My interview with him was chiefly remarkable for the number of unwilling but necessary falsehoods that I told; and I rallied him unmercifully when he told me that he had made up his mind that I had gone in the track of Madame de Mauban to Strelsau.

The lady, it appeared, was back in Paris, but was living in great seclusion--a fact for which gossip found no difficulty in accounting.

Did not all the world know of the treachery and death of Duke Michael?
Nevertheless, George bade Bertram Bertrand be of good cheer, "for," said he flippantly, "a live poet is better than a dead duke." Then he turned on me and asked: "What have you been doing to your moustache ?" "To tell the truth," I answered, assuming a sly air, "a man now and then has reasons for wishing to alter his appearance.

But it's coming on very well again." "What?
Then I wasn't so far out! If not the fair Antoinette, there was a charmer ?" "There is always a charmer," said I, sententiously.
But George would not be satisfied till he had wormed out of me (he took much pride in his ingenuity) an absolutely imaginary love-affair, attended with the proper soupcon of scandal, which had kept me all this time in the peaceful regions of the Tyrol.

In return for this narrative, George regaled me with a great deal of what he called "inside information" (known only to diplomatists), as to the true course of events in Ruritania, the plots and counterplots.