My name is Ratichon--Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so
bold as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing
the value of my services to the State. For twenty years now have I
placed my powers at the disposal of my country: I have served the
Republic, and was confidential agent to Citizen Robespierre; I have
served the Empire, and was secret factotum to our great Napoleon; I
have served King Louis--with a brief interval of one hundred days--
for the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one, in the
whole of France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking
criminals, nosing out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as I have
been.
And yet you see me a poor man to this day: there has been a
persistently malignant Fate which has worked against me all these
years, and would--but for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to
tell you--have left me just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I
first came to Paris and set up in business as a volunteer police agent
at No, 96 Rue Daunou.
My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer
office where, if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their
turn to place their troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the
acutest brain in France, and an inner room wherein that same acute
brain--mine, my dear Sir--was wont to ponder and scheme