His epicurean formulary was the same as old Herrick's, and he would have paraphrased this poet's famous quatrain into Drink a pure claret while you may, Your "stiff" is still a-flying; And he who dines so well to-day To-morrow may be lying, Pounced down upon by Jews _tout net_, Or outlawed in a French _guinguette!_ Bertie was a great believer--if the words are not too sonorous and too earnest to be applied to his very inconsequent views upon any and everything--in the philosophy of happy accident.

Far as it was in him to have a conviction at all,--which was a thorough-going, serious sort of thing not by any means his "form,"-- he had a conviction that the doctrine of "Eat, drink, and enjoy, for to-morrow we die" was a universal panacea.

He was reckless to the uttermost stretch of recklessness, all serene and quiet though his pococurantism and his daily manner were; and while subdued to the undeviating monotone and languor of his peculiar set in all his temper and habits, the natural dare-devil in him took out its inborn instincts in a wildly careless and gamester-like imprudence with that most touchy tempered and inconsistent of all coquettes--Fortune.
Things, he thought, could not well be worse with him than they were now.
So he piled all on one coup, and stood to be sunk or saved by the Prix de Dames.

Meanwhile, all the same, he murmured Mussetism to the Guenevere under the ruins of the Alte Schloss, lost or won a rouleau at the roulette-wheel, gave a banknote to the famous Isabel for a tea-rose, drove the Zu-Zu four in hand to see the Flat races, took his guinea tickets for the Concerts, dined with Princes, lounged arm-in-arm with Grand Dukes, gave an Emperor a hint as to the best cigars, and charmed a Monarch by unfolding the secret of the aroma of a Guards' Punch, sacred to the Household.
Bertie who believed in bivalves but not in heroics, thought it best to take the oysters first and eschew the despair entirely.
He had one unchangeable quality--insouciance; and he had, moreover, one unchangeable faith--the King.

Lady Guenevere had reached home unnoticed after the accident of their moonlight stag-hunt.