d a seat in the parterre, I may
say."

"I want that bracelet," broke in the soi-disant Jean Duval
unceremoniously. "The stones are false, the gold strass. I admire
Mlle. Mars immensely. I dislike seeing her wearing false jewellery. I
wish to have the bracelet copied in real stones, and to present it to
her as a surprise on the occasion of the twenty-fifth performance of
_Le Reve_. It will cost me a king's ransom, and her, for the time
being, an infinite amount of anxiety. She sets great store by the
valueless trinket solely because of the merit of its design, and I
want its disappearance to have every semblance of a theft. All the
greater will be the lovely creature's pleasure when, at my hands, she
will receive an infinitely precious jewel the exact counterpart in all
save its intrinsic value of the trifle which she had thought lost."

It all sounded deliciously romantic. A flavour of the past
century--before the endless war and abysmal poverty had killed all
chivalry in us--clung to this proposed transaction. There was nothing
of the roturier, nothing of a Jean Duval, in this polished man of the
world who had thought out this subtle scheme for ingratiating himself
in the eyes of his lady fair.

I murmured an appropriate phrase, placing my services entirely at M.
le Marquis's disposal, and once more he broke in on my polished
diction with that brusquerie which betrayed the man accustomed to be
silently obeyed.

"Mlle. Mars wears the bracelet," he said, "during the third act of _Le
Reve_. At the end of the act she enters her dressing-room, and her
maid helps her to change her dress. During this entr'acte Mademoiselle
with her own hands puts by all the jewellery which she has to wear
during the more gorgeous scenes of the play. In the last act--the
finale of the tragedy--she appears in a plain stuff gown, whilst all
her jewellery reposes in the small iron safe in her dressing-room. It
is while Mademoiselle is on the stage during the last act that I want
you to enter her dressing-room and to extract the bracelet out of the
safe for me."

"I, M. le Marquis?" I stammered. "I, to steal a--"

"Firstly, M.--er--er--Ratichon, or whatever your confounded name may
be," interposed my client with inimitable hauteur, "understand that my
name is Jean Duval, and if you forget this again I shall be under the
necessity of laying my cane across your shoulders and incidentally to
take my business elsewhere. Secondly, let me tell y