tnight--mostly on my back,
for a severe chill developed itself; and I was also the victim of a
nervous reaction, which made me weak as a baby. As soon as I had reached
my quarters, I sent an apparently careless postcard to my brother,
announcing my good health and prospective return. That would serve to
satisfy the inquiries as to my whereabouts, which were probably still
vexing the Prefect of the Police of Strelsau. I let my moustache and
imperial grow again; and as hair comes quickly on my face, they were
respectable, though not luxuriant, by the time that I landed myself in
Paris and called on my friend George Featherly. My interview with
him was chiefly remarkable for the number of unwilling but necessary
falsehoods that I told; and I rallied him unmercifully when he told me
that he had made up his mind that I had gone in the track of Madame de
Mauban to Strelsau. The lady, it appeared, was back in Paris, but was
living in great seclusion--a fact for which gossip found no difficulty
in accounting. Did not all the world know of the treachery and death
of Duke Michael? Nevertheless, George bade Bertram Bertrand be of good
cheer, "for," said he flippantly, "a live poet is better than a dead
duke." Then he turned on me and asked:

"What have you been doing to your moustache?"

"To tell the truth," I answered, assuming a sly air, "a man now and then
has reasons for wishing to alter his appearance. But it's coming on very
well again."

"What? Then I wasn't so far out! If not the fair Antoinette, there was a
charmer?"

"There is always a charmer," said I, sententiously.

But George would not be satisfied till he had wormed out of me (he
took much pride in his ingenuity) an absolutely imaginary love-affair,
attended with the proper soupcon of scandal, which had kept me all this
time in the peaceful regions of the Tyrol. In return for this
narrative, George regaled me with a great deal of what he called "inside
information" (known only to diplomatists), as to the true course of
events in Ruritania, the plots and counterplots. In his opinion, he told
me, with a significant nod, there was more to be said for Black Michael
than the public supposed; and he hinted at a well-founded suspicion that
the mysterious prisoner of Zenda, concerning whom a good many paragraphs
had appeared, was not a man at all, but (here I had much ado not to
smile) a woman disguised as a man; and that strife between the King and
his brother for th