ten o'clock
He was , to be perfectly candid , very much interested in her and very much distressed by the fact that she was bound to a venerable reprobate who dared not put his foot on Graustark soil because once he had defiled it atrociously . But of the Countess and her visits to Edelweiss , more anon -- with the indulgence of the reader . At present we are permitted to attend a meeting of the cabinet , which sits occasionally in solemn collectiveness just off the throne room within the tapestried walls of a dark little antechamber , known to the outside world as the `` Room of Wrangles . '' It is ten o'clock of the morning on which the Prince is to review the troops from the fortress . The question under discussion relates to the loan of 5,000,000 gavvos , before mentioned . At the head of the long table , perched upon an augmentary pile of law books surmounted by a little red cushion , sits the Prince , almost lost in the hugh old walnut chair of his forefathers . Down the table sit the ten ministers of the departments of state , all of them loving the handsome little fellow on the necessary pile of statutes , but all of them more or less indifferent to his significant yawns and perplexed frowns .