Chapter FOURTEEN

Criminals I Have Met--Sarah Bernhardt Introduces Me to Madame
Humbert of the Humbert Millions--The Pale-faced Cripple
who was a Jewel Thief--I Meet Pietro Rossi, who Murdered
the Baroness di Vinadio--I am Suspected of being his
Accomplice!--Delloye, the Paris Bank-clerk, who Worked at
His Desk by Day, and Posed as a Millionaire at Night--My
Pretty Friend Gabrielle Sohet--What M. Paul Deschanel,
President of the Republic, Thought of Delloye.

In the course of my wanderings up and down Europe, searching for local colour and fresh ideas for my novels, and at the same time continuing to act as secret agent of Great Britain, I have mixed with all sorts and conditions of persons, both in the _haut monde_ and in the underworld of the great cities.

Who goes spying must often keep queer company, associating with swindlers, adventurers, _escrocs_, and undesirables of all sorts. The criminal world is at least exciting. To a student of crime and its psychology it is, of course, of intense interest. As one of the oldest members of the Crimes Club of London--to which I have referred in the chapter on my adventures in club-land--I have always taken an especial interest in the criminally inclined. Curiously enough, I seem to possess a magnetic attraction for criminals! Why, I cannot imagine.

In the years that I have drifted about the smart continental hotels I have had some strange and sometimes exciting experiences. Some of these adventures I have, I confess, recorded in my romances, thereby turning truth into fiction.

I well recollect one day being at lunch with Madame Sarah Bernhardt--who was my friend through more than thirty years--at her beautiful house in the Avenue Pereire, in Paris. The Divine Sarah, in that sweet, musical voice of hers, introduced me then to a short, stout, rather overdressed Frenchwoman, whose name I did not catch, but whose manner was that of a _grande dame_. We chatted together in the big salon, where with us were, among others, two of my oldest friends, Madame Zola and Paul Deschanel, who afterwards became President of the French Republic.

The stout lady was telling me that she had rented a summer château in Brittany, somewhere near Quimperle, and that she and her husband were leaving Paris in a month’s time. Before we parted she gave me her card, and expressed a hope that I would call and join one of her Wednesday evening parties. As I took her card I saw that her name was Humbert.

Acting on her invitation, I found that she lived in a magnificent mansion in the Avenue de la Grande Armée. Her salon was filled by smartly-gowned _mondaines_, Senators, Deputies, and financial magnates.

My hostess, in a magnificent black gown, with a wonderful necklace of pearls, greeted me effusively, and introduced me to the attractive daughter of Monsieur Lebaudy, the great sugar-refiner. Not till I began to chat with my charming little friend did I identify the name of my hostess, Madame Humbert, with the romantic story of the safe that contained nearly four million pounds, and which by the terms of a will she was forbidden to open.

That evening I was shown the huge dark-green safe, which stood in the corner of a small room at the back of the house, the two keyholes being covered with great seals of red wax.

As a novelist that locked safe interested me.

The mystery of the marvellous fraud of the Humbert millions may be half forgotten, therefore I will venture to refresh the reader’s memory. Thérèse Daurignac, a rather plain country girl, daughter of an evil-living old fellow of Bauzelles, near Toulouse, who claimed to be Count d’Aurignac, was often shown by her father an old oak chest. He was fond of telling her that it would, on being opened after his death, be found to contain documents that should bring her a great fortune and place her among the highest in France.

This impressed the girl, and no doubt turned her head, till she became one of the greatest adventuresses in French history. When her father died the chest was found to be empty! But in the meantime Thérèse kept up her father’s fiction. My friend, Mr. Barry Richmond, in a very able review of the case, says that among the wealthy folk in the neighbourhood who befriended the Daurignacs was the Humbert family, consisting of M. Gustave and Mme. Humbert and their son Frédéric. M. Gustave Humbert was Mayor of the district, a Senator, and a person of considerable distinction. Thérèse Daurignac’s first connection with this family was humble enough, she being employed as a washerwoman by old Mme. Humbert.

