uncommonly good dinners, and, although a bachelor (in Aureataland, at
all events), had as well ordered a household as I have ever known.
My gratification was greatly increased when, on my arrival, I found
myself the only guest, and realized that the President considered my
society in itself enough for an evening's entertainment. It did cross
my mind that this might mean business, and I thought it none the worse
for that.

We dined in the famous veranda, the scene of so many brilliant
Whittingham functions. The dinner was beyond reproach, the wines
perfection. The President was a charming companion. Though not, as I
have hinted, a man of much education, he had had a wide experience of
life, and had picked up a manner at once quiet and cordial, which set
me completely at my ease. Moreover, he paid me the compliment,
always so sweet to youth, of treating me as a man of the world. With
condescending confidence he told me many tales of his earlier days;
and as he had been everywhere and done everything where and which
a man ought not to be and do, his conversation was naturally most
interesting.

"I am not holding myself up as an example," he said, after one of his
most unusual anecdotes. "I can only hope that my public services will
be allowed to weigh in the balance against my private frailties."

He said this with some emotion.

"Even your Excellency," said I, "may be content to claim in that
respect the same indulgence as Caesar and Henri Quatre."

"Quite so," said the President. "I suppose they were not exactly--eh?"