Windsor Magazine/Volume 39/From the Collection of the Duke

FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE DUKE
By ANTHONY HOPE
IT was characteristic of the Duke of Belleville—and to many the trait will seem a graceful one—to attach no exaggerated importance to the antiques and curiosities which he had inherited from his ancestors or himself acquired by purchase. Indeed, he was accused of holding too lightly even things of real beauty or historic interest. For example, he gave the Queen Bess Flagon to a pretty girl whom he had never seen before and never saw again, just to please her—and himself. ("And two people better worth pleasing I can't imagine," reflected the Duke.) He presented his cousin, Lady Anastasia Vieilleroche—the name is pronounced Veelrock—with the shoes discarded by Marie Antoinette on her wedding-day as being too tight, though he well knew that her ladyship, having the family temperament and the smallest foot in London, would wear them—and wear them out—at her next dance, as in fact she did. And—but there is really no need to multiply instances of his good-nature, carelessness, or caprice, excusable only by the reflection that man's well-being lies not in the multitude of his possessions, but in the free play of the human spirit.
Yet he did

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