I was presented to him while he was making his round before dinner on the first night. That clicking of heels business is highly effective on such occasions, but it is a perilous practice when you are adorned with hunting spurs; they have protuberances which have a way of catching. There is no getting over it--to find, when conversing with an Emperor, that your feet have become locked together and that if you stir you will topple forward into his arms, does place you at a disadvantage. An even worse experience once befell me when on the staff at Devonport a good many years ago. Our general liked a certain amount of ceremonial to take place before the troops marched back to barracks of a Sunday after the parade service at the garrison church; a staff officer collected the reports and reported to another staff officer, who reported to a bigger staff officer, and so on; there was any amount of saluting and of reassuring prattle before the general was at last made aware that everything was all right. One Sunday it was my turn to collect the reports and to report to the D.A.A.G. In those days cocked hats had (and they probably still have) a ridiculous scrap of ribbed gold-wire lace of prehensile tendencies at their fore-end--at their prow, so to speak. While exchanging intimate confidences with the D.A.A.G., the prows of our cocked hats became interlocked; so there we were, almost nose to nose, afraid to move lest one or both of us should part with our headgear. But he never lost his presence of mind. "Hold your infernal hat on with your hand, man," he hissed, and did the same. We backed away from each other gingerly, came asunder, and there was no irretrievable disaster; but the troops (who ought all to have been looking straight to their front) had apparently been watching our performance with eager interest, because there was a fatuous grin on the face of every one of them, officers and all. The colonel of the Rifle Brigade said to me afterwards that he trusted the staff did not mean to make a hobby of these knock-about-turns on parade, because if they did it would undermine the discipline of his battalion.