Castles in the Air | Page 2

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 Napoléon; 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. That apartment was not
luxuriously furnished--furniture being very dear in those days--but
there were a couple of chairs and a table in the outer office, and a
cupboard wherein I kept the frugal repast which served me during the
course of a long and laborious day. In the inner office there were more
chairs and another table, littered with papers: letters and packets all tied
up with pink tape (which cost three sous the metre), and bundles of
letters from hundreds of clients, from the highest and the lowest in the
land, you understand, people who wrote to me and confided in me
to-day as kings and emperors had done in the past. In the antechamber
there was a chair-bedstead for Theodore to sleep on when I required
him to remain in town, and a chair on which he could sit.
And, of course, there was Theodore!
Ah! my dear Sir, of him I can hardly speak without feeling choked with
the magnitude of my emotion. A noble indignation makes me dumb.
Theodore, sir, has ever been the cruel thorn that times out of number
hath wounded my over-sensitive heart. Think of it! I had picked him
out of the gutter! No! no! I do not mean this figuratively! I mean that,
actually and in the flesh, I took him up by the collar of his tattered coat
and dragged him out of the gutter in the Rue Blanche, where he was
grubbing for trifles out of the slime and mud. He was frozen, Sir, and

starved--yes, starved! In the intervals of picking filth up out of the mud
he held out a hand blue with cold to the passers-by and occasionally
picked up a sou. When I found him in that pitiable condition he had
exactly twenty centimes between him and absolute starvation.
And I, Sir Hector Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three autocrats
and an emperor, took that man to my bosom--fed him, clothed him,
housed him, gave him the post of secretary in my intricate, delicate,
immensely important business--and I did this, Sir, at a salary which, in
comparison with his twenty centimes, must have seemed a princely one
to him.
His duties were light. He was under no obligation to serve me or to be
at his post before seven o'clock in the morning, and all that he had to do
then was to sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well in the
courtyard below, light the fire in the iron stove which stood in my inner
office, shell the haricots for his own mess of pottage, and put them to
boil. During the day his duties were lighter still. He had to run errands
for me, open the door to prospective clients, show them into the outer
office, explain to them that his master was engaged on affairs relating
to the kingdom of France, and generally prove himself efficient, useful
and loyal--all of which qualities he assured me, my dear Sir, he
possessed to the fullest degree. And I believed him, Sir; I nurtured the
scorpion in my over-sensitive bosom! I promised him ten per cent. on
all the profits of my business, and all the remnants from my own
humble repasts--bread, the skins of luscious sausages, the bones from
savoury cutlets, the gravy from the tasty carrots and onions. You would
have thought that his gratitude would become boundless, that he would
almost worship the benefactor who had poured at his feet the full
cornucopia of comfort and luxury. Not so! That man, Sir, was a snake