Mira Descartes! She was the kind of woman of whom people like to say that she would have made a great actress. Actress? I do not know. But she was an artist at dissembling. And she had beauty that turned the heads of more than the “Reds” upon whom she spied; and a genius for hatred: a cold hatred that cleared the brain and enabled her to give even her body to men she despised in order the better to betray them. I was fortunate in securing her aid, I told myself; and I did not hesitate to use her services. (For in my profession, as must have been apparent to you, scrupulousness must be reserved for use “in one’s private capacity as a gentleman.”) So Mlle. Descartes went to Geneva, and armed with my previously acquired information and her own charms, she contrived to get into the good graces of the committee there, and surprised me a week later by writing to Paris that she had already contracted a liaison with the Spaniard whom I had overheard speaking that night in the _Café de l’Europe_. Soon I had full information about the entire plot. It was planned, I learned, to blow up King Alfonso with a bomb upon the day of his return to Madrid. The work was in the hands of two South Americans who were then in Geneva. But far more important than this was the information which Mlle. Descartes had obtained that a high official of Spain—a member of the Cabinet—was cognizant of the plot and had kept silent about it. Why, I asked myself, should this official—a man who surely had no sympathy with the aims of the revolutionists—lend his aid to them in this plot? The reason was not hard to discover. Alfonso’s position at the time was far from secure. His government was unpopular at home; and the pro-Teutonic leanings of many government officials had lost him the moral and political support of the English government and press—a fact of considerable importance. So it seemed possible that Alfonso’s reign might not be of long duration. And the new government? It might be radical or conservative; pro-English or pro-German. A man with a career did well to keep on friendly terms with all factions. Thus, I fancied, the Cabinet Minister must have reasoned. At any rate he said nothing of the plot. But I went to Brussels and reported all I had learned—and did not forget to mention the Cabinet Minister’s rumored share in the plot. There my connection with the affair ceased. But not long after a little tragi-comedy occurred which was a direct result of my activities. Let me recall it to you. On the evening of May 24, 1910, those of the people of Madrid who were in the neighborhood of that monument which had been raised in memory of the victims of the attempted assassination of Alfonso, four years before, were horrified by a tragedy which they witnessed. There was a sudden commotion in the streets, an explosion, and the confused sound of a crowd in excitement.