“Of M. Platzoff I have very little to tell you.  Even in his own house and among his own people he is a recluse.  He has his own special rooms, and three-fourths of his time is spent in them.  Above all things he dislikes to see strange faces about him, and I have been instructed by Cleon to keep out of his way as much as possible.  Even the old servants, people who have been under his roof for years, let themselves be seen by him as seldom as need be.  In person he is a little, withered-up, yellow-skinned man, as dry as a last year’s pippin, but very keen, bright and vivacious.  He speaks such excellent English that he must have lived in this country for many years.  One thing I have discovered about him, that he is a great smoker.  He has a room set specially apart for the practice of the sacred rite to which he retires every day as soon as dinner is over, and from which he seldom emerges again till it is time to retire for the night.  Cleon alone is privileged to enter this room.  I have never yet been inside it.  Equally forbidden ground is M. Platzoff’s bedroom, and a small study beyond, all en suite.

“Those who keep servants keep spies under their roof.  It has been part of my purpose to make myself agreeable to the older domestics at Bon Repos, and from them I have picked up several little facts which all Mr. Cleon’s shrewdness has not been able entirely to conceal.  In this way I have learned that M. Platzoff is a confirmed opium-smoker.  That once, or sometimes twice, a week he shuts himself up in his room and smokes himself into a sort of trance, in which he remains unconscious for hours.  That at such times Cleon has to look after him as though he were a child; and that it depends entirely on the mulatto as to whether he ever emerges from his state of coma, or stops in it till he dies.  The accuracy of this latter statement, however, I must beg leave to doubt.

“Further gossip has informed me, whether truly or falsely I am not in a position to judge, that M. Platzoff is a refugee from his own country.  That were he to set foot on the soil of Russia, a life-long banishment to Siberia would be the mildest fate that he could expect; and that neither in France nor in Austria would he be safe from arrest.  The people who come as guests to Bon Repos are, so I am informed, in nearly every instance foreigners, and, as a natural consequence, they are all set down by the servants’ gossip as red-hot republicans, thirsting for the blood of kings and aristocrats, and willing to put a firebrand under every throne in Europe.  In fact, there cannot be a popular outbreak against bad government in any part of Europe without M. Platzoff and his friends being credited with having at least a finger in the pie.

“All these statements and suppositions you will of course accept cum grano salis.  They may have their value as serving to give you a