"My hands were very full," said the baron, displaying his stumpy fingers. "I received patients in this house; I had what you call many irons in ze fire. I was making napoleons then, I don't mind telling you, as fast as a man could run bullets. My minutes counted by the crown. It was in the month of May, 1844, late at night, a man called here, wanting to consult me. He called himself Herr von Konigsmark. I went down and saw him in my audience room. He knew I was to be depended upon. Such people tell one another who may be trusted. He told me he was an Austrian proscribed: very good. He proposed to place himself in my hands: very well. I looked him in the face--you have _there_ exactly what I saw." He extended his hand toward the mask of Yelland Mace. "'You are an Austrian,' I said, 'a native subject of the empire?' "'Yes.' "'Italian?' "'No.' "'Hungarian?' "'No.' "'Well, you are not _German_--ha, ha!--I can swear to that.' "He was speaking to me in German. "'Your accent is foreign. Come, confidence. You must be no impostor. I must make no mistake, and blunder into a national type of features, all wrong; if I make your mask, it must do us credit. I know many gentlemen's secrets, and as many ladies' secrets. A man of honour! What are you afraid of?'" "You were not a statuary?" said Uncle David, astonished at his versatility. "Oh, yes! A statuary, but only in grotesque, you understand. I will show you some of my work by-and-by." "And I shall perhaps understand." "You _shall_, _perfectly_. With some reluctance, then, he admitted that what I positively asserted was true; for I told him I knew from his accent he was an Englishman. Then, with some little pressure, I invited him to tell his name. He did--it was Yelland Mace. _That_ is Yelland Mace." He had now finished his pipe: he went over to the chimney-piece, and having knocked out the ashes, and with his pipe pointing to the tip of the long thin plaster nose, he said, "Look well at him. Look till you know all his features by rote. Look till you fix them for the rest of your days well in memory, and then say what in the devil's name you could make of them. Look at that high nose, as thin as a fish-knife. Look at the line of the mouth and chin; see the mild gentlemanlike contour. If you find a fellow with a flat nose, and a pair of upper tusks sticking out an inch, and a squint that turns out one eye like the white of an egg, you pull out the tusks, you raise the skin of the nose, slice a bit out of the cheek, and make a false bridge, as high as you please; heal the cheek with a stitch or two, and operate with the lancet for the squint, and your bust is complete. Bravo! you understand?" "I confess, Baron, I do not." "You shall, however. Here is the case--a political refugee, like Monsieur Yelland Mace----" "But he was no such thing."