces
they moved before or followed the image of the Mother of God?
Did she not see the Canopy of wrought cloth-of-gold, adorned with
tassels of pearls, fringed with innumerable little golden bells that tinkled as
its bearers bore it onwards? Was she blind to the Figure that stumbled along
in its shelter, robed in white linen, bloodstained and torn and dusty, bending
almost double under a Cross of roughly-shaped timbers, and wearing a
Crown of Thorns?...
The haggard black eyes sought hers in desperate interrogation. But
Henriette was dreamily playing with a silver fruit-knife as she listened to
von Steyregg. Her own eyes were hidden under their long lashes; her face
told no tale, as the intolerable voice of the agent trumpeted:
“As regards a favorable answer from this arrogant prelate, Your
Excellency, I will guarantee it within the hour—or two—having, in His
Serene Highness’s name, as his business-representative, undertaken that
compliance with his desires will be made profitable in the pecuniary sense
by a donation of One Thousand Thalers to the Restoration Fund of the
Cathedral. Ahem!”
He winked his left eye, which the sliding turban threatened to extinguish,
folded up the official programme and threw it on the table, saying:
“This reading dries the throat consumedly. With Her Highness’s—I mean
with Madame’s permission, I will take another drop of punch!”
He filled a bumper and proposed a toast: “To the Success of The
Adventure!”
Köhler drank the sentiment with enthusiasm. Henriette sipped, smiling at
her moody lover, who pushed his glass away. And a resonant, cultured
voice said from the doorway:
“Permit me to beg pardon of the company for having entered
unannounced!”
The heads of the adventurers turned as by a single impulse. The landlord,
who had knocked unheard, and ushered in a stranger under cover of the
toast-drinking, was seen to be posed, in an attitude of rigid respect, beyond
the threshold. The person who had spoken, a short priest with singularly
bright gray eyes shining out of a pale, thin-featured face;—who was
wrapped, despite the sultry heat of August, in a voluminous and shabby
black cloak, and did not seem at all embarrassed,—was standing just within
the door.
He said, and the great volume of his voice seemed to fill the room and
flow outwards through the French windows that opened upon a stone
balcony overhanging the Market Place:
“May it be understood that I am here as the mouthpiece of the
Archbishop of Widinitz?... May I presume that I shall be patiently listened
to?... I will be as brief as is compatible with clearness. Pray remain seated,
all of you. No, sir, I am obliged!...”
For Henriette had risen languidly and curtsied deeply. Von Steyregg had
hoisted himself to those baluster-shaped legs of his. Köhler had got up with
his mouth full of almonds and raisins: and Dunoisse, with the polished
grace that distinguished him, was offering the little priest his chair.
The ecclesiastic scanned the dark, handsome face and the soldierly,
muscular, supple figure with a degree of kindliness. He said, as he waved
the offered seat away:
“What I have to say, Colonel Dunoisse, will be best said standing. Your
intention to visit this town was not previously notified to the Archbishop.
He was not consulted in the matter of your intentions and views. Otherwise
you might have been spared the commission of a grievous error, which
cannot but create antagonism, prejudice, and contempt in the minds of those
whom you would most desire to ingratiate——”
He broke off, for von Steyregg smote upon the table, and bellowed, while
the decanters and glasses jingled, peaches hopped from the center dish, and
the thumper’s turban fell off and rolled under the board:
“‘Contempt,’ sir, is not a word to be used in connection with His Serene
Highness. I, Rodobald von Steyregg, Baron and Knight of the Sublime
Order of St. Emmerich, protest against its use!”
Having protested, Steyregg dived for his turban, replaced it on his head,
and snorted defiance. The small pale priest regarded him with a faint,
lurking smile, and said calmly:
“Sir, the Archbishop received a letter from you this evening. I am
charged with the answer to the document herewith.”
He turned to Dunoisse and continued:
“Colonel Dunoisse, the fact of your near alliance by blood with the
reigning House of Widinitz is incontestable and undeniable. Did not the
Salic law obtain in this principality, upon you would undoubtedly devolve
the Hereditary Crown.”
His great voice seemed to be a palpable presence in the room. While he
spoke, not by any means at the full pitch of it, the wires of a spinet that
stood against the wall vibrated audibly; and the crystal pendants on the
chandeliers and mantel-vases tinkled with a gentle musical sound. While
another sound, of which Dunoisse had been faintly conscious for some
time, and which might have been the muttering of distant thunder; or the
humming of innumerable bees; or the purring of a cat of Brobdingnagian
proportions, was stilled as though the unknown forces that combined to
cause it had caught an echo of the powerful tones, and held their peace to
listen.
