First it was Mr. Aminadab, who kissed his foot, and brought papers to sign.  “How is the house in Grosvenor Square, Aminadab; and is your son tired of his yacht yet?” Mendoza asked.  “That is my twenty-fourth cashier,” said Rafael to Codlingsby, when the obsequious clerk went away.  “He is fond of display, and all my people may have what money they like.”

Entered presently the Lord Bareacres, on the affair of his mortgage.  The Lord Bareacres, strutting into the apartment with a haughty air, shrank back, nevertheless, with surprise on beholding the magnificence around him.  “Little Mordecai,” said Rafael to a little orange-boy, who came in at the heels of the noble, “take this gentleman out and let him have ten thousand pounds.  I can’t do more for you, my lord, than this—­I’m busy.  Good-by!” And Rafael waved his hand to the peer, and fell to smoking his narghilly.

A man with a square face, cat-like eyes, and a yellow moustache, came next.  He had an hour-glass of a waist, and walked uneasily upon his high-heeled boots.  “Tell your master that he shall have two millions more, but not another shilling,” Rafael said.  “That story about the five-and-twenty millions of ready money at Cronstadt is all bosh.  They won’t believe it in Europe.  You understand me, Count Grogomoffski?”

“But his Imperial Majesty said four millions, and I shall get the knout unless—­”

“Go and speak to Mr. Shadrach, in room Z 94, the fourth court,” said Mendoza good-naturedly.  “Leave me at peace, Count:  don’t you see it is Friday, and almost sunset?” The Calmuck envoy retired cringing, and left an odor of musk and candle-grease behind him.

An orange-man; an emissary from Lola Montes; a dealer in piping bullfinches; and a Cardinal in disguise, with a proposal for a new loan for the Pope, were heard by turns; and each, after a rapid colloquy in his own language, was dismissed by Rafael.

“The queen must come back from Aranjuez, or that king must be disposed of,” Rafael exclaimed, as a yellow-faced amabassador from Spain, General the Duke of Olla Podrida, left him.  “Which shall it be, my Codlingsby?” Codlingsby was about laughingly to answer—­for indeed he was amazed to find all the affairs of the world represented here, and Holywell Street the centre of Europe—­when three knocks of a peculiar nature were heard, and Mendoza starting up, said, “Ha! there are only four men in the world who know that signal.”  At once, and with a reverence quite distinct from his former nonchalant manner, he advanced towards the new-comer.

He was an old man—­an old man evidently, too, of the Hebrew race—­the light of his eyes was unfathomable—­about his mouth there played an inscrutable smile.  He had a cotton umbrella, and old trousers, and old boots, and an old wig, curling at the top like a rotten old pear.

He sat down, as if tired, in the first seat at hand, as Rafael made him the lowest reverence.