“It’s so simple,” he would say to those perplexed potentates who flocked to him from the mainland for advice on administrative questions.  “So simple!  One knock to each nair.  And keep smiling.”

It was the Good Duke Alfred who, with a shrewd eye to the future prosperity of his dominions, made the first practical experiments with those hot mineral springs—­those healing waters whose virtues, up till then, had been unaccountable neglected.  Realizing their curative possibilities, he selected fifty of the oldest and wisest of his Privy Councillors to undergo a variety of hydro-thermal tests on their bodies, internal and external.  Seven of these gentlemen had the good luck to survive the treatment.  They received the Order of the Golden Vine, a coveted distinction.  The remaining forty-three, what was left of them, were cremated at night-time and posthumously ennobled.

He was the author of some mighty fine dissertations on falconry, dancing and architecture.  He wrote furthermore, in the flamboyant style of his period, two dozen pastoral plays, as well as a goodly number of verses addressed, for the most part, to ladies of his Court—­a Court which was thronged with poets, wits, philosophers and noble women.  The island was a gay place in those days!  There was always something doing.  His Highness had a trick of casting favourites into dungeons, and concubines into the sea, that endeared him to his various legitimate spouses; and the rapidity with which these self-same spouses were beheaded one after the other, to make room for what he mirthfully called “fresh blood,” struck his faithful subjects as an ever-recurring miracle of statecraft.  “Nothing,” he used to say to his intimates, “nothing ages a man like living always with the same woman.”  Well aware, on the other hand, of the inequality of social conditions and keenly desirous of raising the moral tone of his people, he framed iron laws to restrain those irregularities of married life which had been a disreputable feature of local society prior to his accession.

Not in vain had he pondered in youth the political maxims of the great Florentine.  He cultivated assiduously the friendship of Church and Mob; he knew that no throne, however seemingly well-established, can weather the blasts of fortune save by resting on those twin pillars of security.  So it came about that, while all Europe was convulsed in savage warfare, his relations with other rulers were marked by rare cordiality and simplicity of intercourse.  He never failed to conciliate his more powerful neighbours by timely gifts of local delicacies—­gifts of dark-eyed virgins to grace their palaces, and frequent hampers of those succulent LANGOUSTES for which the coastal waters of the island are renowned, both items of the finest quality obtainable.  A born statesman, he extended this ingratiating demeanour even to those minor sovereigns from whom, to all appearance, she had nothing to fear, supplying them likewise with periodical consignments of pretty maidens and well-flavoured crayfish, only of somewhat inferior quality—­the crustaceans often too young, the damsels occasionally over-ripe.