From the elevator we were emptied into a nineteenth century corridor, guarded by a twentieth century soldier and then we were turned by him into a waiting room.  It was floored with marquetry, ceiled with brown and gold decoration—­but modern enough—­and walled in old tapestry.  The room expressed the ornate impotent gorgeousness of a useless leisure class.  Four or five tables, cases and stands, backed standoffishly against the tapestry on the walls, and the legs and bases of this furniture were great—­unbelievably great, rococo gilded legs—­legs that writhed and twisted themselves in a sheening agony of impossible forms, before they resigned themselves to dropping to the floor in distress.

Henry nudged me as our Kansas eyes bugged out at the Byzantine splendeur and whispered:  “Bill, what this place needs is a boss buster movement.  How the Kansas legislature would wallop this splendeur in the appropriation bill!  How the Sixth District outfit would strip the blue plush off our upholstered friend by the elevator and send him shinning home in a barrel.  Topeka,” sighed Henry, deeply impressed, “never will equal this!”

[Illustration:  He wore a scarlet coat of unimaginable vividness, a cutaway coat of glaring scarlet broadcloth]

In this room we met a soldierly young prince, in a dark blue dress uniform, with a light blue sash across his shoulder.  He shook hands with us.  And he wore gloves and didn’t say, “Excuse my glove,” as we do in Kansas!  But he was polite enough for the Grand Duke himself; indeed we thought he was the Grand Duke until we saw Medill and the minister stalking through another door, saw the minister formally bowing and then we found that we had been moved into another room—­a rather plainly furnished office room, such as one might find in New York or Chicago when one called on the head of a bank or of an industrial corporation.  We had left the “days of old when knights were bold,” and had come bang! into the latest moment of the twentieth century.  We were shaking hands rather cordially with a kindly-eyed, bald-headed little man in a grey VanDyke beard, who wore a black frock coat, rather a low-cut white vest, a black four-in-hand rather wider than the Fifth Avenue mode, striped dark grey trousers, and no jewelry except a light double-breasted gold watch-chain.  He was the Duke of Genoa, who to all intents and purposes is the civilian ruler of Italy while the King is with the army.  We found four chairs grouped around a sofa, and we sat while the duke, with a diffidence that amounted to shyness, talked with us about most unimportant things.  The interview was purely ceremonial.  It had no relation to the passports we were asking from his government to visit the Italian front, though this request had made the visit necessary.  Several times there were pauses in the conversation—­dead stops in the talk, which court etiquette required the Duke to repair.  We didn’t worry about them, for always he began to repair these gaps in