"Bien! that is a good commencement. We will have enough for the whole dinner.... I listen...."
"To begin with, we spent two months in Denmark. Then I went to America to see my mother; then to Paris; then to the Riviera; and from Monte Carlo here."
"Monte Carlo," remarked the King. "That is a bad place. I have never been there. It is out of the circuit of my official duties," he added, laughingly.
"It is a very bad place, your Majesty, if you are unlucky in play; otherwise it is a lovely place."
"Of course you played at the tables?" the King said.
"Of course," I replied.
"And lost all your money," said the King, and laughed.
"No, your Majesty. I won. I won enough to bring away a hundred-franc gold piece which I keep as a fetish."
"Lend it to me! I need a fetish badly," said the King.
"Certainly I will," and prepared to unhook it from the chain it was on.