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44 Mayol came on in act two, in the burlesque make-up of a Russian aristocrat which was a farcical mingling of whiskers, sable furs, vodka bottles, ikons, and an obligato knout, did a Cossack dance with Argentine excrescences and George-cohanesque frills, and introduced himself to the audience with a tense, cavernous "Sh-sh! I am Pavel Narodkine, the great Moscovite enigma!" after which he peered right and left with all the time-hallowed stage business of a conspirator, caused his legs and his whiskers to shiver violently, whipped the property calves of the chorus girls with his property knout, and then danced off to the pizzicato of a dozen balalaikas which were striving to syncopate the Russian national anthem.

Thus the beginning; and the boulevards caught the ball of rumor and mystery which Mayol had tossed in the air. They gilded and tinseled and embossed it. They flung it wide and caught it again.

The next morning, cut in below a screaming bit of editorial hysterics which accused the ministry of having sold the country to the freemasons, the atheists, and the stock exchange, the royalist Gaulois brought half a dozen lines about Prince Pavel Narodkine speaking with pontifical unction about