smeared like a clown and preaching his gentility, he made a
figure completely comic--should I say?--or tragic. Anyway I gave a
gesture of derision that stung him past endurance.

"Dumail--" he broke out. "You laugh? Dumail, will you believe this?
There is awaiting me back home at the present moment a heritage of
millions. Of millions, I swear to you! Not the treasure of an opium
dream, Dumail, but a place ready established among the great and the
fortunate. For me: Number Matricule 2232! Life in a gondola, do you see?
Luxury, leisure, rank. Beauty. Women. Happiness! Everything a poor lost
devil could crave!"

Well, you know, it was a bit too much for me.

"Comedian!" I applauded. "Ah-ah--comedian!"

A sort of fury took him. All else forgotten, he jerked loose the collar
of his jacket: made to spread it wide--checked himself and instead drew
out from his breast an object for my inspection.

I had view of a miniature: one of those cherubic heads on ivory that
relate to the model, perhaps, as a promise relates to a fact in this
naughty world. Nevertheless I could trace a sort of semblance to that
roguish front as it might have seemed in childhood--all ringlets and
innocence, cerulean eye and carmine cheek--the whole encircled by a
double row of pearls: Bibi-Ri himself.

"My title deed."

I was impressed. Impossible to deny a richness in this miniature. And
while the likeness was thin the pearls were indubitable. Still--

"Blagueur!" I murmured. "Where did you snaffle it?"

Gloomily he regarded me. "You are like the others. Always while I was
kicking about the gutters or the jail it was that way. No one would
listen. Another of Bibi-Ri's jokes! And I lacked any clew to this
trinket: my single poor inheritance.... But now--look! These queer signs
on the reverse. They have been deciphered. Oh, an unbelievable stroke of
chance! Of course I have much to learn. The name of the family. My own
true name itself. But at least I am in the way of proof and this time I
was going to win!... A famished man--a man famished since his birth,
Dumail--is set before a boundless feast. Does he joke about that?"

"Perhaps not," I admitted. "Go on."

"But I am showing you what Life means to me!"

"And M. de Nou--?" I reminded him.

He shuddered: his head dropped upon his breast.

"M. de Nou--is Death!"

Well, you know, this was all very thrilling for emotion, but as a
statement it left something to be desired.

"Answer me," I