me, however. One morning near the end of last July, they decreed that
I should pass through Half Moon Street and meet there a friend who
should ask me to go with him to his club and watch for the results of
the racing at Goodwood. This club includes hardly any member who is
not a devotee of the Turf, so that, when we entered it, the cloak-room
displayed long rows of unburdened pegs--save where one hat shone. None
but that illustrious dandy, Lord X., wears quite so broad a brim as
this hat had. I said that Lord X. must be in the club.

`I conceive he is too nervous to be on the course,' my friend replied.
`They say he has plunged up to the hilt on to-day's running.'

His lordship was indeed there, fingering feverishly the sinuous
ribands of the tape-machine. I sat at a little distance, watching him.
Two results straggled forth within an hour, and, at the second of
these, I saw with wonder Lord X.'s linen actually flush for a moment
and then turn deadly pale. I looked again and saw that his boots had
lost their lustre. Drawing nearer, I found that grey hairs had begun
to show themselves in his raven coat. It was very painful and yet, to
me, very gratifying. In the cloak-room, when I went for my own hat and
cane, there was the hat with the broad brim, and (lo!) over its iron-
blue surface little furrows had been ploughed by Despair.

Rouen, 1896.


A Good Prince

I first saw him one morning of last summer, in the Green Park. Though
short, even insignificant, in stature and with an obvious tendency to