But the girl had her eyes open to eventualities, and she laid herself out to attract the attentions of M. Humbert’s son Frédéric, a law student. She contrived to surround herself with the air of mystery and romance that by a twist she gave to the legend of the Daurignac fortune. It impressed people, even the Humberts.

M. Gustave Humbert and his wife took up their residence in Paris, leaving Frédéric behind to pursue his law studies at Toulouse. It was Thérèse’s great chance, and she seized it. The Humbert parents shortly afterwards learned with mortification that their son was determined to marry his mother’s ex-washerwoman. The marriage took place in spite of all their objections, which were considerable, for Gustave Humbert was rising to the head of his profession, and was shortly to become Minister of Justice.

For two or three years the woman lived as an adventuress, when suddenly the Senator announced to his friends that his daughter-in-law had inherited an enormous fortune.

At first the amount of Mme. Humbert’s inheritance was given out as £80,000, but gossip increased it to £800,000, and finally it was popularly credited with being £4,000,000. That was the amount that Madame Sarah Bernhardt mentioned to me. The Humberts very cleverly accepted this gratuitous estimate, and £4,000,000 remained for twenty years the figure of the mythical fortune.

Details were soon forthcoming to substantiate the story.

According to Mme. Humbert, she was travelling on the Ceinture Railway one afternoon soon after her marriage when she heard groans proceeding from the compartment next her own. She climbed to it along the footboard, entered, and found an old man suffering great agony. She undid his collar, assisted him as best she could, and by the time the train reached Paris he had sufficiently recovered to leave the station without further help. Before he departed he made a careful note of his benefactress’s name and address, and told her that he was an American, called Robert Henry Crawford. This was the story all Paris knew.

It was not long after the railway incident that, declared Mme. Humbert, she received a copy of the old man’s will. He had died at Nice, leaving a fortune of £4,000,000 to be divided between Mme. Humbert and his two nephews on certain extraordinary conditions. One-third of the £4,000,000 was left to his nephew, Robert Crawford; one-third to Henry Crawford; and the rest to Marie Daurignac, Thérèse’s sister, who was still a child at school. Out of the inheritance the three legatees were to pay Mme. Humbert £14,400 per annum.

It was on no firmer basis than this extravagant invention that, says Mr. Barry Richmond, Mme. Humbert for the next twenty years was enabled to borrow sums amounting to about £3,000,000, to live the life of a _grande dame_, and to ruin thousands of people in all classes of French society.

But soon Thérèse showed the touch of genius that lifted her complicated series of frauds far beyond the level of an ordinary commonplace swindle. She invented an interminable lawsuit over the will, and in a few months’ time, with the help of her husband (and, as many people believed, of Gustave Humbert), piled up a huge mass of legal procedure that not even the lawyers could unravel.

The mythical Crawfords pleaded (through counsel, of course) against Thérèse. They lost cases and won them, appealed and were appealed against, paid heavy fees to famous lawyers, and wrote countless letters of instructions. This sort of thing went on for years, and to the ordinary mind it was proof positive of the Crawford brothers’ existence. Phantoms do not engage in long and costly lawsuits. It never seems to have occurred to anyone that Mme. Humbert was running both sides of the affair, that she was plaintiff as well as defendant, and defendant as well as plaintiff, that she was inspiring all the legal attacks made on her by the supposed Crawfords.

There, in the Humberts’ magnificent mansion in the Avenue de la Grande Armée, for all to see, stood the famous locked safe containing the £4,000,000.

