"Not at all!" The duke is taking the whole thing as an affront to his generosity. He speaks in the unhurried, dignified cadences of a man who is mentally thumbing through a German-English dictionary. "Even setting aside my own. . . patriotic obligations. . . cheerfully accepted, of course. . . it has almost become almost. . . terribly fashionable to have a whole. . . crew. . . of. . . uniformed fellows and whatnot running around in one’s. . . pantry.