air and gave him his chance.

He took it. With subtle flattery he recognized in me a powerful arm of
a corrupt Empire, which Empire he likened to the old man who rode
Sindbad the Sailor. He admitted my noble loyalty to France, pointing
out, however, that devotion to the Empire was not devotion to France,
but the contrary. Skilfully he pictured the unprepared armies of the
Empire, huddled along the frontier, seized and rent to fragments, one
by one; adroitly he painted the inevitable ending, the armies that
remained cut off and beaten in detail.

And as I listened I freely admitted to myself that I had undervalued
him; that he was no crude Belleville orator, no sentimental
bathos-peddling reformer, no sansculotte with brains ablaze, squalling
for indiscriminate slaughter and pillage; he was a cool student in
crime, taking no chances that he was not forced to take, a calm,
adroit, methodical observer, who had established a theory and was
carefully engaged in proving it.

"Scarlett," he said, in English, "let us come to the point. I am a
mercenary American; you are an American mercenary, paid by the French
government. You care nothing for that government or for the country;
you would drop both to-day if your pay ceased. You and I are
outsiders; we are in the world to watch our chances. And our chance is
here."

He unfolded the creased bit of paper and spread it out on his knees,
smoothing it thoughtfully.

"What do I care for the Internationale?" he asked, blandly. "I am
high in its councils; Karl Marx knows less about the Internationale
than do I. As for Prussia and France--bah!--it's a dog-fight to me,
and I lack even the interest to bet on the German bull-dog.

"You will know me better some day, and when you do you will know that
I am a man who has determined to get rich if I have to set half of
France against the other half and sack every bank in the Empire.

"And now the time is coming when the richest city in Europe will be
put to the sack. You don't believe it? Yet you shall live to see Paris
besieged, and you shall live to see Paris surrender, and you shall
live to see the Internationale rise up from nowhere, seize the
government by the throat, and choke it to death under the red flag of
universal--ahem!... license"--the faintest sneer came into his pallid
face--"and every city of France shall be a commune, and we shall pass
from city to city, leisurely, under the law--_our_ laws, which we will
make--and I