f mischief. I thought of your letter
directly, and I have given you the most tremendous recommendation--part
of it quite true, I suspect, though I am not a judge of learning. I
explained, however, that you are a master of languages, of elegant
though subdued deportment, and I extolled at length your saintly habits.
Altogether, I fear there may have been too much of the virtuoso in my
interpretation of you; few would have recognized from it the gentleman
who closed a table at Monte Carlo and afterwards was closed himself in
the handsome and spectacular fashion I remember with both delight and
regret. Briefly, I lied like a master. He almost had me in the matter of
your age; it was important that you should be middle-aged. I swore that
you were at least thirty-eight, but, owing to exemplary habits, looked
very much younger. The cub himself is twenty-four.

"Hence, if you are really serious and determined not to appeal to your
people, call at once upon Mr. Lambert R. Poor, of the Hotel d'Iena. He
is the father, and the cub is with him. The elder Yankee is primed with
my praises of you, and must engage someone at once, as he sails in a day
or two. Go--with my blessing, an air of piety, and as much age as you
can assume. When the father has departed, throw the cub into the Seine,
but preserve his pocket-book, and we shall have another go at those
infernal tables. Vale! J.G.S."

I found myself smiling--I fear miserably--over this kind letter,
especially at the wonder of my friend that I had not appealed to my
relatives. The only ones who would have liked to help me, if they had
known I needed something, were my two little nieces who were in my own
care; because my father, being but a poet, had no family, and my mother
had lost hers, even her eldest son, by marrying my father. After that
they would have nothing to do with her, nor were they asked. That
rascally old Antonio was now the head of all the Caravacioli, as was I
of my own outcast branch of our house--that is, of my two little nieces
and myself. It was partly of these poor infants I had thought when I
took what was left of my small inheritance to Monte Carlo, hoping, since
I seemed to be incapable of increasing it in any other way, that number
seventeen and black would hand me over a fortune as a waiter does wine.
Alas! Luck is not always a fool's servant, and the kind of fortune she
handed me was of that species the waiter brings you in the other bottle
of champagne