HE HONOURS THE GRAND DUKE.
EXPLOIT THE SIXTH.
HE HONOURS THE GRAND DUKE.
I.
WE MEET THE DUKE.
The character of my friend Bernard O’Hagan is a maze within a maze, a dædalian labyrinth, to the heart whereof I long since have despaired of penetrating. His sense of humour is acute, but peculiar. A man, he declares, who cannot laugh at Mark Twain is a man from whose soul the joy of life has departed. Yet his idea of bliss would seem to be existence in a Persian rose-garden with some few congenial spirits, and, for attendants, only Greek youths and maidens of flawless classic beauty.
Grotesque anomaly! For I defy any philosopher to reconcile the ideals of Petronius Arbiter, Omar, and Samuel Clemens!
“Alas, O’Hagan,” I say, “this world of ours is a grey place.”
But he turns to me in surprise, monocle raised, and studies my face with a certain apprehension.
“How can you say so, Raymond? Have I not repeatedly demonstrated that Romance lurks in hiding amid the most prosaic surroundings? Adventure, my boy, is for the adventurous! It is only the blind who deny the existence of fauns. I will undertake to find you a nymph in any wood. Villains profound as the darkest dreams of Tolstoy regularly take tea in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair; heroes loftier than Charlemagne jostle one in the Strand!”
Potential Cleopatras and Trojan Helens, I take it, abound in London. Only lacking is that clash of Circumstance and the Man, which, in history, has cast up such wondrous beings.