“I think I understand you,” said he, with a cunning expression in his half-closed eyes. “You go in for being a 'character.' Haven't I hit it? You want to be thought a strange, eccentric sort of fellow. Now there was a time the world had a taste for that kind of thing. Romeo Coates, and Brummel, and that Irish fellow that walked to Jerusalem, and half-a-dozen others, used to amuse the town in those days, but it's all as much bygone now as starched neckcloths and Hessian boots. Ours is an age of paletots and easy manners, and you are trying to revive what our grandfathers discarded and got rid of. It won't do, Pottinger; it will not.”
“I am not Pottinger; my name is Algernon Sydney Potts.”
“Ah! there's the mischief all out at last. What could come of such a collocation of names but a life of incongruity and absurdity! You owe all your griefs to your godfathers, Potts. If they 'd have called you Peter, you 'd have been a well-conducted poor creature. Well, I'm to give you a passport. Where do you wish to go?”
“I wish, first of all, to go to Como.”
“I think I know why. But you're on a wrong cast there. They have left that long since.”
“Indeed, and for what place?”
“They 've gone to pass the winter at Malta. Mamma Keats required a dry, warm climate, and you 'll find them at a little country-house about a mile from Valetta; the Jasmines, I think it's called. I have a brother quartered in the island, and he tells me he has seen them, but they won't receive visits, nor go out anywhere. But, of course, a Royal Highness is always sure of a welcome. Prince Potts is an 'Open, sesame!' wherever he goes.”
“What atrocious tobacco this is of yours, Buller!” said I, taking a cigar from his case as it lay on the table. “I suppose that you small fry of diplomacy cannot get things in duty free, eh?”
“Try this cheroot; you 'll find it better,” said he, opening a secret pocket in the case.
“Nothing to boast of,” said I, puffing away, while he continued to fill up the blanks in my passport.