Not far from him, unconsciously seated above the radiator from which the warm air rose, blowing out the legs of his trousers, was the Prince de Waldeck. The Prince de Waldeck was what Pierre de Coulevain would describe as "Old France"; his face was wrinkled like the sole of a foot, and he wore a Lavallière tie, button boots and a coat of a "Club Agricole" cut; he never shook hands with anyone, and beneath a blustering demeanour concealed a heart of gold. With a certain bitter charm he could talk amusingly about anything because of his warped sense of humour. He was one of the last of the idlers, and belonged to a past generation: in the morning he fenced, in the afternoon he hunted about for seventeenth-century first editions and fortune tellers; he was the only man who still went to tea parties; in the evening he always dressed, even when dining by himself. One of his affectations was never to tell his age. When anyone asked him he answered "--ty-eight," smothering the first part of the number. He was known as Tyate. Not a day passed without his making a pun. He used to act as judge in the jumping at the Horse Show. He occasionally went to theatres but never to music halls or cinemas. In fact he represented a complete period. At the moment of Lewis's entry the Prince had just told how Madame Briffault, whom he had consulted that afternoon, had foretold that the greater part of his fortune "which he had hidden away in England" (as indeed he had) would soon be lost. "It's the fault of the financial 'International,' isn't it?" he asked, turning to an ex-Prime Minister for the time being unemployed, who blushed; he took any remark directly addressed to himself as a challenge, and kept himself modestly in a corner like a spittoon. "You see, Anglophile," he went on, addressing Lewis, "your beastly pound sterling...," to the great annoyance of Captain Montgiscard, himself an obsolete type of naval officer and art connoisseur, who was waiting to be asked to play Delage's _Hindu Love Songs_ on the piano, and who was running his bejewelled fingers through a tactile beard which was like that of a deep-sea fish. "My dear old Tyate," answered Lewis, "that is of no interest at all. What _is_ amusing is to do business. Whether it is in shells or English bank-notes, or depreciated stock, it is all the same. One is put into this world to gamble."