The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of fallen leaves....

May, 1900.

A KNIGHT

TO MY MOTHER

A KNIGHT

I

At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an old fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon.  Every morning at eleven o’clock, he would come down to the Place, followed by a brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it, and seat himself on a bench facing the casino.  There he would remain in the sun, with his straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart, his brown hands crossed between them, and the dog’s nose resting on his knee.  After an hour or more he would get up, and, stooping a little from the waist, walk slowly round the Place and return up hill.  Just before three, he would come down again in the same clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog outside.

One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him.  He passed through the hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the concert.  It became my habit after that to watch for him.  When he sat in the Place I could see him from the window of my room.  The chief puzzle to me was the matter of his nationality.

His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather; his jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows in his cheeks.  There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes were brown; and little white moustaches were brushed up from the corners of his lips.  The back of his head bulged out above the lines of his lean neck and high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped quite close.  In the Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met an Englishman, almost his counterpart in features—­but somehow very different!  This old fellow had nothing of the other’s alert, autocratic self-sufficiency.  He was quiet and undemonstrative, without looking, as it were, insulated against shocks and foreign substances.  He was certainly no Frenchman.  His eyes, indeed, were brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle—­not the red-brown sensual eye of the Frenchman.  An American?  But was ever an American so passive?  A German?  His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a modest, almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic.  Nothing seemed to fit him.  I gave him up, and named him “the Cosmopolitan.”