It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this volume,
and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor: the first series of NEW
ARABIAN NIGHTS. The loss is yours—and mine; or to be more exact, my
publishers’. But if you are thus unlucky, the least I can do is to pass
you a hint. When you shall find a reference in the following pages to
one Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert Street, Soho,
you must be prepared to recognise, under his features, no less a person
than Prince Florizel of Bohemia, formerly one of the magnates of Europe,
now dethroned, exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the tobacco trade.