"With his great powers of discernment, his energy, his qualities of decision and execution, his unexpected methods, his inexhaustible resources, M. Lenormand reminds us of the only man who, if he were still alive, could hope to hold his own against him: I mean Arsène Lupin. M. Lenormand is an Arsène Lupin in the service of society." And, lo and behold, M. Lenormand was none other than Arsène Lupin! That he was a Russian prince, who cared! Lupin was an old hand at such changes of personality as that. But chief detective! What a delicious irony! What a whimsical humor in the conduct of that extraordinary life! M. Lenormand! . . . Arsène Lupin! . . . People were now able to explain to themselves the apparently miraculous feats of intelligence which had quite recently bewildered the crowd and baffled the police. They understood how his accomplice had been juggled away in the middle of the Palais de Justice itself, in broad daylight and on the appointed day. Had he himself not said: "My process is so ingenious and so simple. . . . How surprised people will be on the day when I am free to speak! 'Is that all?' I shall be asked. That is all; but it had to be thought of." It was, indeed, childishly simple: all you had to do was to be chief of the detective-service. Well, Lupin was chief of the detective-service; and every police-officer obeying his orders had made himself the involuntary and unconscious accomplice of Arsène Lupin. What a comedy! What admirable bluff! It was the monumental and consoling farce of these drab times of ours. Lupin in prison, Lupin irretrievably conquered was, in spite of himself, the great conqueror. From his cell he shone over Paris. He was more than ever the idol, more than ever the master. * * * * * When Arsène Lupin awoke next morning, in his room at the "Santé Palace," as he at once nicknamed it, he had a very clear vision of the enormous sensation which would be produced by his arrest under the double name of Sernine and Lenormand and the double title of prince and chief of the detective-service. He rubbed his hands and gave vent to his thoughts: "A man can have no better companion in his loneliness than the approval of his contemporaries. O fame! The sun of all living men! . . ." Seen by daylight, his cell pleased him even better than at night. The window, placed high up in the wall, afforded a glimpse of the branches of a tree, through which peeped the blue of the sky above. The walls were white. There was only one table and one chair, both fastened to the floor. But everything was quite nice and clean. "Come," he said, "a little rest-cure here will be rather charming. . . . But let us see to our toilet. . . . Have I all I want? . . . No. . . . In that case, ring twice for the chambermaid." He pressed the button of an apparatus beside the door, which released a signaling-disc in the corridor.