It was when Madame Humbert was at the height of her success that Madame Sarah Bernhardt introduced me to her. Her father-in-law’s position as French Minister of Justice had, besides serving to induce confidence in his daughter-in-law’s pretentions, gave her the _entrée_ to the best Parisian society. Thérèse, the ex-washerwoman, had now become a _grande dame_, and was living on credit on a scale that no other swindler has ever approached. She was surely the queen of _escrocs_. She and her husband Frédéric Humbert entertained lavishly. How well I recollect those wonderful nights in her great flower-decked salons, where I usually met Zola and his wife and other French celebrities in art, the drama, and diplomacy. The most prominent members of Parisian society considered it the height of _chic_ and popularity to be photographed in company with their host and hostess, either at the races or at one of the country châteaux that the Humberts had bought and in which they constantly had smart house-parties.

The cleverness of that arch-adventuress has never been equalled. Financiers crowded about her and offered loans, while she exhibited to any sceptical persons big piles of letters purporting to be from the Crawfords, together with voluminous correspondence concerning the lawsuits that ever and anon cropped up concerning her inheritance.

Madame’s extravagance naturally necessitated a great deal of money, and at last a woman who was her rival in Society, a certain Madame Guilbert, set about rumours concerning the famous safe. People began to hesitate before they made loans, and slowly but surely the great Action so cleverly built up by twenty years of double-dealing was brought to a dramatic _dénouement_.

I remember a certain night when, walking past the Madeleine with Zola and a lawyer friend of his, the latter told us that Waldeck-Rousseau, the famous lawyer, who had been acting for one of Madame Humbert’s creditors, had been making very careful investigations, and had arrived at the conclusion that the whole thing was a colossal swindle.

“Surely not!” I said.

Zola laughed incredulously. He had been misled and bamboozled just as all Paris had been. Both of us had looked with awe on that great safe containing £4,000,000.

“Well,” said our friend, “you will see. Waldeck-Rousseau has been to the director of _Le Matin_ to-day, and has placed all his proofs before him!”

Surely enough, the famous lawyer had interested the _Matin_ to probe the great mystery of the safe, with the result that a series of trenchant articles appeared, and in the end a joint law-case against Madame Humbert and the bulk of her creditors was commenced. After many delays the judge decided, as the _Matin_ intended, that the only way was to inspect the contents of the safe, and he fixed a definite day for it to be unsealed and unlocked.

And, lo! when opened, the safe supposed to contain £4,000,000 was found only to contain a foreign copper coin _worth a halfpenny_!

It was on such security madame had obtained some £3,000,000, and ruined thousands of people!

Madame and her brother Romain Daurignac fled, but were arrested a few weeks later in Madrid and brought to Paris, where a long and sensational trial took place. During part of it I was present in court. Madame Humbert, when pressed, declared that the mythical Crawford was none other than Marshal Bazaine, the man who surrendered Metz to the Germans in 1870, and that the four million sterling was the price he received for his treachery. She further added that when she discovered the true source of the millions she destroyed the original will and all the bonds.

Such a fantastic story was, however, not credited, and madame and her husband were found guilty--“with extenuating circumstances,” strangely enough--and both sentenced to five years’ solitary confinement, while Romain Daurignac received three years and Emile Daurignac two years.

Surely it was the most colossal fraud ever perpetrated in Europe.

* * * * *

I frequently find myself in Nice about Carnival-time, for I served for several years on the Carnival Committee at San Remo.

On one occasion, while occupying my usual room at the Hôtel de Luxembourg, on the Promenade des Anglais--which I always do in preference to the far gayer and better painted ones, for I like quiet for writing, and can always go to the dancing at the neighbouring hotels. Paint means everything to a hotel, both here and everywhere else. White and pale green paint will convert a farmhouse into a country villa. I always look at the back of a hotel, and test the qualities of the kitchen. As an old traveller, I think I have acquired an unerring sense of hotels. They may put their photographs in Bradshaw, or in their local brochures, and may present themselves as “the perfect paradise,” but as soon as I cross the threshold and speak to the reception clerk I can sum the place up. And I am seldom wrong. The man who is ever travelling acquires the hotel-sense, whatever that may be. He knows whether after the soup will come the _lesso_. Perhaps my readers who do not know Italian will not understand. But your _chef_ of any nationality will, and will smile if you ask him.

