There is no better exemplar among all the exponents of espionage in its higher phases than the Comte d'Antraigues in so far as he provides us with positive proof that there comes a point at which a spy, already too dangerous by reason of his private knowledge, must be placed beyond all possibility of indiscretions. The Count was murdered in 1812 by an Italian valet who was afterwards declared by enemies of d'Antraigues to have been in the employ of the foreign secret service, a somewhat easy _ex-post-facto_ explanation on the part of individuals who had long wished the Count on the safer side of Styx. The fact that his wife was murdered at the same time lends, however, some colour to the statement that the murder had been "fixed" as they say in the vernacular of the Black Hand. She had been in her time a famous opera singer who had tried to found a political _salon_ on the basis of the private information which her husband possessed, and altogether seems to have been one of those terrible but inept females who wander through the world for the unrest of souls, not only knowing, but knowing that they know. We make no apology for insisting that the fact that d'Antraigues was of Gascon birth is a point in favour of our idea that megalomania is in a large measure the motive-power which turns men and women to the business of espionage. The native of Gascony is by every tradition, both home and foreign, said to represent Pretence made flesh. It is very certain that the number of secrets which pass out of the cabinets of diplomacy into the possession of non-diplomatic persons must be infinitesimal, and it is also certain that the Machiavellian waiters on whose long ears depend the fate of thrones; or the inspired courtesans who wheedle men like Bismarck out of information the divulging of which is sufficient to shake the hemispheres; or the journalistic sleuth who divines a cabinet débâcle from the way the Foreign Secretary gives an expression of opinion to the War Minister about the fineness of the night as both leave Downing Street; or the mysterious Ambassador to Everywhere who visits Constantinople and "draws up a treaty" which he submits to an uncle of the Sultan's head doorkeeper as a _modus vivendi_ for the Balkans—all of them are the fictitious creations of very "yellow" writers. These beings really count for less in the processes of diplomacy than the proverbial row of pins, and only the most credulous of souls can accept such a story as that which professes to show how so important a personage as a Russian Ambassador was once taken off his guard to the extent of giving away a secret the publication of which to the world led to an estrangement between France and his own country, the medium of his lapse being a Polish Countess with a form like Juno Victrix, eyes as big as billiard-balls, the soul of one of those awful Ouida heroines who felt it in her to "dominate the world with the man I love," and the manners