As the priest went on:
“Undoubtedly, but the fundamental law as it stands strictly excludes the
female line and the males derived from it. And were it possible to change
this law, even at the eleventh hour, I am deputed to say to you that the
procedure would be strenuously opposed by the person who would in that
event stand as the direct dynastic successor to the hereditary authority!”
“My mother!”
Dunoisse, through whom the words had darted with a shock and thrill
resembling the discharge from an electric battery, thrust from him the chair
on which he had hitherto indifferently leaned, and turned upon the speaker a
face that had suddenly grown sharp and pinched, saying in a voice that was
curiously flat and toneless:
“You are in communication with my mother, sir? You have been deputed
by her to say this to me?”
The priest bowed assent, and continued calmly:
“For, though it be true that the Almighty, in His Infinite wisdom, has
chastened us Catholics of Widinitz by placing over us a sovereign of the
Reformed Faith; and, though we cannot but deplore the rigor with which the
Regent has treated certain communities of religious hitherto resident in the
principality; we are bound to own that in other respects we have been
treated with clemency and justice. In addition, the domestic life of our
Regent is free from scandal....”
Dunoisse’s ears burned like fire. The little priest’s great voice went on:
“We recognize in His Serene Highness a chaste spouse, a wise father, a
prudent governor. How ill-advised should we be to prefer to a ruler such as
this a bad Catholic, an individual whose personal history affords a
lamentable example of ungoverned passions; who, dead to all sense of
shame, blazons his infamy before the eyes of the conscientious and the
decent——”
Dunoisse interrupted, saying with stiff lips:
“May I take it that these personalities are leveled at myself?”
The little priest returned, with extraordinarily quiet dignity:
“The rebuke, Colonel Dunoisse, is meant for you. I do not deal in
personalities.”
He added, in a voice that sent keen, icy thrills coursing down the spines
of his listeners:
“The Archbishop replies to the proposal contained in your agent’s letter
emphatically in the negative. He says to you, Colonel Dunoisse, with the
voice that speaks to you now: ‘You have offered us a price in money for the
privilege of participating in the morrows procession. You have not scrupled
to present yourself as a partaker in the solemnities of our Blessed Lady’s
Festival. You shrink not at the thought of approaching Him Who is borne
beneath the Sacred Canopy, unconfessed, unabsolved—in a state of deadly
sin. Shameless, unabashed, you would display yourself to the scandal of
Christ’s servants, accompanied by the partner of your lamentable errors—
with your acknowledged mistress, the unfaithful wife of another, flaunting
by your side!”
Henriette, pale as death, leaped up from her seat as a woman might who
had swallowed some deadly alkaloid. Dumbly, as though the poison
veritably stiffened her muscles, she writhed, fighting for speech—
wrenching at the velvet ribbon that confined her swelling throat.
“You!—you!—you hear these insults?” she at last stammered, pointing a
quivering hand at Dunoisse, whom the words seemed to have deprived of
the powers of speech and motion. “Are you deaf, sir, that such things are
spoken, and you stand there silent as one of those statues in the Cathedral?
Are you dumb or paralyzed that you do not order this man to leave my
presence? Cannot you see,” she raved, “that this is no messenger from the
Archbishop? Some fanatical priest,—some presumptuous secretary,—has
dared—has——! Just Heaven!—if my husband had been here, he would
have thrown the creature from the room!”
But Dunoisse remained speechless and frozen, under the fiery torrent of
her upbraidings. It was von Steyregg who, in absence of any demonstration
from his principal, seized his opportunity to be effective and picturesque.
He strode haughtily to the door, and, opening it, turned with majesty to the
intruder, trumpeting:
“With your person, sir, respecting your cloth as I abhor your sentiments, I
will not soil my fingers. But unless you instantly remove yourself from
these apartments, private to His Serene Highness and Her Excellency, I will
—I will ring for the landlord and have you carried out and put upon the
street!”
“That could hardly be,” said the little gray priest mildly, “for I am the
Archbishop of Widinitz....”
He showed one lean finger outside the folds of the shabby cloak. Upon
the digit a great sapphire gleamed darkly.... And a silence of unspeakable
consternation fell upon the conspirators, that was suddenly broken by a
half-brick, deftly thrown, that crashed through a pane of one of the French
windows, shivered a crystal chandelier full of twinkling wax-lights that
hung above the supper-table; and plopped into the punch-bowl, dispersing
shivers of Oriental ware and gouts of fragrant liquor into every corner of the
room....

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