our own
boyhood, Don Antonio. Nevertheless, I promise you some laughter in
the Rue Auber. Though you will not be able to understand the half
of what I shall tell you--particularly the portraits I shall
sketch of my defeated rivals--your spirit shall roll with
laughter.

To the bank, then, the instant you read. Cable me one thousand
dollars, and be at the Rue Auber not more than ten days later. To
the bank! Thence to the telegraph office. Speed! V. C.

He was in better spirits as he read over this letter, and he
chuckled as he addressed it. He pictured himself in the rear room
of the bar in the Rue Auber, relating, across the little
marble-topped table, this American adventure, to the delight of
that blithe, ne'er-do-well outcast of an exalted poor family, that
gambler, blackmailer and merry rogue, Don Antonio Moliterno,
comrade and teacher of this ductile Valentine since the later days
of adolescence. They had been school-fellows in Rome, and later
roamed Europe together unleashed, discovering worlds of many
kinds. Valentine's careless mother let her boy go as he liked, and
was often negligent in the matter of remittances: he and his
friend learned ways to raise the wind, becoming expert and making
curious affiliations. At her death there was a small inheritance;
she had not been provident. The little she left went rocketing,
and there was the wind to be raised again: young Corliss had wits
and had found that they could supply him--most of the time--with
much more than the necessities of life. He had also found that he
possessed a strong attraction for various women; already--at
twenty-two--his experience was considerable, and, in his way, he
became a specialist. He had a talent; he improved it and his
opportunities. Altogether, he took to the work without malice and
with a light heart. . . .

He sealed the envelope, rang for a boy, gave him the letter to
post, and directed that the apartment should be set to rights. It
was not that in which he had received Ray Vilas. Corliss had moved
to rooms on another floor of the hotel, the day after that
eccentric and somewhat ominous person had called to make an
"investment." Ray's shadowy forebodings concerning that former
apartment had encountered satire: Corliss was a "materialist" and,
at the mildest estimate, an unusually practical man, but he would
never sleep in a bed with its foot toward the door; southern Italy
had seeped into him. He changed his rooms, a measure