or had galloped clear with morning
over the border, some had trudged roads for days from their capital in
disguise, yet many had had time just as they left to snatch up some
small thing without price in markets, for the sake of old times as
they said, but quite as much, I thought, with an eye to the future.
And there these treasures glittered on that long table in the
banqueting-hall of the basement of that strange club. Merely to see
them was much, but to hear their story that their owners told was to
go back in fancy to epic times on the romantic border of fable and
fact, where the heroes of history fought with the gods of myth. The
famous silver horses of Gilgianza were there climbing their sheer
mountain, which they did by miraculous means before the time of the
Goths. It was not a large piece of silver but its workmanship
outrivalled the skill of the bees.

A yellow Emperor had brought out of the East a piece of that
incomparable porcelain that had made his dynasty famous though all
their deeds are forgotten, it had the exact shade of the right purple.

And there was a little golden statuette of a dragon stealing a diamond
from a lady, the dragon had the diamond in his claws, large and of the
first water. There had been a kingdom whose whole constitution and
history were founded on the legend, from which alone its kings had
claimed their right to the scepter, that a dragon stole a diamond from
a lady. When its last king left that country, because his favorite
general used a peculiar formation under the fire of artillery, he
brought with him the little ancient image that no longer proved him a
king outside that singular club.

There was the pair of amethyst cups of the turbaned King of Foo, the
one that he drank from himself, and the one that he gave to his
enemies, eye could not tell which was which.

All these things the ex-King of Eritivaria showed me, telling me a
marvelous tale of each; of his own he had brought nothing, except the
mascot that used once to sit on the top of the water tube of his
favorite motor.

I have not outlined a tenth of the splendour of that table, I had
meant to come again and examine each piece of plate and make notes of
its history; had I known that this was the last time I should wish to
enter that club I should have looked at its treasures more
attentively, but now as the wine went round and the exiles began to
talk I took my eyes from the table and listened to strange tales of