The old Admiral shakes his head, but looks a little guilty.
“Yes, yes,” he says dubiously: “umbrellas! they are—they are—a little evasive. I think of them all the time, and then—in a moment—they are gone. It is marvellous, Your Majesty, marvellous how they disappear.”
“Last Christmas,” says the Emperor, speaking to the table at large, “the Empress gives him a beautiful new silk umbrella, with his name and address on it in large letters. What is the result? He sets off home taking his umbrella with him. How far do you think?” The Emperor thumps the table to emphasize the astonishing absent-mindedness of the admiral. “Why, he actually leaves it in the carriage that takes him to the station—leaves it in the carriage—loses it in the first half-hour of possession.”
The Admiral wears a shamefaced smile like a guilty schoolboy.
“But that wasn’t the end of it, Your Majesty—it was found again.”
“Found again!” shouts the Emperor, bursting into a roar of laughter. “Yes, you found it waiting for you on the doorstep when you got home, didn’t you?”
Some one had seen the forsaken umbrella and given it to a footman travelling to Berlin by the same train, who had left it at the Admiral’s house.
The Emperor always talks with great energy, and has a habit of thrusting his face forward and wagging his finger when he wishes to be emphatic. He has a very hearty, infectious laugh, and often stamps violently with one foot to show his appreciation of a joke. His characteristic attitude and manner of rocking incessantly from one leg to another and nodding his head as he talks make it easy to identify him in a crowd.
Sometimes he falls into Napoleonic attitudes, and occasionally attempts to pinch the ear of a particular friend.
On his face, whether grave or gay, stands out prominently the scar on his left cheek, made by the madman who once threw at him a piece of an iron bar. It is not a long scar nor very disfiguring, but the wound must have been fairly deep. An inch higher it might have done terrible mischief. It was dangerously near one of those bright blue, restless, twinkling eyes.