I led the way out into the street, called a fiacre, and whispered an address into the driver’s ear. It was my turn to enjoy the discomfiture of my colleague, as the carriage drew up before his own door. ‘Here!’ was all he could gasp. I paid the driver and dismissed him. ‘Surely there could be no spot more safe from the perquisitions of the police,’ I answered mockingly. M. Rattache conducted me in, and led the way towards his study. ‘Not that way,’ I objected. ‘It is necessary for us to go upstairs.’ With ever-deepening chagrin M. Rattache followed me, as I ascended to the schoolroom in which his little daughters were at play with their dolls. They rushed to embrace me with exclamations of joy. ‘Isabel,’ I said to the eldest, a bright girl of twelve, ‘now you shall show the others the hiding-place where we put the box of bricks.’ A cry of delight greeted this proposal. Isabel ran gaily in front to lead the party into her own little bedroom, where, under a loose plank, which this observant child had discovered, and the knowledge of which she had kept to herself with that marvellous secrecy of which children are sometimes capable, lay--the Humbert millions! Isabel was a little disappointed to find, when the box was opened, that her bricks had been changed into stupid pieces of paper. But I explained that a fairy had been at work, and that a new and better set of bricks would arrive by the next post. And so, I am relieved to say, terminated my connection with the Humbert Case. XII THE BLACK POPE I must be pardoned if I exercise a certain reserve in telling the story of the most delicate of all the affairs in which I have been engaged. While the interests concerned were, in their own nature, purely political, the fact that they centred round the spiritual Head of Christendom imposes on me restraints which I am bound to recognise. I cannot recall at this moment whether, in the course of these reminiscences, I have had occasion to mention that I was honoured on several occasions by the confidence of the illustrious Pontiff who, in the course of less than a generation, exalted the Papacy to a height of power and reverent esteem such as it had scarcely enjoyed since the Middle Ages. To me, as to all who have paid any attention to the history of their own times, the passing away of Leo XIII. marked an epoch in the history of the world. I was in Paris, awaiting the announcement which would plunge two continents into mourning, when, an hour before the fatal bulletin reached the newspaper offices, I received a despatch desiring me to start immediately for Rome, and wait upon the young King of Italy in the Palace of the Quirinal.