ngs in that bag I couldn't have believed
existed out of a museum or a grand-opera property-room. There were his
epaulettes and other insignia as a grand duke's purser, thick slices of
gold and silver lace, buttons as large as medallions, and a badge like
some ancient coat of arms done in glittering enamel. There were
russia-leather boxes whose frayed edges still bore traces of exquisite
gold-tooling and which, on being opened, bore within, delicately printed
on their satin lining, the strange names of oriental and Levantine
jewellers. And in one of these boxes, an oblong affair like the case of
a cigar-holder, we were permitted to behold the cigarette which the
great potentate had deigned to offer the Grand Duke's purser. A fat oval
thing bearing an imperial monogram in gold. Captain Macedoine regarded
it reverently as it lay on his palm. From His Majesty's own case, he
observed in a deep abstraction. Part of the Old Order. Soon to go.... He
spread out his bizarre possessions on the coverlet and showed us each in
turn. There was a slip-ring for a cravat, of gold so heavy it could
never be used, and with an incongruous emerald like a lump of bottle
glass clamped to the centre of it. There was a stick-pin with a perfect
knob of silly-looking rubies. There were cuff-buttons like Brazil nuts
and about as beautiful, with diamonds in an eruption around the edges.
There was a gold stop watch in a hunter case, with a chime and a
coat-of-arms. And there was a gold cigarette case like a polished slab,
almost insolent in its sheer, naked pricelessness. These, it appeared,
were tokens of recognition from various wealthy personages who had been
guests on the Grand Duke's yacht. It was customary, you know. There had
been many others, which he did not regard with any particular sentiment,
and had sold or exchanged for feminine trinkets for his dear Euphrosyne.
There was a movement on the part of the two women as he pronounced this
name and I looked at the girl. She met my gaze with a radiant smile and
a little nod that seemed to mean 'Now we are coming to it.' As we were.
For Captain Macedoine went on to inform us that one of the penalties of
his wanderings among princes and plutocrats was an almost monastic habit
of life. It would not have done, you know. He was the repository of
discreet confidences, the inarticulate witness of august privacies. He
occupied a position, so he seemed to imply, similar to that of the
eunuchs of oriental