Guild looked him calmly in the eyes. "It was spelled Gueldres," he said.
"I see, I see. That _is_ interesting. Gueldres, Kervyn Gueldres. Why, it sounds almost Belgian. Let me see--if I remember--there was such a family inscribed in the Book of Gold. There was even a Kervyn of Gueldres--a count, was he not?--Comte d'Yvoir--Count of Yvoir, Hastière, and Lesse. Was he not--this Kervyn of Gueldres, many, many years ago?"
"I congratulate General von Reiter on his memory for such unimportant history as that of Belgium," said Guild, reddening.
"Oh, we Germans are studious in our youth--and thorough. Nothing is too unimportant to ignore and"--he smiled grimly--"nothing is too vast for us to undertake--and accomplish."
He lifted his hand to his mustache again. "Mr. Guild," he said, "at the elections in America you--ah--vote of course?"
The general, stroking his mustache, said pleasantly: "The Belgian nobility always interested me; it is so exclusive and there are so few families of the _classe noble_. Except for those ten families who are independent of Court favour--like the Croys and De Lignes--there seem to be only about thirty families who possess the privileges of the Golden Book. Is this not so?"
The general seemed gratified at this corroboration of his own memory. "And," he went on amiably, "this Belgian nobility is a real nobility. Once of it, always a part of it. And, too, its code is so rigid, so inexorably precise that it seems almost Prussian. For example, the code of the Belgian aristocracy permits none of its members to go into any commercial business, any trade--even forbids an entry into high finance. Only the Church and Army are open to it; and in the Army only the two Guides regiments and the Lancers are permitted to young men of the aristocracy." He gazed almost mildly at the young man: "You are in business, you tell me?"
"Oh! Then of course you have never been a soldier."
"Really! In what American regiment have you served?"
"In a militia regiment of cavalry--the 1st New York."
"How interesting. And--you have never served in the regular army?"
"Did you reply in the negative, Mr. Guild?"
"Oh! Then would you be good enough to reply?"
"Very well," said Guild, reddening, "then I have served in the--Belgian army."
