On the other hand, if I’d passed his photograph without the barest twinge of recognition, I would never have known who he was. Or, come to think of it, cared.

So if anything was remarkable (and it certainly seemed as though something ought to be) it was that I had subconsciously retained the image of Vlados in my mind from an earlier glance through the Scott catalog. But that, damn it to hell, wasn’t remarkable either, because I’d looked up Anatruria in that very volume a week or so ago, after Ilona had acknowledged it as her birthplace. That was why I’d been able to rattle off all that historical data so glibly, impressing the daylights out of Carolyn.

I used the magnifying glass and had another look at His Highness. He was better, I decided, at flashing smiles than at looking solemn. The smile might not have been appropriate for a serious philatelic occasion like this, but it gave him a leg up on the legion of royal twits who’ve left their faces on the stamps and coins of Europe. I wondered what might have been the source of his claim to the Anatrurian throne, and if he was related to the other kings and princelings. Most of them are descended one way or another from Queen Victoria, and are almost as much fun at parties as she was.

What about Vlados’s consort, she of the high-piled hair and the pathetic little foxes? The Scott people hadn’t provided a picture of her, but they were nice enough to tell me her name. According to the descriptive listing, she appeared twice in the series-alone on the 35-tschirin stamp, and with her husband on the 50-tschirin denomination. And her name was Queen Liliana.