And nearly always, too, you will find hard by, over doors
and passageways, the names of his two sons, each accompanied or
underscored by the heraldic emblem of their house--a barbed and
feathered arrow pointing horizontally.
And so it was that King Verboten lived happily ever after and in
the fullness of time died peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his
wives, his children and his courtiers; and all of them sorrowed
greatly and wept, but the royal signpainter sorrowed most of all.
I know that certain persons will contest the authenticity of this
passage of history; they will claim Verboten means in our tongue
Forbidden, and that Ausgang means Outgoing, and Eingang means
Incoming--or, in other words, Exit and Entrance; but surely this
could not be so. If so many things were forbidden, a man in Germany
would be privileged only to die--and probably not that, unless he
died according to a given formula; and certainly no human being
with the possible exception of the comedian who used to work the
revolving-door trick in Hanlon's Fantasma, could go out of and
come into a place so often without getting dizzy in the head. No
--the legend stands as stated.
Even as it is, there are rules enough in Germany, rules to regulate
all things and all persons. At first, to the stranger, this seems
an irksome arrangement--this posting of rules and orders and
directions and warnings everywhere--but he finds that everyone,
be he high or low, must obey or go to jail; there are no exceptions
and no evasions; so that what is a duty on all is a burden on none.
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