But this is digression, for which I apologize.

Well, on that occasion, at the Luxembourg at Nice I noticed on the day of my arrival a pinched-faced, grey-eyed little man, with a despairingly sad expression, being wheeled out of the lift and in to his meals.

The figure of the poor invalid was most pathetic amongst all the gaieties of Carnival, the masked crowds, and the famous Battle of Flowers. So on the next evening I chatted to him, and he drew his chair up in the billiard-room, while I sat on the raised lounge. He was forlorn, friendless, hopeless, a gloomy but well-educated man. His name was Andrade, a Spaniard, but he spoke very good English. He was a lawyer in Bilbao before he was compelled to retire owing to his infirmity, he told me.

A week later I was suddenly recalled to London, and regretted leaving him, as we had become friends and used to chat daily. Indeed, I had several times walked by his side when his tall, thick-set male nurse pulled his bath-chair along the promenade.

One evening, about three months later, I came off the Calais express at the Nord station in Paris, and drove to the Grand Hotel. After a wash I went down to dinner alone, when I saw across the great restaurant, at a table in the corner, two very smartly-gowned young ladies, with three smart-looking men. All were laughing merrily over their wine.

One of the men I recognized instantly as my crippled friend Señor Andrade. He was laughing merrily, his glass poised in his hand. Then he set it down, and, after some words to the girl next to him, they all rose, and walked out of the restaurant.

He had evidently been restored to health by a miracle! But how?

The situation intrigued me, and what I found out was certainly interesting. While the two ladies and one of the men were staying there at the Grand, my crippled friend--who had discarded his invalid chair, and was apparently leading a gay life--was with his male nurse living at the Continental, while the other man was a guest at the Maurice.

I watched still further, and found that while the cripple of Nice and his male nurse were inseparable, and spent their evenings in the cabarets on the Montmartre, the little circle always met each morning for some discussion, and in secret. They met either at the Grand, or at the Continental, as though they were a party of visitors seeing Paris.

One morning I had lunched at the Brasserie Universale, in the Avenue de l’Opéra, and, on going out, I encountered quite unexpectedly my friend Brigadier Gilliot, of the Sûreté. As we walked together towards the Louvre, I told him of the mysterious cripple.

Early next morning with my café-au-lait the waiter brought me a note saying in French:

“MY DEAR LE QUEUX,--Please take no further notice of your
crippled friend. I will explain why, later on.--Your friend,
JULES GILLIOT.”

Two days later the waiter ushered him into my room.

“Well, my dear friend,” he said, with a laugh, “you have done us a very good turn, though you did it quite unintentionally. Your friend Andrade is, as I suspected at once, Léon Albacete, the most daring and expert jewel-thief in Europe. The moment you described him I had my suspicions, and went back to my bureau to look at his photograph. Yesterday a jewel-case belonging to the Duchess d’Ussac, and containing half-a-million francs worth of jewels, was stolen at the Gare de l’Est, and to-day, knowing what we do, and what was in progress, we arrested the whole gang. In the room of your cripple friend was found the jewel-case, with the whole of the contents. Albacete is a slippery customer. When resting, he adopted the rôle of invalid, and as a cripple he misled you thoroughly. He was not arrested without a struggle. He fired two shots at my agents, and one man has a bullet in his shoulder.”

He was sentenced at the Assize Court of the Seine to ten years’ hard labour.

Some readers may know the beautiful Villa Igiea Hotel at Palermo, in Sicily--that great white building facing the blue bay, where the clear, tideless Mediterranean laps lazily on the brown rocks of the long terrace.

The lounge, which runs the whole length of the hotel, has long windows, giving a beautiful view of the sea, and is carpeted in green, a soft carpet into which one’s feet sink as one walks. It is one of the most luxurious hotels in all Europe, where one may exchange the English winter for delightful spring.

