Chapter I: Preface

This story, like its predecessor, has been written in those rare moments of leisure that an Indian official can afford. Bits of time were snatched here and there, and much, perhaps too much, reliance has had to be placed on memory, for books there were few or none to refer to. Occasionally, too, inspiration was somewhat rudely interrupted. Notably in one instance, in the Traveller's Bungalow at Hassan Abdal (Moore's Lalla Rookh was buried hard by), when a bat, after making an ineffectual swoop at a cockroach, fell into the very hungry author's soup and put an end to dinner and to fancy. There is an anachronism in the tale, in which the writer finds he has sinned with M. C. de Remusat in "Le Saint-Barthelemy." The only excuse the writer has for not making the correction is that his object is simply to enable a reader to pass away a dull hour.

Umballa Cantonments,
March 16, 1896.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

The Justice of M. de Rone.

CHAPTER II.

M. de Rone Cannot Read a Cypher.

CHAPTER III.

The Red Cornfield.

CHAPTER IV.

The Chateau de la Bidache.

CHAPTER V.

A Good Deed Comes Home to Roost.

CHAPTER VI.

'Green as a Jade Cup.'

CHAPTER VII.

Poor Nicholas!

CHAPTER VIII.

Monsieur de Preaulx.

CHAPTER IX.

The Master-General.

CHAPTER X.

An Old Friend.

CHAPTER XI.

A Swim in the Seine.

CHAPTER XII.

Monsieur Ravaillac does not Suit.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Louvre.

CHAPTER XIV.

Under the Limes.

CHAPTER XV.

The Hand of Babette.

CHAPTER XVI.

A Council of War.

CHAPTER XVII.

Maitre Pantin Sells Cabbages.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Skylight in the Toison d'Or.

CHAPTER XIX.

'Plain Henri de Bourbon.'