“Madame Brandt,” said I, “the last thing to be astonished at is human ignorance.  Do you know that 30 per cent of the French army at the present day have never heard of the Franco-Prussian War?”

“My dear Simon,” cried Dale, “the two things don’t hang together.  The Franco-Prussian War is not advertised all over France like Beecham’s Pills, whereas six years ago you couldn’t move two steps in London without seeing posters of Lola Brandt and her horse Sultan.”

“Ah, the horse!” said I.  “That’s how the wicked circus story got about.”

“It was the last act I ever did,” said Madame Brandt.  “I taught Sultan—­oh, he was a dear, beautiful thing—­to count and add up and guess articles taken from the audience.  I was at the Hippodrome.  Then at the Nouveau Cirque at Paris; I was at St. Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin—­all over Europe with Sultan.”

“And where is Sultan now?” I asked.

“He is dead.  Somebody poisoned him,” she replied, looking into the fire.  After a pause she continued in a low voice, singularly like the growl of a wrathful animal, “If ever I meet that man alive it will go hard with him.”

At that moment the door opened and the servant announced: 

“Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos!”

Whereupon the shortest creature that ever bore so lengthy a name, a dwarf not more than four feet high, wearing a frock coat and bright yellow gloves, entered the room, and crossing it at a sort of trot fell on his knees by the side of Madame Brandt’s chair.

"Ah!  Carissima, je vous vois enfin, Ach liebes Herz!  Que j’ai envie de pleurer!"

Madame Brandt smiled, took the creature’s head between her hands and kissed his forehead.  She also caressed his shoulders.

“My dear Anastasius, how good it is to see you.  Where have you been this long time?  Why didn’t you write and let me know you were in England?  But, see, Anastasius, I have visitors.  Let me introduce you.”

She spoke in French fluently, but with a frank British accent, which grated on a fastidious ear.  The dwarf rose, made two solemn bows, and declared himself enchanted.  Although his head was too large for his body, he was neither ill-made nor repulsive.  He looked about thirty-five.  A high forehead, dark, mournful eyes, and a black moustache and imperial gave him an odd resemblance to Napoleon the Third.

“I arrived from New York this morning, with my cats.  Oh, a mad success.  I have one called Phoebus, because he drives a chariot drawn by six rats.  Phoebus Apollo was the god of the sun.  I must show him to you, Madonna.  You would love him as I love you.  And I also have an angora, my beautiful Santa Bianca.  And you, gentlemen”—­he turned to Dale and myself and addressed us in his peculiar jargon of French, German, and Italian—­“you must come and see my cats if I can get a London engagement.  At present I must rest.  The artist needs repose sometimes.  I will sun myself in the smiles of our dear lady here, and my pupil and assistant, Quast, can look after my cats.  Meanwhile the brain of the artist,” he tapped his brow, “needs to lie fallow so that he can invent fresh and daring combinations.  Do such things interest you, messieurs?”