Chaos supreme! The soldiery overwhelmed—even themselves drawn into the fray—for Les Six had not failed to cast the necessary and necessarily cross-purposed insults on the respective merits of Ozarine Embassy guards versus Pryggian praetorians!
Blood, booze and bamboozlement! For years to come, these were the three words always spoken together, the world over, whenever was told the tale of the Pryggian social event of the season, Year of the Jackal.
But wait! A small knot of sanity remained! The eye of the storm! For there, at the very center of the ballroom, upon the dais, next to the huge wedding cake, stood the Princess Snuffy and her swain, the Honorable Anthwerp Freckenrizzle III. The newlyweds clutched each other, aghast at the shambles, the Ozarine heir’s face pale as a ghost, the eyes of the Pryggian princess pouring tears.
“Oh, Anthwy!” the Princess wailed. “Our wedding’s ruined!”
Freckenrizzle III comforted his bride. “There now, Snuffy, there now! Let’s forget all this—we still have each other, after all. I’ll tell you what—let’s cut the cake.”
And so saying, the scion of Ozar’s fifth-richest family drew his ceremonial sword—not too deftly, truth to tell, for the pear-shaped heir’s talents and experience lay rather in counting money than the more vigorous of the upper-crust skills—and made to slice the cake.
“You can have the first piece!” he said. The Princess clasped her pudgy hands. “Oh, Anthwy, you’re so sweet!”
Alas, ’twas at that very moment that the full dimensions of Magrit’s scheme were revealed. Stage Four—voila!
No sooner did the sword touch the cake than the cake collapsed, like a house riddled with termites. The cause? Obvious at a glance! For there, in the very center of the confectionary rubble, his green belly swollen like a pumpkin, squatted the salamander.
“Great cake,” it burped. “Try some—I saved you a little.”
The Princess shrieked. Freckenrizzle dropped the sword.
Then, eyeing the—actually, quite dumpy—figure of the Princess, the salamander was heard to exclaim: “What a babe!”
This gross remark made, the horrid beast sprang onto the shoulder of the Princess, wrapped itself around her neck, and began uttering foul and lecherous phrases, of which “Dump this chump and let’s party!” was only the least obscene.
Now squealing like a pig, Princess Snuffy began capering and leaping about, attempting to dislodge the perverse amphibian, who, for its part, clung the more tightly to her neck, its slimy snout buried in her ear, continuing to speak unspeakable words, of which “Once you’ve had salamander, you’ll never go back” was only the least sordid.
Undignified though the figure of the Princess was, writhing and reeling in a manner which belied her sedentary form, ’twas only this unregal behavior which saved her life. For her spouse, whose wealth was now revealed to be the product of good luck rather than good sense, proceeded to retrieve his sword and hack wildly at the salamander. As the amphibian was still coiled about his bride’s neck, ’twas only the clumsiness of the Ozarine heir which made possible the heirs of the future. As it was, he managed to shave his wife’s head clean of the long blond hair which was, truth to tell, her only attractive feature. He also inflicted numerous but thankfully minor flesh wounds upon divers portions of her anatomy, most of which, so I am told, left few visible scars to remind her, in later life, of the unpleasantness which attended her wedding.
Alas, the scars on her royal soul did not fade as well. For it was noted, in the years to come, that the Freckenrizzles were not a happy couple. To her dying day, Madame Freckenrizzle, née the Princess Snuffy, persisted on keeping her scalp shaved as bald as an egg, this peculiar habit being, or so it was supposed, a reproach to her husband. For his part, the Honorable Anthwerp Freckenrizzle III became obsessed with the hunting and trapping of all manner of reptiles and amphibians. By middle age, he was eccentric. He wore nothing but snakeskin clothing and lizardskin boots, refused to sit on any item of furniture not upholstered by salamander pelts, ate nothing but turtle soup and frog legs. By old age he was a certifiable paranoid. On one famous occasion, he burned down his mansion, claiming it was infested with toads in the woodwork. He ended his life a suicide, leaping one day into the crocodile pen at the Ozarian Zoo and attacking the prehistoric monsters therein with naught but a sword, in the use of which, all witnesses agreed, he had gained not a whit more skill than he possessed as a newlywed.