‘Who is that gentleman?’ asked Sutherland, glancing towards the next table, where a little bald-headed man, surrounded by many admiring friends, was trifling with the cruet. Sutherland had recognised the individual who, in the saloon of the theatre, had introduced the little anecdote of his amours in Constantinople.
‘What, don’t you know him? That’s Lagardère, of the “Plain Speaker.”’
‘Indeed! A journal, I presume?’ ‘The journal of the period, based upon the new principle of extenuating nothing and setting down everything in malice. Lagardère can tell you to a nicety where La Perichole buys her false teeth, how much money Mrs. Harkaway Spangle pays her washerwoman weekly, and when any given leader of society is likely to pawn her diamonds or elope with her cook. You know Tennyson’s lines—
A lie which is all a lie can be met with and fought with outright,
But a lie which is half a truth is a harder matter to fight!
Lagardère has achieved the complete art of so mingling truth and falsehood together that it is impossible even for himself to distinguish the one from the other. What wine will you take?’
‘None. I am a water drinker.’
‘Still! Well, you thrive upon the crystal draught. Hallo, what’s Lagardère romancing about now?’
As he spoke the gentleman in question was leaning back in his chair, and in his peculiar drawl, to the edification of his immediate friends and admirers, speaking as follows:—
‘When I was with the army in Schleswig-Holstein, the Hereditary Duke of Schlagberg-Schwangau lived in the same hotel, and there was an English girl stopping with him, disguised as a young officer. The Duke laid a wager that this girl would smoke more cigars than I could in the course of twelve hours. Bismarck, who dropped in by accident, held the stakes. We began at six p.m. and smoked on till four in the morning, when the girl gave in and had to be carried off to bed. I mention the fact because she was exactly the same height as the girl who acted to-night.’