gallantry with a lady of doubtful repute, would never have signed his
titular designation to a letter, and would have kept himself as much
incognito as he could. But this man was dead--had been dead some years.
He had not died at Vienna--never visited that capital for some years
before his death. He was then, and had long been, the _ami de la maison_
of one of those grandes dames of whose intimacy _grands seigneurs_ are
not ashamed. They parade there the _bonnes fortunes_ they conceal
elsewhere. Monsieur and the grande dame were at Baden when the former
died. Now, Monsieur, a Don Juan of that stamp is pretty sure always to
have a confidential Leporello. If I could find Leporello alive I might
learn the secrets not to be extracted from a Don Juan defunct. I
ascertained, in truth, both at Vienna, to which I first repaired in order
to verify the renseignements I had obtained at Paris, and at Baden, to
which I then bent my way, that this brilliant noble had a favourite valet
who had lived with him from his youth--an Italian, who had contrived in
the course of his service to lay by savings enough to set up a hotel
somewhere in Italy, supposed to be Pisa. To Pisa I repaired, but the man
had left some years; his hotel had not prospered--he had left in debt.
No one could say what had become of him. At last, after a long and
tedious research, I found him installed as manager of a small hotel at
Genoa--a pleasant fellow enough; and after friendly intercourse with him
(of course I lodged at his hotel), I easily led him to talk of his
earlier life and adventures, and especially of his former master, of
whose splendid career in the army of '_La Belle Deesse_' he was not a
little proud. It was not very easy to get him to the particular subject
in question. In fact, the affair with the poor false Duval had been so
brief and undistinguished an episode in his master's life, that it was
not without a strain of memory that he reached it.

"By little and little, however, in the course of two or three evenings,