No such fateful issue as that involved in Caillaux's arrest hung upon the result of the trial of Bolo Pasha. But Bolo's whole career was a tragical farce, to which even Alphonse Daudet could scarcely have done full justice. Bolo was a Frenchman of the Midi: a Tartarin with the tendencies of a financial Vautrin: a fine specimen of the flamboyant and unscrupulous international adventurer. His first experience in the domain of extraction was as a dentist in the country of his birth. A handsome, blond young man of fine appearance and manners and methods of address attractive to women, he soon found that the drawing of teeth and other less skilled professions led to the receipt of no emoluments worthy of his talents. To take in a well-to-do partner and decamp with his wife and the firm's cash-box was more in the way of business. So satisfactory was this first adventure that he extended his field of operations, and several ladies had the advantage of paying for his attentions in the shape of all the money of which they chanced to be possessed. Somehow or other he found himself in the Champagne country during the wine-growers' riots, and continued to have a good time in the district while they were going on. But in 1905 the claret region proved more lucrative. For in Bordeaux the charm of his disposition produced so great an effect upon the widow of a rich merchant of that city that she succumbed to his attractions and married him. This provided Bolo with the means for setting on foot all sorts of financial enterprises in Europe and America. He thus became a promoter of the open-hearted and sanguine type, found his way into "society" of the kind which opens its arms to such men, had sufficient influence to become a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and by 1914 had lost all his wife's money and more into the bargain--was, in fact, in very serious financial straits from which he saw no way of extricating himself. Certain Egyptian friends he had made, who later obtained for him his title of Pasha from the Khedive, were not then in a position to help him. But Bolo without money meant a German agent in search of a job. It proved easy to get it. He notified the Germans through the Egyptians that he could do good service in France if only he were provided with plenty of funds. He was so furnished with hundreds of thousands of pounds. _L'Homme Libre_ said of him that he revelled in the prestige of having money, to such an extent that he believed that money was everything. Rather, perhaps, he had become so accustomed to indulge in pleasures and political and financial intrigues of every sort that he would run any risk rather than give up the game. So it was that he carried on the dangerous policy, if such it could be called, sketched above.