"I met her in my quality as Prince of Syracuse. She first thought that Syracuse was the name of my father; when I had explained to her that Syracuse was the name of a famous town in Sicily, she asked me whether I belonged to the great family whose motto was _qui s'excuse, s'iracuse_. "On my answering in the negative, she exclaimed: 'But surely you belong at least to the Maffia? Oh do, it would be so interesting!' In order to please her I at once belonged to that society of secret assassins. However, I soon noticed that she thought the Maffia was the Sicilian form of a society for patriotic Mafficking. "When we became a little more intimate, she told me that I was never to speak of anything else than Syracuse. That would give me a certain _cachet_, as she put it, and distinguish me from the others. Accordingly I placed all my stories and occasional sallies of talk at Syracuse. I was the Syracusan. She swore my accent was Syracusan, and that my entire personality breathed Syracusan air. In society she presented me as a member of a curious race, the Syracusans, in Sicily, close to the Riviera. "One day she surprised me with the question whether the men of Syracuse were still in the habit of marrying two women at a time. She had read in some book of the double marriage of Dionysus the Elder in the fourth century B.C. I calmed her in that respect. I said that since that time things had changed at Syracuse. "On the other hand, I was unable to make out whether she was a divorced virgin, or a deceased sister's wife. It was not clear at all. When conversing with me alone, she was as dry as a Nonconformist; but in a drawing-room, full of people, she showered upon me all the sweets of passionate flirtation. "One day I told her that I had won great victories in the chariot races at Olympia. She looked at me with a knowing smile and said: 'Come, come, why did I not read about it in the _Daily Nail_?' and, showing me the inside of her hat, she pointed at a slip of paper in it, on which was printed: 'I am somewhat of a liar myself.' I assured her that I had really won great prizes at Olympia. "'Were they in the papers?' she asked. "I said, we had no papers at that time. "'No papers?' she exclaimed. 'Why, were you like the negroes? No papers! What will you tell me next? Had you perhaps no top-hats either? Do you mean to tell me that this great poet of yours--what you call him?--ah, Lord Homer, had no top-hat?' "I assured her that we had no hats whatever. "'Oh, I see,' she said, 'you were founded like the blue boys,--I see. But surely you wore gloves?' "On my denying it, she turned a little pale. "'No gloves either? Then I must ask you only one more thing: had you no shoes either?' "'No,' I said, calmly, 'some of us, like Socrates, went always barefoot, others in sandals.'