At last, in despair, after a fruitless search of two days, Lorry was willing to submit.  With the perverseness common to half-defeated fighters, Anguish at once protested, forgetting that he had sought to dissuade his friend the day before.

“We’ll go to the library of Paris and take a look through the books and maps,” he said.  “Or, better still, let us go to the post office.  There!  Why have we not thought of that?  What there is of Graustark they’ll know in the postal service.”

Together they visited the chief post office, where, after being directed to various deputies and clerks, they at length found the department in which the information was obtainable.  Inside of five minutes they were in possession of facts that vindicated Miss Guggenslocker, lifted Lorry to the seventh heaven, and put Mr. Anguish into an agony of impatience.  Graustark was a small principality away off to the east, and Edelweiss was a city of some seventy-five thousand inhabitants, according to the postal guide-book.

The Americans could learn no more there, so they went to Baedecker’s office.  Here they found a great map, and, after a diligent and almost microscopic search, succeeded in discovering the principality of Graustark.  Then they looked at each other in dismay.

“It’s a devil of a distance to that little red blot on the map,” mused Lorry, pulling his nose reflectively.  “What an outlandish place for a girl like her to live in,” he continued.  “And that sweet-faced old lady and noble Uncle Caspar!  Ye gods! one would think barbarians existed there and not such people as the Guggenslockers, refined, cultivated smart, rich.  I’m more interested than ever in the place.”

“So am I!  I’m willing and ready to make the trip, old man, if you are still of a mind.  It’s a lark, and, besides, she may not be the only pretty and gracious girl there.  We’ve had bard work to find it on the map, let’s not stop till we see Edelweiss on the earth itself.”

They made hasty preparations for the journey.  Anguish, romantic and full of adventure, advised the purchase of a pair of pistols and a knife apiece, maintaining that, as they were going into an unknown and mountainous region, they should be prepared for brigands and other elements of danger.  Lorry pooh-poohed the suggestion of brigands, but indulged his mood by buying some ugly-looking revolvers and inviting the prospect of something really thrilling in the way of an adventure.  With their traps they were soon whirling through France, bound for a certain great city, on the road to Edelweiss, one filled with excitement, eagerness and boyish zeal, the other harrassed by the sombre fear that a grave disappointment was in store for him.  Through the glamour and the picturesqueness of the adventure there always crept the unconquerable feeling that he was on a fool’s errand, that he was committing a deed so weak and brainless that it was sure to make him a veritable laughing-stock when it became known.  After all, who was Miss Guggenslocker—­brewer, baker, gardener or sausage-maker.