international and astonishing syndicate. And we were all ardent
Royalists of the snow-white Legitimist complexion--Heaven only
knows why! In all associations of men there is generally one who,
by the authority of age and of a more experienced wisdom, imparts a
collective character to the whole set. If I mention that the
oldest of us was very old, extremely old--nearly thirty years old--
and that he used to declare with gallant carelessness, "I live by
my sword," I think I have given enough information on the score of
our collective wisdom. He was a North Carolinian gentleman, J. M.
K. B. were the initials of his name, and he really did live by the
sword, as far as I know. He died by it, too, later on, in a
Balkanian squabble, in the cause of some Serbs or else Bulgarians,
who were neither Catholics nor gentlemen--at least, not in the
exalted but narrow sense he attached to that last word.

Poor J. M. K. B., Americain, Catholique, et gentilhomme, as he was
disposed to describe himself in moments of lofty expansion! Are
there still to be found in Europe gentlemen keen of face and
elegantly slight of body, of distinguished aspect, with a
fascinating drawing-room manner and with a dark, fatal glance, who
live by their swords, I wonder? His family had been ruined in the
Civil War, I fancy, and seems for a decade or so to have led a
wandering life in the Old World. As to Henry C-, the next in age
and wisdom of our band, he had broken loose from the unyielding
rigidity of his family, solidly rooted, if I remember rightly, in a
well-to-do London suburb. On their respectable authority he
introduced himself meekly to strangers as a "black sheep." I have
never seen a more guileless specimen of an outcast. Never.

However, his people had the grace to send him a little money now