In that lounge I met a wealthy, middle-aged Italian nobleman, the Count Ugo Rizzetti. The hall-porter whispered to me that he was one of the most wealthy men in Italy, for he possessed in Umbria the great mediæval Castello Rizzetti, and broad wine-lands around the neighbouring hills.

Your Italian nobleman is ever the same; elegant, well-dressed, extremely affable, with sallow face, and in middle-age usually grows a dark beard.

The Count was very popular among the ladies in the hotel. He had been there a fortnight when I arrived. In speech he was full of quick gestures, his eyes were dark and brilliant, and his face was rather sallow.

He was a heavy cigar-smoker, and always had excellent Havanas. He told me that he loved golf, and played frequently on the Florence course, and when he was in England he had played at Ascot with some friends named Walker.

Ours was quite a pleasant friendship. We took many long walks together along the picturesque sea-road to Arenella and the Vergine Maria, or up to Monreale, with its wonderful view across the sapphire bay, or perhaps to the summit of Monte Pellegrino. Then, before dinner, we usually took our _apéritifs_, either at the big Trinacria, on the Quattro Canti, or at the Italia.

Count Rizzetti was a charming man, more refined than most Italians, and he seemed quite well versed in Cinquecento art, and that of the Proto-Renaissance, of which I had very little knowledge. He evidently moved in the best Italian society, and talked to me of the Strozzis as his intimate friends.

One afternoon, after we both had been out at a picnic with Henniker-Heaton, of Post Office reform fame, I returned to my room, and was much surprised to find unlocked the leather despatch-case that I always kept locked because I had a certain private telegraph-code inside.

I knew I had locked it with my own hand. Who could have a second key?

I called the chambermaid, but she denied all knowledge of the matter. It was, to me, a most mysterious affair.

At dinner I mentioned it in confidence to the Count, and he seemed most perturbed that anybody had tried to penetrate into my private affairs.

That night, immediately after dinner, I went out to meet a lady at the Hôtel des Palmiers.

Next morning I had occasion to go to the General Post Office in Palermo, when, on entering, I saw the Count at the _guichet_ of the _poste-restante_, and, as I approached him from behind, the clerk handed him a letter that I saw was addressed, not to Count Ugo Rizzetti, but to “Signor M. Carava.”

I noticed that he was much confused at our encounter, but I took no notice. It was not a crime for a man to receive letters at a _poste-restante_ in a name not his own. I had done it myself. But, ever since I had mentioned the mysterious search of my belongings, the Count had seemed to have avoided me. Perhaps, however, it was only my fancy.

I saw little of him that day except at meals, but that night, while I was sitting alone in the beautiful palm-garden facing the sea, enjoying the bright moonlight and watching the brightly-lit mail steamer crossing the bay on its way to Naples, the _maître d’hôtel_ approached me, and in a low, confidential tone said:

“There is a gentleman at the front door of the hotel, signore, who wishes to see you privately. He prefers to remain outside.”

In surprise I rose and followed the man through the hotel to the front entrance, where I was met by a well-dressed, thin-faced, middle-aged Italian, who raised his soft grey hat, and, after inquiring my name, politely said:

“I believe you are a friend of the Commendatore Pavolini in Rome, signore?”

The stranger had mentioned the name of the Chief of the Italian Secret Police, who was an old friend of mine, and whom I had more than once assisted in some delicate inquiries.

I replied in the affirmative, whereupon he said:

“I am Questore (Chief of Police) of Palermo. The Commendatore sent me a telegram in cipher an hour ago, asking you to pack your things and leave this hotel at once. Go anywhere you wish--anywhere out of Palermo---to Messina, or across to Calabria. But do not remain here. He asks you to do this at once.”

“But why?” I inquired, much puzzled.

“Unfortunately, signore, I am not in a position to explain,” was the police official’s polite response. “Of course, our conversation is strictly private. When you leave here do not leave your address. The Commendatore will tell you the reason in due course.”

