“And my qualities?” asked the other, haughtily.
“As you please, sir.”
The stranger took the pen, and wrote “Milo M'Caskey, Count of the two Sicilies, Knight of various orders, and Knight-postulate of St. John of Jerusalem, &c. &c.”
“Your Excellency has not added your address,” said the clerk, obsequiously.
“The Tuileries when in Paris, Zarkoe-Zeloe when in Russia. Usually incog, in England, I reside in a cottage near Osborne. When at this side of the Alps, wherever be the royal residence of the Sovereign in the city I chance to be in.” He turned to retire, and then, suddenly wheeling round, said, “Forward any letters that may come for me to my relative, who is now at the Trombetta, Turin.”
“Your Excellency has forgotten to mention his name.”
“So I have,” said he, with a careless laugh. “It is somewhat new to me to be in a town where I am unknown. Address my letters to the care of his Highness the Duke of Lauenburg-Gluckstein;” and with a little gesture of his hand to imply that he did not exact any royal honors at his departure, he strutted out of the bank and down the street.
Few met or passed without turning to remark him, such was the contrast between his stature and his gait; for while considerably below the middle size, there was an insolent pretension in his swagger, a defiant impertinence in the stare of his fiery eyes, that seemed to seek a quarrel with each that looked at him. His was indeed that sense of overflowing prosperity that, if it occasionally inclines the right-minded to a feeling of gratitude and thankfulness, is just as certain to impel the men of a different stamp to feats of aggressiveness and insolence. Such was indeed his mood, and he would have hailed as the best boon of Fate the occasion for a quarrel and a duel.
The contempt he felt for the busy world that moved by, too deep in its own cares to interpret the defiance he threw around him, so elevated him that he swaggered along as if the flagway were all his own.
Was he not triumphant? What had not gone well with him? Gold in his pocket, success in a personal combat with a man so highly placed that it was a distinction to him for life to have encountered; the very peremptory order he received to quit Naples at once, was a recognition of his importance that actually overwhelmed him with delight; and he saw in the vista before him, the time when men would stop at the windows of printshops to gaze on the features of “Le fameux M'Caskey.”