“Do you call it dear or cheap?”
“Dear, monstrously dear. If I were promised cream I should expect strawberries, but under those conditions I should receive nothing better than the leaves.”
“Have you ever shaken hands with a duchess?” I asked by way of keeping up the conversation.
“Why do you smile? Once I offered to shake hands with an empress.”
“And did she return the compliment?”
“Oh, no. The temptation to resist me was too great, so she refused; consequently she is serving a term of apprenticeship here. At the same time I offered to shake hands with an emperor, and the temptation not to resist me was also too great; consequently he is here too. Now if the emperor had behaved like the empress, and the empress like the emperor, there is no telling where they might have been.”
“It takes a very simple sin then to translate a man from earth to hell,” I remarked.
“Well, you see, so much lies in a nutshell,” she explained. “I remember when I shook hands with the emperor he forgot to release my hand. I think he was engaged on matters of state, so it was perhaps excusable. On that occasion I was wearing a toilet which was a simple creation of beauty, though made at home and without assistance. I remember my train was badly torn through his mental aberration.”
“But you had the other hand at liberty?”
“Well, you see it happened most unfortunately that the grand vizier (I think it was the grand vizier) had taken possession of my other hand, and he also was engrossed by state calculations. It would have been a pity to disturb two such eminent gentlemen from so sacred a reverie, so I waited, and afterwards they were obliged to pay the cost of the spoilt robe.”