“But it is late,” I remarked.

“The express to Messina leaves at a quarter to eleven,” he remarked.

“Very well, I will go by that to Messina,” I said much puzzled. “I will stay at the Regina Elena for a day or two. Will you let the Commendatore know?”

“Certainly,” he replied, and, raising his hat, turned, and was quickly lost in the darkness.

During that night I lay in the _wagon-lit_ between Palermo and Messina, wondering why my friend had sent me that mysterious message. Signor Pavolini is well known in London, for at one time he was Commissary of Police at the Italian Consulate-General, after a brilliant police record as chief of the detective service in Florence.

Next evening the concierge of the hotel at Messina handed me a telegram, which I found was from the great police official. His words were: “_See newspapers--Pavolini._”

I dashed out and bought an evening paper, when a glaring head-line caught my eye: “Arrest of Pietro Rossi.”

Pietro Rossi! At last the assassin, who had been hunted for nearly a year, had been caught. Readers of the continental newspapers will no doubt recollect the sensational case. The Baroness di Vinadio, a wealthy old lady who lived in a great cinquecento palace in Bologna, was believed to have gone to Paris, for the servants had been sent on holiday and the place closed. When it was re-opened by a relative who could obtain no news of the Baroness, the body of the unfortunate lady was found on the floor of her dressing-room. She had, according to the medical evidence, been dead about three weeks.

A steel despatch-box, containing the Baroness’s jewels and a considerable sum of money and negotiable securities, had been opened with its key, and the contents extracted, while the whole place was stripped of its plate and pictures, among them a small ancient painting of S. Francesco on a panel about six inches square.

After much investigation two servants, the Baroness’s maid and a footman, were arrested, the little painting being found concealed at the house of the footman’s father, while among the maid’s belongings was a brooch that was identified as the property of the dead Baroness. The maid protested that the brooch had been given her by her mistress before she left for Paris.

The pair were tried and convicted, and, while the footman was sentenced to solitary imprisonment for life, the woman escaped with ten years’ penal servitude.

My friend the Commendatore Pavolini was, however, not quite satisfied. The trial had caused a great sensation, but, expert criminologist that he was, he felt that there was something further behind it all. After long and diligent inquiry he discovered that the Baroness had met in secret and been courted by Pietro Rossi, a good-looking, well-educated clerk employed by her lawyers in Milan. Perhaps this man was scheming to get the old lady’s money, but it is evident the woman was flattered by the man’s attentions, otherwise she would not have met him clandestinely, as she did. No doubt he proposed marriage to her and was refused. Whereupon he formed a deep-laid and diabolical plot. He knew that the brooch had been given by the Baroness to her maid, and, having first made the acquaintance of the footman’s father, a gardener, he took the little picture, and succeeded in one of his visits to the house to slip it behind a wardrobe.

Later he made a secret rendezvous with the old lady at the palazzo, after the house had been shut and everyone thought she had gone to Paris, as indeed she had done and returned to Bologna unnoticed. He calmly and callously murdered her, and decamped with all her property, disposing of the securities in Brussels a week later. He gained by his crime nearly twenty thousand pounds, therefore he assumed the title of Count, and led a life of luxury, while the innocent pair were tried and sentenced.

After six months, however, the maid and footman were suddenly released, and the police of Europe and America were raising a hue-and-cry for the lawyer’s clerk Pietro Rossi, who proved to be no other than my fascinating companion, Count Ugo Rizzetti.

It was not long before I learned that the mysterious visitor to my room was a police agent who was inquiring into my identity as an associate of Rossi; and my old friend’s warning was in order that I should be able to slip away from Palermo and not be called on to give evidence.

Rossi was tried at Bologna, and sentenced to solitary confinement for life. He died in his cell about a year ago.

Another famous _escroc_ I met was the Comte de Rebecque.

