Corps concerns itself with diplomatic affairs, details as to cabinet discussions, royal and princely scandals and includes among its agents men and women who are conducting inquiries on behalf of the Emperor himself. Among its members are to be found princes, dukes, counts and barons, lawyers, clergymen, doctors, actors and actresses, _mondaines_ and _demi-mondaines_, journalists, authors, money-lenders, jockeys, trainers, waiters and porters. Mr Graves dismisses the waiters and the porters as being nonentities who are never given commissions except those of the most non-committal kind, and in any case are never entrusted with the reasons underlying the little jobs which they perform at a few shillings each time. After a successful series of missions, men in the higher departments receive salaries from the bureau varying between £600 and £2000 yearly, which sums are invariably supplemented by generous bonuses—£1500 is not uncommon—as a reward for good work in particularly perilous enterprises. The remuneration is, however, mean when compared with the dangers undergone, and since no official countenance is ever given (nor, indeed, expected) on the part of an agent's employers, once a spy falls into the hands of the enemy, the game is far from being worth the worry and strain it entails. Moreover, a time comes in the case of the very successful agent when he has learned so much about the "policies" of his highly placed patrons that his existence becomes a source of anxiety to them, and his removal is often effected by means which recall the time of the Borgias or the days of the _oubliette_. XV GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_concluded_