morning through the rain something of that same quaint personality seemed once more to haunt the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumiere.  I seemed to see the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of this “confidant of Kings”; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and sensed his furtive footstep whene’er a gendarme came into view.  I saw his ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps upon the boulevard, or, like a reckless smuggler, affronted the grave dangers of mountain fastnesses upon the Juras; and I was quite glad to think that a life so full of unconscious humour had not been cut short upon the gallows.  And I thought kindly of him, for he had made me smile.

There is nothing fine about him, nothing romantic; nothing in his actions to cause a single thrill to the nerves of the most unsophisticated reader.  Therefore, I apologize in that I have not held him up to a just obloquy because of his crimes, and I ask indulgence for his turpitudes because of the laughter which they provoke.

Emmuska orczy. Paris, 1921.

CASTLES IN THE AIR

CHAPTER I

A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER

1.

My name is Ratichon—­Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so bold as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing the value of my services to the State.  For twenty years now have I placed my powers at the disposal of my country:  I have served the Republic, and was confidential agent to Citizen Robespierre; I have served the Empire, and was secret factotum to our great Napoleon; I have served King Louis—­with a brief interval of one hundred days—­ for the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one, in the whole of France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking criminals, nosing out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as I have been.

And yet you see me a poor man to this day:  there has been a persistently malignant Fate which has worked against me all these years, and would—­but for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to tell you—­have left me just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I first came to Paris and set up in business as a volunteer police agent at No, 96 Rue Daunou.

My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer office where, if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their turn to place their troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the acutest brain in France, and an inner room wherein that same acute brain—­mine, my dear Sir—­was wont to ponder and scheme.  That apartment was not luxuriously furnished—­furniture being very dear in those days—­but there were a couple of chairs and a table in the outer office, and a cupboard wherein I kept the frugal repast which served me during