“And my boots are so small that I can hardly endure them.”

“Very becoming to the foot,” said Dalyrmple, with exasperating indifference.

“And my collar is so stiff that it almost cuts my throat.”

“Makes you hold your head up,” said Dalrymple, “and leaves you no inducement to commit suicide.”

I could not help laughing, despite my discomfort.

“Job himself never had such a comforter!” I exclaimed.

“It would be a downright pleasure to quarrel with you.”

“Put on your hat instead, and let us delay no longer,” replied my friend.  “My cab is waiting.”

So we went down, and in another moment were driving through the lighted streets.  I should hardly have chosen to confess how my heart beat when, on turning an angle of the Rue Trudon, our cab fell into the rear of three or four other carriages, passed into a courtyard crowded with arriving and departing vehicles, and drew up before an open door, whence a broad stream of light flowed out to meet us.  A couple of footmen received us in a hall lighted by torches and decorated with stands of antique armor.  From the centre of this hall sprang a Gothic staircase, so light, so richly sculptured, so full of niches and statues, slender columns, foliated capitals, and delicate ornamentation of every kind, that it looked a very blossoming of the stone.  Following Dalrymple up this superb staircase and through a vestibule of carved oak, I next found myself in a room that might have been the scene of Plato’s symposium.  Here were walls painted in classic fresco; windows curtained with draperies of chocolate and amber; chairs and couches of ebony, carved in antique fashion; Etruscan amphorae; vases and paterae of terracotta; exquisite lamps, statuettes and candelabra in rare green bronze; and curious parti-colored busts of philosophers and heroes, in all kinds of variegated marbles.  Powdered footmen serving modern coffee seemed here like anachronisms in livery.  In such a room one should have been waited on by boys crowned with roses, and have partaken only of classic dishes—­of Venafran olives or oysters from the Lucrine lake, washed down with Massic, or Chian, or honeyed Falernian.

Some half-dozen gentlemen, chatting over their coffee, bowed to Dalrymple when we came in.  They were talking of the war in Algiers, and especially of the gallantry of a certain Vicomte de Caylus, in whose deeds they seemed to take a more than ordinary interest.

“Rode single-handed right through the enemy’s camp,” said a bronzed, elderly man, with a short, gray beard.

“And escaped without a scratch,” added another, with a tiny red ribbon at his button-hole.

“He comes of a gallant stock,” said a third.  “I remember his father at Austerlitz—­literally cut to pieces at the head of his squadron.”

“You are speaking of de Caylus,” said Dalrymple.  “What news of him from Algiers?”

“This—­that having volunteered to carry some important despatches to head-quarters, he preferred riding by night through Abd-el-Kader’s camp, to taking a detour by the mountains,” replied the first speaker.