hundred francs for cigarettes, at the bar of the private play rooms. She can't find anyone who will lend her money. Besides, she has frightful bad luck; she loses everything. These are fatal days for people of royal blood. I almost wept when I heard all her poverty and troubles, and felt that I couldn't give her anything more. The daughter of a king?"

"But her father disowned her, when she eloped with some unknown artist," said Atilio. "And besides, Don Carlos wasn't a king anywhere."

"Señor de Castro," replied the Colonel, drawing himself up, like a rooster, "let's not spoil the party. You know my ideas: I have shed my blood in the cause of Legitimacy, and the respect that I have for you should not...."

Novoa, wishing to calm Don Marcos, intervened in the conversation.

"Monte Carlo here is like a beach, where all sorts of wreckage, living and dead, is washed up sooner or later. In the Hôtel de Paris there is another member of the family, but of the successful branch, the one that is ruling and taking in the money."

"I know him," said Atilio, laughing. "He's a young man of calipigous exuberance and wherever he goes his handsome gentleman secretary goes with him. He always meets some venerable old lady who, dazzled by his royal kinship, takes it upon herself to keep up his extravagant mode of living.... Don't know what the devil he can possibly give her in return! As for the secretary, he gives him a slap from time to time just to assert his ancient rights."

Don Marcos remained silent. He was not interested in the members of that branch, not he.

"Also," Castro continued mischievously, "in the Casino before the war, I met Don Jaime, your own king at present. A great fellow for gambling! He risked thousand franc chips by the handful. He had a lot of money coming from somewhere. In the Casino they all used to say that it was sent him from Madrid, on condition that he should have no children and allow his claims to the throne to die out with him."

"And just to think," murmured Novoa, without realizing that he was speaking aloud, "that for both of these families, back there, so many men have killed one another. To think, that for a question of inheritance among people like that we have gone back a century in European life!"

"You too!" exclaimed the Colonel, provoked again. "A scholar, saying a thing like that! I can hardly believe 

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