Fiction there is--and history. Certain critics of no little discernment have considered that fiction is history which _might_ have taken place, and history fiction which _has_ taken place. We are, indeed, forced to acknowledge that the novelist’s art often compels belief, just as reality sometimes defies it. Alas! there exists an order of minds so sceptical that they deny the possibility of any fact as soon as it diverges from the commonplace. It is not for them that I write. Whether the representative of God upon earth was actually snatched from the Holy See and by the machinations of the Quirinal stolen, so to speak, from the whole body of Christendom, is an exceedingly thorny problem, and one which I have not the temerity to raise here. But it is an _historical_ fact that towards the end of the year 1893 a rumour to that effect was in circulation. Certain newspapers mentioned it timidly; they were silenced. A pamphlet on the subject appeared at St. Malo[D] and was suppressed. For, on the one hand, the freemasons were as little anxious that the report of such an abominable outrage should be spread abroad, as, on the other, the Catholic leaders were afraid to support--or could not resign themselves to countenance--the extraordinary collections which were immediately started in this connection. There is no doubt that innumerable pious souls bled themselves freely (the sums which were collected--or dispersed--on this occasion are reckoned at close upon half a million francs), but what remained doubtful was whether all those who received the funds were really the devout persons they pretended to be, or whether some of them were not mere swindlers. At any rate, for the successful accomplishment of this scheme there was necessary, in the absence of religious conviction, an audacity, a skilfulness, a tact, an eloquence, a knowledge of facts and characters, a vigour of constitution, such as fall to the lot of few only in this world--strapping fellows, like Protos, for instance, Lafcadio’s old school-mate. I honestly warn the reader that it is he I am now introducing, under the appearance and borrowed name of the canon of Virmontal.