Arthur Carmichael was Irish.  He was born in America, educated there and elsewhere, a little while in Paris, a little while at Bonn, and, like all Irishmen, he was baned with the wandering foot; for the man who is homeless by choice has a subtle poison in his blood.  He was at Bonn when the Civil War came.  He went back to America and threw himself into the fight with all the ardor that had made his forebears famous in the service of the worthless Stuarts.  It wasn’t a question with him of the mere love of fighting, of tossing the penny; he knew with which side he wished to fight.  He joined the cavalry of the North, and hammered and fought his way to a captaincy.  He was wounded five times and imprisoned twice.  His right eye was still weak from the effects of a powder explosion; and whenever it bothered him he wore a single glass, abominating, as all soldiers do, the burden of spectacles.  At the end of the conflict he returned to Washington.

And then the inherent curse put a hand on his shoulder; he must be moving.  His parents were dead; there was no anchor, nor had lying ambition enmeshed him.  There was a little property, the income from which was enough for his wants.  Without any influence whatever, save his pleasing address and his wide education, he blarneyed the State Department out of a consulate.  They sent him to Ehrenstein, at a salary not worth mentioning, with the diplomatic halo of dignity as a tail to the kite.  He had been in the service some two years by now, and those who knew him well rather wondered at his sedative turn of mind.  Two years in any one place was not in reckoning as regarded Carmichael; yet, here he was, caring neither for promotion nor exchange.  So, then, all logical deductions simmered down to one:  Cherchez la femme.

He knew that his case would never be tried in court nor settled out of it; and he realized that it would be far better to weigh anchor and set his course for other parts.  But no man ever quite forsakes his dream-woman; and he had endued a princess with all the shining attributes of an angel, when, had he known it, she was only angelic.

The dreamer is invariably tripping over his illusions; and Carmichael was rather boyish in his dreams.  What absurd romances he was always weaving round her!  What exploits on her behalf!  But never anything happened, and never was the grand duke called upon to offer his benediction.

It was all very foolish and romantic and impossible, and no one recognized this more readily than he.  No American ever married a princess of a reigning house, and no American ever will.  This law is as immovable as the law of gravitation.  Still, man is master of his dreams, and he may do as he pleases in the confines of this small circle.  Outside these temporary lapses, Carmichael was a keen, shrewd, far-sighted young man, close-lipped and observant, never forgetting faces, never forgetting benefits, loving a fight but never provoking one.  So he and the world were friends.  Diplomacy has its synonym in tact, and he was an able tactician, for all that an Irishman is generally likened to a bull in a china-shop.