Chauvenet was now leading the conversation; it might even have seemed to a critical listener that he was guiding it with a certain intention.
He laughed as though at the remembrance of something amusing, and held the little company while he bent over a candle to light a cigar.
"With all due respect to our American host, I must say that a title in America goes further than anywhere else in the world.

I was at Bar Harbor three years ago when the Baron von Kissel devastated that region.

He made sad havoc among the ladies that summer; the rest of us simply had no place to stand.

You remember, gentlemen,"-- and Chauvenet looked slowly around the listening circle,--"that the unexpected arrival of the excellent Ambassador of Austria-Hungary caused the Baron to leave Bar Harbor between dark and daylight.

The story was that he got off in a sail-boat; and the next we heard of him he was masquerading under some title in San Francisco, where he proved to be a dangerous forger.