THE Russian ambassador put a monocle to his eye and then let it fall without a sound as his eye expanded in surprise.
“This I do not believe!” he muttered, to no one in particular. A second secretary, standing close by, stooped as if to gather up the remark and put it to his ear; however, he heard nothing. He raised his head and followed his master’s gaze.
Standing by the entrance with a glass of champagne in one hand and a pair of kid gloves in the other was Stanislaw Palewski, the Polish ambassador. But he was like no Polish ambassador the Russian had ever seen. In a face as pallid as death itself, his blue eyes flashed with interest: but it was not the expression on his face that astounded the minister of the czar.
Palewski was dressed in a calf-length padded riding coat of raw red silk, fantastically embroidered in gold thread, with magnificent ermine trim at the neck and cuffs. His long waistcoat was of yellow velvet: unencumbered by anything so vulgar as buttons, it was held at the waist by a splendid sash of red and white silk. Below the sash he wore a pair of baggy trousers of blue velvet, stuffed into flop-topped boots so highly polished that they reflected the checkerboarding of the palace floor.
The boots, Yashim’s tailor had said defiantly, were beyond his help.
But now, thanks to some judicious polishing of the ambassador’s feet, it was impossible to detect that the boots were holey at all.
“It’s an old trick I read about somewhere,” Palewski had remarked, calmly blacking his toes with a brush. “French officers did it in the late war, whenever Napoleon ordered an honor guard.”