"Comedian!" I applauded. "Ah-ah—comedian!"
A sort of fury took him. All else forgotten, he jerked loose the collar of his jacket: made to spread it wide—checked himself and instead drew out from his breast an object for my inspection.
I had view of a miniature: one of those cherubic heads on ivory that relate to the model, perhaps, as a promise relates to a fact in this naughty world. Nevertheless I could trace a sort of semblance to that roguish front as it might have seemed in childhood—all ringlets and innocence, cerulean eye and carmine cheek—the whole encircled by a double row of pearls: Bibi-Ri himself.
"My title deed."
I was impressed. Impossible to deny a richness in this miniature. And while the likeness was thin the pearls were indubitable. Still—
"Blagueur!" I murmured. "Where did you snaffle it?"
Gloomily he regarded me. "You are like the others. Always while I was kicking about the gutters or the jail it was that way. No one would listen. Another of Bibi-Ri's jokes! And I lacked any clew to this trinket: my single poor inheritance.... But now—look! These queer signs on the reverse. They have been deciphered. Oh, an unbelievable stroke of chance! Of course I have much to learn. The name of the family. My own true name itself. But at least I am in the way of proof and this time I was going to win!... A famished man—a man famished since his birth, Dumail—is set before a boundless feast. Does he joke about that?"
"Perhaps not," I admitted. "Go on."
"But I am showing you what Life means to me!"
"And M. de Nou—?" I reminded him.