While I lived at the Château des Grands-Vignes, at Veneux-Nadon, in the Forest of Fontainebleau, Sarah Bernhardt, La Duse, La Belle Otero, and a number of Paris stage celebrities visited me on summer afternoons, while my life-long friend, Paul Deschanel, then President of the Chamber of Deputies, often motored out to me for a run in the glorious forest. I, in turn, often went to the artists’ colony at Barbizon, and there I first met the clever young artist named Gaston Deltour, who, by the way, afterwards designed several covers for my books. He introduced me to his very pretty sister Gabrielle, who had married a publicity-expert named Sohet. They often visited me, and one Sunday Madame Sohet, who was about twenty-four and a typically smart Parisienne, was accompanied by a tall, refined, dark-haired man, named Comte de Rebecque. I rather liked him. As we took tea together in the garden on the border of the Forest he told me that he had properties in Chile, but lived mostly in Paris. I quickly saw that he was a great admirer of my artist friend’s pretty sister.

They stayed till evening, taking me in their car for a run round the Gorge aux Loups, and then returned to Paris.

Two days later the pretty Gabrielle was missing from her home, while inquiries at the Count’s fine house near the Arc de Triomphe made it plain that he too was missing. It was evident that she had eloped with him.

A week later Paris was startled by a strange truth. The millionaire Count was in reality a Paris bank-clerk named Delloye. Most readers of these pages will recollect how this plausible young man led a dual existence, working hard in the bank all day, and posing at night as a wealthy nobleman, giving expensive parties and entertaining on a lavish scale.

At once a warrant was issued for the arrest of the missing pair, as it had been found that Delloye, whose salary was about two hundred and fifty pounds a year, had by a most ingenious system that astounded the experts in banking embezzled over four million francs belonging to the bank.

Next day it was discovered that the pseudo-Count had bought a fine steam-yacht at Havre, and, having engaged a crew, the pair had sailed away in it.

To this sensational story the newspapers devoted much space, and weeks elapsed before the yacht was heard of again, for she purposely kept out of the track of the shipping. Because of an accident the vessel put into Buenos Ayres, but its name had been changed and its appearance altered. Delloye and the pretty Gabrielle Sohet were arrested, and after long legal delays were extradited and brought back to Paris.

When Gabrielle faced her trial the jury found that on her part she had honestly believed her lover to be a millionaire, so she was released, but the pseudo-Count was sent to hard labour for a very long period, one that has not yet expired.

I remember discussing the case with Paul Deschanel in 1920, after he had become President, when, smiling, he said:

“Ah, Delloye was like so many others, _mon cher_ Le Queux. He ploughed the water, built upon the sand, and wrote upon the wind.”

Poor Deschanel! He was eight years older than myself, but first and foremost in all our students’ pranks on the Boul’ Mich’. He was at the St. Barbe College, and passed in literature and law. Elsewhere I have described our student life together, and I often reflect how strange it was that after our buoyant youth spent together, that I should drift into becoming a wanderer and a novelist, while he, always merry and irresponsible, should enter the cold austere officialdom of France, as _sous-préfet_ of Dreux, _secrétaire général_ of the Seine-et-Marne, then Deputy for the Eure-et-Loir, and so on till he presided over the destinies of France.

His untimely end, hastened by an imbalanced mentality, which betrayed itself suddenly in recent years, came as a great shock to me. I wrote at the time my reminiscences of him in the _Daily Sketch_. To him I was much indebted in many ways. He introduced me, after I had found my public as a novelist, to Daudet, Rostand, Willy, Baron de Constant, Foch, Emile Legouis, the Professor of English at the Sorbonne, the dramatic author Eugène Brieux, whose _La Femme Seule_ is so well known as a gem of dramatic art, M. Raymond Poincaré, and a host of others, whom I met, and some of whom I still meet each time I spend a few days at the Hôtel Chatham, in Paris, of which I have been a constant habitué for many years.