“Oh, tell us,” cried Hope pleadingly; “what does he do?”
“It must be seen to be appreciated,” the Englishwoman replied. She was auburn-haired, generously proportioned, and rather stolid. Her tone was even more of a refusal than her words.
“I’ll tell you,” volunteered Edson glibly. “He has a special bowl twice the ordinary size and he plunges his whole face in it.”
“Horrors!” shrieked Mrs. Dickie; “he should be arrested for attempted suicide.”
“But he isn’t the most interesting personage here by any means,” Edson pursued, now thoroughly launched in the exercise of his _métier_; “have you noticed the sallow-faced, heavy-browed and long-moustached gentleman just three tables away, dining with the dark-bearded president of the Chamber of Deputies?”
“The man with that enormous, gorgeously jewelled star on his breast?” asked Miss Van Tuyl, leaning back and gazing over Frothingham’s shoulder. “Oh, what a brutal face he has!”
“It is the Shah of Persia,” announced Edson; and then he glanced about to revel in the effect of his revelation.
“He’s a beast,” commented Lady Constance, disgustedly, “though I believe his manners have improved somewhat since he was here last. Do you know when he was in Berlin some years ago he sat next to the Empress Augusta at a State banquet, and whenever he got anything in his mouth that was not to his taste, he just calmly removed it!”
“They say he thought nothing of putting his hands on the bare shoulders of the women he met,” Edson added.
“I saw the King of the Belgians as we came in,” said Mr. Van Tuyl, presently, as a waiter passed the _filet aux truffes_; “one sees him everywhere, eh?”
“Oh, yes,” Edson hastened to observe; “he’s as omnipresent as the poor. But did you see the woman with him? She’s the very latest, you know. Was a _Quartier Latin_ model six months ago and is now regarded as the most beautiful woman in Paris. _La Minette Blanche_, they call her. She has a palace on the Boulevard Malesherbes and as many retainers as a princess.”
“The old scoundrel!” exclaimed Mrs. Dickie, vindictively; “I don’t know which is worse, the Shah or he. He gained a reputation as a wife-beater or something, didn’t he? At all events I’ll bet the devil is keeping a griddle hot for him down below, and it’s pretty near time he occupied it.”
