As music and   Survive not the lamp and the ,
The heart's echoes render
  No song when the spirit is mute—
No songs but sad ,
  Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
  That ring the dead seaman's .
—Shelley.
Captain Richard Claiborne gave a supper at the Army and Navy Club for ten men in honor of the newly-arrived military attaché of the Spanish legation. He had his guests largely from his foreign acquaintances in Washington because the Spaniard little English; and Dick knew Washington well enough to understand that while a girl and a man who speak different languages may sit comfortably together at table, men in like predicament grow and are likely to quarrel with their eyes before the cigars are passed. It was Friday, and the whole party had witnessed the drill at Fort Myer that afternoon, with nine girls to listen to their explanation of the manoeuvers and the earliest spring bride for chaperon. Shirley had been of the party, and somewhat the heroine of it, too, for it was Dick who sat on his horse out in the tanbark with the little whistle to his lips and manipulated the troop.
 
"Here's a confusion of tongues; I may need you to interpret," laughed
Dick, indicating a chair at his left; and when Armitage sat down he faced
Chauvenet across the round table.
With the first filling of glasses it was found that every one could speak French, and the talk went forward spiritedly. The discussion of military matters naturally occupied first place, and all were anxious to clear of anything that might be offensive to the Spaniard, who had lost a brother at San Juan. Claiborne thought it wisest to discuss nations that were not represented at the table, and this made it very simple for all to unite in rejecting the impertinent claims of Japan to be reckoned among world powers, and to declare, for the benefit of the Russian attaché, that Slav and Saxon must ultimately contend for the earth's .
 
Then they fell to talking about individuals, chiefly men in the public eye; and as the Austro-Hungarian embassy was in mourning and unrepresented at the table, the new Emperor-king was discussed with considerable frankness.
 
"He has not old Stroebel's right hand to hold him up," remarked a young
German officer.
" hangs a dark tale," remarked Claiborne. "Somebody stuck a knife into Count von Stroebel at a singularly inopportune moment. I saw him in Geneva two days before he was , and he was very feeble and seemed . It gives a man the to think of what might happen if his , Charles Louis, should go by the board. His only child died a year ago—after him his cousin Francis, and then the ."
 
"Bah! Francis is not as dark as he's painted. He's the most lied-about prince in Europe," remarked Chauvenet. "He would most certainly be an improvement on Charles Louis. But ! Charles Louis will live on forever, like his father. The King is dead: long live the King!"
 
"Nothing can happen," remarked the German sadly. "I have lost much money betting on in that direction. If there were a man in Hungary it would be different; but riots are not revolutions."
 
"That is quite true," said Armitage quietly.
 
"But," observed the Spaniard, "if the Archduke Karl had not gone out of his head and died in two or three dozen places, so that no one is sure he is dead at all, things at Vienna might be rather more interesting. Karl took a son with him into exile. Suppose one or the other of them should reappear, stir up and rebellion—?"
 
"Such are quite idle," commented Chauvenet. "There is no doubt whatever that Karl is dead, or we should hear of him."
 
"Of course," said the German. "If he were not, the death of the old
Emperor would have brought him to life again."
"The same applies to the boy he carried away with him—undoubtedly dead—or we should hear of him. Karl disappeared soon after his son Francis was born. It was said—"
 
"A pretty tale it is!" commented the German—"that the child wasn't exactly Karl's own. He took it quite hard—went away to hide his shame in exile, taking his son Frederick Augustus with him."
 
"He was surely mad," remarked Chauvenet, a cordial. "He is much better dead and out of the way for the good of Austria. Francis, as I say, is a good fellow. We have hunted together, and I know him well."
 
They fell to talking about the lost sons of royal houses—and a goodly number there have been, even in these later centuries—and then of the latest marriages between American women and titled foreigners. Chauvenet was now leading the conversation; it might even have seemed to a critical listener that he was guiding it with a certain intention.
 
He laughed as though at the remembrance of something amusing, and held the little company while he over a candle to light a cigar.
 
"With all due respect to our American host, I must say that a title in America goes further than anywhere else in the world. I was at Bar Harbor three years ago when the von Kissel that region. He made sad among the ladies that summer; the rest of us simply had no place to stand. You remember, gentlemen,"—and Chauvenet looked slowly around the listening circle,—"that the unexpected arrival of the excellent Ambassador of Austria-Hungary caused the Baron to leave Bar Harbor between dark and daylight. The story was that he got off in a sail-boat; and the next we heard of him he was masquerading under some title in San Francisco, where he proved to be a dangerous . You all remember that the papers were full of his performances for a while, but he was a lucky , and always disappeared at the pr............