Regiment!" he muttered. "Now, when I am
King----"

Then he realized that during the few minutes that had elapsed since the
train started, the whole aspect of the adventure had changed completely.
It was no longer a snatch of opera bouffe, a fantastic conceit
engendered in the brain of that elderly beau whom he had left in the Rue
Boissiere, a bit of stage trifling happily typified by the property
sword. It had become real, grim, menacing. It reeked of blood. Its first
battle was there, recorded in the newspaper. He pictured those brutal
soldiers mauling the warm bodies, thrusting them through an open window
and proclaiming their loyalty--to him!

The train was rushing through an estate noted for its game, and he had
been one of a party of guns in its coverts last October. He remembered
shooting a pheasant of glorious plumage, and saying: "Ah! What a pity! I
ought to have spared him, if only on account of his coat of many
colors."

"When birds are flying fast, even you, Alec, have to shoot _passim_,"
said a witty Hebrew, and Delgrado did not appreciate the _mot_ until
some one told him that _passeem_ in Hebrew meant "patchwork," and that
Jacob's offense to Joseph's brethren lay in the gift of a Prince's robe
to his favorite son.

The quip came to mind now with sinister significance; he wished most
heartily he had missed that pheasant. It was quite a relief when dinner
was announced, and he made his way to the dining car, where a polyglot
gathering showed that although the Orient Express had not quitted Paris
fifteen minutes it had already crossed many frontiers. There were few
French or English on board, and not one American. A couple of Turks, a
Bulgarian, a sprinkling of Russians and Levantines, and a crowd of
Teutons, either German or Austrian, made up the company. Stampoff
remained invisible, and Alec shared a table with an Armenian, who
insisted on speaking execrable English, though he understood French far
better.

Then this newest of all Kings felt very lonely, and he began to
understand something of the isolation that would surround him in that
Black Castle of his daydream, where, if all went well with him, he
alone would be the "foreigner." A longing for companionship came upon
him. He wanted some one who would laugh and talk airy nonsense, some one
whose mind would not be running everlastingly in the political groove,
and an irresistible impulse urged him to ask for a telegraph form and
write:

B