Copyright, 1896 and 1897 By S. LEVETT YEATS * * * _All rights reserved_.
FIRST EDITION, MARCH, 1897 REPRINTED, AUGUST, AND SEPTEMBER, 1897
TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK
THE CHEVALIER D'AURIAC
TO THE
CHUMMERY OF THE PALMS
I DEDICATE THIS, IN MEMORY OF CERTAIN
RED-HOT DAYS
S. L. Y.
PREFACE
This story, like its predecessor, has been written in those raremoments of leisure that an Indian official can afford. Bits of timewere snatched here and there, and much, perhaps too much, reliance hashad to be placed on memory, for books there were few or none to referto. Occasionally, too, inspiration was somewhat rudely interrupted.Notably in one instance, in the Traveller's Bungalow at Hassan Abdal(Moore's Lalla Rookh was buried hard by), when a bat, after making anineffectual swoop at a cockroach, fell into the very hungry author'ssoup and put an end to dinner and to fancy. There is an anachronism inthe tale, in which the writer finds he has sinned with M. C. deRemusat in "Le Saint-Barthelemy." The only excuse the writer has fornot making the correction is that his object is simply to enable areader to pass away a dull hour.