He has twopenny-halfpenny French prints of women with languishing eyes, dressed in dominoes,--guitars, gondolas, and so forth,--and tells you stories about them.
'It's a bad print,' says he, 'I know, but I've a reason for liking it.
It reminds me of somebody--somebody I knew in other climes.

You have heard of the Principessa di Monte Pulciano?
I met her at Rimini.

Dear, dear Francesca! That fair-haired, bright-eyed thing in the Bird of Paradise and the Turkish Simar with the love-bird on her finger, I'm sure must have been taken from--from somebody perhaps whom you don't know--but she's known at Munich, Waggle my boy,--everybody knows the Countess Ottilia de Eulenschreckenstein.

Gad, sir, what a beautiful creature she was when I danced with her on the birthday of Prince Attila of Bavaria, in '44.

Prince Carloman was our vis-a-vis, and Prince Pepin danced the same CONTREDANSE.