ugging the shore.

Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like a
true philosopher, he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, which
he took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, but
just so lightly that its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when he
had been a king of thieves and the most famous figure in Paris, he had
often received wild communications of approval, denunciation, or even
love; but one had, somehow, stuck in his memory. It consisted simply of
a visiting-card, in an envelope with an English postmark. On the back of
the card was written in French and in green ink: "If you ever retire and
become respectable, come and see me. I want to meet you, for I have met
all the other great men of my time. That trick of yours of getting one
detective to arrest the other was the most splendid scene in French
history." On the front of the card was engraved in the formal fashion,
"Prince Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk."

He had not troubled much about the prince then, beyond ascertaining that
he had been a brilliant and fashionable figure in southern Italy. In his
youth, it was said, he had eloped with a married woman of high rank; the
escapade was scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung to
men's minds because of an additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of the
insulted husband, who appeared to have flung himself over a precipice in
Sicily. The prince then lived in Vienna for a time, but his more recent
years seemed to have been passed in perpetual and restless travel. But
when Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left European celebrity
and settled in England, it occurred to him that he might pay a surprise
visit to this eminent exile in the Norfolk Broads. Whether he should
find the place he had no idea; and, indeed, it was sufficiently small
and forgotten. But, as things fell out, he found it much sooner than he
expected.

They had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled in high grasses
and short pollarded trees. Sleep, after heavy sculling, had come to them
early, and by a corresponding accident they awoke before it was light.
To speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for a large
lemon moon was only just setting in the forest of high grass above their
heads, and the sky was of a vivid violet-blue, nocturnal but bright.
Both men had simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood, of the elfin
and adventurou