ed them up, or found the draughts, or collected the
dominoes, or put my hand to any kind of work?'

'Never!'

'Have you ever thought of looking to me to do any kind of work?'

John Baptist answered with that peculiar back-handed shake of the
right forefinger which is the most expressive negative in the Italian
language.

'No! You knew from the first moment when you saw me here, that I was a
gentleman?'

'ALTRO!' returned John Baptist, closing his eyes and giving his head a
most vehement toss. The word being, according to its Genoese emphasis,
a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt,
a compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present
instance, with a significance beyond all power of written expression,
our familiar English 'I believe you!'

'Haha! You are right! A gentleman I am! And a gentleman I'll live, and
a gentleman I'll die! It's my intent to be a gentleman. It's my game.
Death of my soul, I play it out wherever I go!'

He changed his posture to a sitting one, crying with a triumphant air:

'Here I am! See me! Shaken out of destiny's dice-box into the company
of a mere smuggler;--shut up with a poor little contraband trader, whose
papers are wrong, and whom the police lay hold of besides, for placing
his boat (as a means of getting beyond the frontier) at the disposition
of other little people whose papers are wrong; and he instinctively
recognises my position, even by this light and in this place. It's well
done! By Heaven! I win, however the game goes.'

Again his moustache went up, and his nose came down.

'What's the hour now?' he asked, with a dry hot pallor upon him, rather
difficult of association with merriment.

'A little half-hour after mid-day.'

'Good! The President will have a gentleman before him soon. Come!

Shall I tell you on what accusation? It must be now, or never, for I
shall not return here. Either I shall go free, or I shall go to be made
ready for shaving. You know where they keep the razor.'

Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette from between his parted lips, and
showed more momentary discomfiture than might have been expected.

'I am a'--Monsieur Rigaud stood up to say it--'I am a cosmopolitan
gentleman. I own no particular country. My father was Swiss--Canton de
Vaud. My mother was French by blood, English by birth. I myself was born
in Belgium. I am a citizen of the world.'

His theatrical air, as he stood with one arm on his h