Vassili merely bowed and stood upright again.  There was something in his attitude of quiet attention, of unobtrusive scrutiny and retiring intelligence, vaguely suggestive of the police—­something which his friends refrained from mentioning to him; for this Vassili was a dignified man, of like susceptibilities with ourselves, and justly proud of the fact that he belonged to the Corps Diplomatique.  What position he occupied in that select corporation he never vouchsafed to define.  But it was known that he enjoyed considerable emoluments, while he was never called upon to represent his country or his emperor in any official capacity.  He was attached, he said, to the Russian Embassy.  His enemies called him a spy; but the world never puts a charitable construction on that of which it only has a partial knowledge.

In ten minutes Claude de Chauxville left the Concours Hippique.  In the Champs Elysees he turned to the left, up toward the Bois du Boulogne; turned to the left again, and took one of the smaller paths that lead to one or other of the sequestered and somewhat select cafes on the south side of the Champs Elysees.

At the Cafe Tantale—­not in the garden, for it was winter, but in the inner room—­he found the man called Vassili consuming a pensive and solitary glass of liqueur.

De Chauxville sat down, stated his requirements to the waiter in a single word, and offered his companion a cigarette, which Vassili accepted with the consciousness that it came from a coroneted case.

“I am rather thinking of visiting Russia,” said the Frenchman.

“Again,” added Vassili, in his quiet voice.

De Chauxville looked up sharply, smiled, and waved the word away with a gesture of the fingers that held a cigarette.

“If you will—­again.”

“On private affairs?” enquired Vassili, not so much, it would appear, from curiosity as from habit.  He put the question with the assurance of one who has a right to know.

De Chauxville nodded acquiescence through the tobacco smoke.

“The bane of public men—­private affairs,” he said epigrammatically.

But the attache to the Russian Embassy was either too dense or too clever to be moved to a sympathetic smile by a cheap epigram.

“And M. le Baron wants a passport?” he said, lapsing into the useful third person, which makes the French language so much more fitted to social and diplomatic purposes than is our rough northern tongue.

“And more,” answered De Chauxville.  “I want what you hate parting with—­information.”

The man called Vassili leaned back in his chair with a little smile.  It was an odd little smile, which fell over his features like a mask and completely hid his thoughts.  It was apparent that Claude de Chauxville’s tricks of speech and manner fell here on barren ground.  The Frenchman’s epigrams, his method of conveying his meaning in a non-committing and impersonal generality, failed to