“Do you think your suspicions and vulgar curiosity quite apropos, St. Hilary?” I demanded vexatiously, as we turned from the door.
“Oh, thick of head and slow of understanding,” he retorted in wild good humor. “Do you think that I asked my questions without reason? I wanted to know if it were not better for us to postpone our explorations till after this precious ball. I have learned definitely that it would be quite useless. If Madame La Princesse goes to Paris immediately after, it is not likely that she will bother her head giving tourists or architects permission to explore her palace. As to forcing our way in afterward, you heard what the man said. For my part I prefer to enter the palace as a guest. We must resort to the jimmy and the dark-lantern as a last extremity. Certainly we must go to that ball.”
“Without an invitation, and costumes?”
“Assuredly not. And the costumes I have in my mind’s eye for you and myself will fit our figures to a marvel. You, the stolid pig, shall be resplendent as the Doge. As for me, I shall be bravely clad in doublet and hose as the captain of the guard. And behold, in that room yonder probably repose our costumes this very moment.”
St. Hilary had tossed his head to a window of a pretentious apartment on the second story.
“We are going to hire costumes from a shop?”
“What!” he cried in horror. “You have lived in Venice three years, and mistake the apartments of one of the most aristocratic families of Venice for a costumer’s shop. Fie, fie!”
“You are not going to steal the costumes and the tickets?” I cried in dismay. St. Hilary’s methods were always so beautifully direct and unscrupulous.
“I am not going to steal them. I am going, as it were, to squeeze the costumes off the noble backs of two gallant cavaliers I know slightly, and the tickets out of their pockets. Oh, they will gladly oblige me, those young gentlemen.”
“But why?”