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And last–and this is by no means a large class–the grave, dignified, self-possessed, well-mannered waiter; smooth-shaven, spotlessly clean, noiseless, smug and attentive. He generally walks with a slight limp, an infirmity due to his sedentary habits and his long acquaintance with his several employers’ decanters. He is never under fifty, is round of form, short in the legs, broad of shoulder, and wears his gray hair cut close. He has had a long and varied experience; he has been buttons, valet, second man, first man, lord high butler, and then down the scale again to plain waiter. This has not been his fault but his misfortune–the settling of an estate, it may be, or the death of a master. He has, with unerring judgment, summed you up in his mind before you have taken your seat, and has gauged your intelligence and breeding with the first dish you ordered. Intimate knowledge of the world and of men and of women–especially the last–has developed in him a distrust of all things human. He alone has seen the pressure of the jewelled hands as they lay on the cloth or under it, the lawful partner opposite. He alone has caught the last whispered word as the opera-cloak fell about her shoulders, and knows just where they dined the next day, and who paid for it and why. Being looked upon as part of the appointments of the place, like the chandeliers or the mirrors or the electric bell that answers when spoken to but never talks back, he has, unconsciously to those he serves, become the custodian of their closest secrets. These he keeps to himself. Were he to open his mouth he could not only break up a score or more of highly respectable families, but might possibly upset a ministry.

My waiter belonged to this last group.

I saw it in every deferential gesture of his body, and every modulated tone of his voice. Whether his moral nature had become warped and cracked and twisted out of all shape by constant daily and nightly contact–especially the last–with the sort of life he had led, or whether some of the old-time refinement of his better days still clung to him, was a question I could not decide from the exhibits before me–certainly not from the calm eyes which never wavered, nor the set mouth which never for a moment relaxed, the only important features in the face so far as character-reading is concerned.

I determined to draw him out; not that he interested me in any way, but simply because such studies are instructive. Then, again, his account of his experiences might be still more instructive. When should I have a better opportunity? Here was a man steeped in the life of Paris up to his very eyelids, one thoroughly conversant with the peccadilloes of innumerable viveurs–peccadilloes interesting even to staid old painters, simply as object-lessons, especially those committed by the other gay Lothario: the fellow, for instance, who did not know she was dangerous until his letter of credit collapsed; or the peccadilloes of the beautiful moth who believed the candle lighting her path to be an incandescent bulb of joy, until her scorched wings hung about her bare shoulders: That kind of peccadillo.

So I pushed back my chair, opened my cigar-case, and proceeded to adjust the end of my mental probe. There was really nothing better to do, even if I had no such surgical operation in view. It was still raining, and neither I nor the waiter could leave our Chinese-junk of an island until the downpour ceased or we were rescued by a lifeboat or an umbrella.

“And this nephew of the Sultan,” I began again between puffs, addressing my remark to the match in my companion’s hand, which was now burning itself out at the extreme end of my cigar. “Is he a new admirer?”

“Quite new–only ten days or so, I think.”