We dined in the famous veranda, the scene of so many brilliant Whittingham functions.  The dinner was beyond reproach, the wines perfection.  The President was a charming companion.  Though not, as I have hinted, a man of much education, he had had a wide experience of life, and had picked up a manner at once quiet and cordial, which set me completely at my ease.  Moreover, he paid me the compliment, always so sweet to youth, of treating me as a man of the world.  With condescending confidence he told me many tales of his earlier days; and as he had been everywhere and done everything where and which a man ought not to be and do, his conversation was naturally most interesting.

“I am not holding myself up as an example,” he said, after one of his most unusual anecdotes.  “I can only hope that my public services will be allowed to weigh in the balance against my private frailties.”

He said this with some emotion.

“Even your Excellency,” said I, “may be content to claim in that respect the same indulgence as Caesar and Henri Quatre.”

“Quite so,” said the President.  “I suppose they were not exactly—­eh?”

“I believe not,” I answered, admiring the President’s readiness, for he certainly had a very dim notion who either of them was.

Dinner was over and the table cleared before the President seemed inclined for serious conversation.  Then he called for cigars, and pushing them toward me said: 

“Take one, and fill your glass.  Don’t believe people who tell you not to drink and smoke at the same time.  Wine is better without smoke, and smoke is better without wine, but the combination is better than either separately.”

I obeyed his commands, and we sat smoking and sipping in silence for some moments.  Then the President said, suddenly: 

“Mr. Martin, this country is in a perilous condition.”

“Good God, your Excellency!” said I, “do you refer to the earthquake?” (There had been a slight shock a few days before.)

“No, sir,” he replied, “to the finances.  The harbor works have proved far more expensive than I anticipated.  I hold in my hand the engineer’s certificate that nine hundred and three thousand dollars have been actually expended on them, and they are not finished—­not by any means finished.”

They certainly were not; they were hardly begun.

“Dear me,” I ventured to say, “that seems a good deal of money, considering what there is to show for it.”

“You cannot doubt the certificate, Mr. Martin,” said the President.

I did doubt the certificate, and should have liked to ask what fee the engineer had received.  But I hastily said it was, of course, beyond suspicion.

“Yes,” said he steadily, “quite beyond suspicion.  You see, Mr. Martin, in my position I am compelled to be liberal.  The Government cannot set other employers the example of grinding men down by low wages.  However, reasons apart, there is the fact.  We cannot go on without more money; and I may tell you, in confidence, that the political situation makes it imperative we should go on.  Not only is my personal honor pledged, but the Opposition, Mr. Martin, led by the colonel, is making itself obnoxious—­yes, I may say very obnoxious.”