Prosper Ronsard, the French minister to Tokio, had formed very early in life the ambition to be a Far Eastern diplomat. His way to the goal was made in regular steps of enjoyment. First there had been Morocco, scarcely more to him now than a far-off memory of yellow sands and white cubes of houses, both emphasized, at effective intervals, by theatrical groups of palms. Then came Cairo,--gay entrancing Cairo! His life there held experiences that old age might lick its chops over. Leaving all else aside, the one flame-tree near his hotel window in Cairo would have burned that memory deep. Then there were French Siam, Tonquin, Nagasaki, and, at last, Tokio. The hot blood of the East flowed now, as native, in Ronsard's veins; but the keen, calculating, questioning judgment of the European statesman kept cool tenure of his brain. In Tokio he found all past Eastern trickery to be useless chaff. Here were no inferior Orientals to browbeat, threaten, or cajole. From Tonquin to Nagasaki he had crossed more than the Yellow Sea; he had sailed over three submerged centuries and landed on a green cliff. Here, in Japan, were men with reasons as clear as his own, and methods that often proved themselves more effective. In the mission to Tokio he soon realized that his full ambition had been won. Every faculty, trained through long apprenticeship, was here needed; and it was part of his intelligence that at times he realized them all as insufficient. That span of "Mysterious Asia" stretched between Algiers and Tonquin, brilliant and pleasurable indeed, was, from the diplomatic standpoint, a mere dank subway coming up at the central station, Tokio. The fascinations of the East, potent as they were, could not quite wean the Parisian from love of his native home. Visits to France were made with strict regularity. It was his wont to declare, and with much show of verity, that the perpetual resident of Paris could never know its real charm. To live there always, paying bills, meeting disappointments, enduring illnesses with the inartistic accompaniments of medicine boxes and physicians, was like having an inexhaustible supply of one's favorite vintage kept in a water-cooler on the back gallery. Ronsard had the true sensualist's gift of extracting flavors. On these home visits he was eagerly sought after by his friends and club fellows, and by the more intelligent among fashionable women. In this latter category shone pre-eminent the widowed Princess Olga Le Beau. Rumor often had it that his next return to the East would be brightened by the wedded companionship of this lady, but each time Rumor hid her face.