“The thing is preposterous.”

“As your excellency has already declared.”

“What has it to do with France?”

“Much or little.  It depends upon this side of the Rhine.”

“What imagination!  But for your credentials, Monsieur Ferraud, I should not listen to you one moment.”

“I have seen some documents.”

“Forgeries!” contemptuously.

“Not in the least,” suavely.  “They are in every part genuine.  They are his own.”

The chancellor paused, frowning.  “Well, even then?”

Monsieur Ferraud shrugged.

“This fellow, who was forced to resign from the navy because of his tricks at cards, why I doubt if he could stir up a brawl in a tavern.  Really, if there was a word of truth in the affair, we should have acted before this.  It is all idle newspaper talk that Germany wishes war; far from it.  Still, we lose no point to fortify ourselves against the possibility of it.  Some one has been telling you old-wives’ tales.”

“Ten thousand marks,” almost inaudibly.

“What was that you said?” cried the chancellor, whirling round abruptly, for the words startled him.

“Pardon me!  I was thinking out loud about a sum of money.”

“Ah!” And yet the chancellor realized that the other was telling him as plainly as he dared that the German government had offered such a sum to forward the very intrigue which he was so emphatically denying.  “Why not turn the matter over to your own ambassador here?”

The secret agent laughed.  “Publicity is what neither your government nor mine desires.  Thank you.”

“I am sorry not to be of some service to you.”

“I can readily believe that, your excellency,” not to be outdone in the matter of duplicity.  “I thank you for your time.”

“I hadn’t the least idea that you were in the service; butterflies and diplomacy!” with a hearty laugh.

“It is only temporary.”

“Your Alpine Butterflies compares favorably with The Life of the Bee.”

“That is a very great compliment!”

And with this the interview, extraordinary in all ways, came to an end.  Neither man had fooled the other, neither had made any mistake in his logical deductions; and, in a way, both were satisfied.  The chancellor resumed his more definite labors, and the secret agent hurried away to the nearest telegraph office.

“So I am to stand on these two feet?” Monsieur Ferraud ruminated, as he took the seat by the window in the second-class carriage for Munich.  “All the finer the sport.  Ten thousand marks!  He forgot himself for a moment.  And I might have gone further and said that ninety thousand marks would be added to those ten thousand if the bribe was accepted and the promise fulfilled.”