New Arabian Nights | Page 4

three of them myself since five o'clock."
"I am in the habit," replied the Prince, "of looking not so much to the
nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered."
"The spirit, sir," returned the young man, with another bow, "is one of
mockery."
"Mockery?" repeated Florizel. "And whom do you propose to mock?"
"I am not here to expound my philosophy," replied the other, "but to
distribute these cream tarts. If I mention that I heartily include myself
in the ridicule of the transaction, I hope you will consider honour
satisfied and condescend. If not, you will constrain me to eat my
twenty-eighth, and I own to being weary of the exercise."

"You touch me," said the Prince, "and I have all the will in the world to
rescue you from this dilemma, but upon one condition. If my friend and
I eat your cakes - for which we have neither of us any natural
inclination - we shall expect you to join us at supper by way of
recompense."
The young man seemed to reflect.
"I have still several dozen upon hand," he said at last; "and that will
make it necessary for me to visit several more bars before my great
affair is concluded. This will take some time; and if you are hungry - "
The Prince interrupted him with a polite gesture.
"My friend and I will accompany you," he said; "for we have already a
deep interest in your very agreeable mode of passing an evening. And
now that the preliminaries of peace are settled, allow me to sign the
treaty for both."
And the Prince swallowed the tart with the best grace imaginable.
"It is delicious," said he.
"I perceive you are a connoisseur," replied the young man.
Colonel Geraldine likewise did honour to the pastry; and every one in
that bar having now either accepted or refused his delicacies, the young
man with the cream tarts led the way to another and similar
establishment. The two commissionaires, who seemed to have grown
accustomed to their absurd employment, followed immediately after;
and the Prince and the Colonel brought up the rear, arm in arm, and
smiling to each other as they went. In this order the company visited
two other taverns, where scenes were enacted of a like nature to that
already described - some refusing, some accepting, the favours of this
vagabond hospitality, and the young man himself eating each rejected
tart.
On leaving the third saloon the young man counted his store. There

were but nine remaining, three in one tray and six in the other.
"Gentlemen," said he, addressing himself to his two new followers, "I
am unwilling to delay your supper. I am positively sure you must be
hungry. I feel that I owe you a special consideration. And on this great
day for me, when I am closing a career of folly by my most
conspicuously silly action, I wish to behave handsomely to all who give
me countenance. Gentlemen, you shall wait no longer. Although my
constitution is shattered by previous excesses, at the risk of my life I
liquidate the suspensory condition."
With these words he crushed the nine remaining tarts into his mouth,
and swallowed them at a single movement each. Then, turning to the
commissionaires, he gave them a couple of sovereigns.
"I have to thank you," said be, "for your extraordinary patience."
And he dismissed them with a bow apiece. For some seconds he stood
looking at the purse from which he had just paid his assistants, then,
with a laugh, he tossed it into the middle of the street, and signified his
readiness for supper.
In a small French restaurant in Soho, which had enjoyed an
exaggerated reputation for some little while, but had already begun to
be forgotten, and in a private room up two pair of stairs, the three
companions made a very elegant supper, and drank three or four bottles
of champagne, talking the while upon indifferent subjects. The young
man was fluent and gay, but he laughed louder than was natural in a
person of polite breeding; his hands trembled violently, and his voice
took sudden and surprising inflections, which seemed to be
independent of his will. The dessert had been cleared away, and all
three had lighted their cigars, when the Prince addressed him in these
words:-
"You will, I am sure, pardon my curiosity. What I have seen of you has
greatly pleased but even more puzzled me. And though I should be loth
to seem indiscreet, I must tell you that my friend and I are persons very
well worthy to be entrusted with a secret. We have many of our own,

which we are continually revealing to improper ears. And if, as