“The Duc de Nevers,” I replied.

“Say,” said O’Toole, “you don’t mean you swallowed that, do you?  Do you know what the feller did?  Why, one afternoon when a swell guy and his girl were out in their gas wagon a mounted cop in the park pulls them in and takes them over to the 57th Street Court.  Well, just as me friend is taking them into the house along walks this Charley Nevers wid his tall silk hat and pearl handle cane, wid a flower in his buttonhole, and his black coat tails dangling around his heels, just like Boni de Castellane, and says he, ‘Officer,’ says he, ’may I inquire what for you’re apprehending this gentleman and lady?’ says he.  With that me friend hands him out some strong language for buttin’ in, and Charley is so much shocked at the insult to himself and the lady that he steps in before the Sergeant and offers to go bond for Douglas, just to go the cop one better, givin’ the Sergeant the same line of drip that he has been handin’ out to us in the Tombs, about his bein’ the son of Oscar, the Duc de Nevers, and related to all the crowned heads in Europe.  Then he ups and signs the bail bond for a house and lot that he has never seen in his life.  And here he is up agin it.  An’ it’s a good stiff one His Honor will be handin’ out to him to my way of thinkin’, for these high fallutin’ foreigners has got to be put a stop to, and Charley Nevers is a good one to begin on.”

“I think you’re wrong, O’Toole,” said I.  “But we can tell better later on.”

All that day my thoughts kept reverting to the Duc de Nevers.  One thing was more than certain and that was that of all the various personages whom I had met during my journey through the world none was more fitted to be a duke than he.  I was obliged to confess that during my hour’s interview I had felt myself to be in the company of a superior being, one of different clay from that of which I was composed, a man of better brain, and better education, vastly more rounded and experienced, a cultivated citizen of the world, who would be at home in any company no matter how distinguished and who would rise to any emergency.  As I ate my dinner at the club the name De Nevers played mistily in the recesses of my memory. De Nevers!  Surely there was something historic about it, some flavor of the days of kings and courtiers.  Smoking my cigar in the library I fell into a reverie in which the Tombs, with its towers and grated windows, figured as a gray chateau of old Tourraine, and Charles Julius Francis in hunting costume as a mediaeval monseigneur with a hooded falcon on his wrist.  I awoke to find directly in my line of vision upon the shelf of the alcove in front of me the solid phalanx of the ten volumes of Larousse’s “Grand Dictionaire Universe du XIX Siecle,” and I reached forward and pulled down the letter “N.”  “Nevers”—­there it was—­“Capitol of the Department of Nievre.  Ducal palace built in 1475.  Charles III de Gonzagne, petit-fils de Charles II,” had sold the duchy of Nevers and