At this time of day I do not mind publishing the facts. It happened a few weeks after those pillars of the State--Thibaudin and Hazard--disappeared from Paris with a couple of million francs. They were leading the police a pretty dance, and people said, "Ah, they are probably at the world's end by this time!" I used to think to myself how securely a man who had a mind to do so might lie hidden within an hour's journey of the Grand Boulevard. It was really the disappearance of Thibaudin and Hazard that originated my Idea. I was manager at that period of the Théâtre Suprême, where we were very soon to produce Beauregard's play, _Omphale_. I descried a way to attract additional attention to our project. I went to see Beauregard one October morning, and gave him a shock. He was breakfasting in bed. "Bonjour, maître," I said. "Are you too much occupied to talk business?" "Panage," exclaimed the dramatist, "if you have come to demand any more mutilations of the manuscript, I tell you without parleying that no consideration on earth will induce me to yield. There is a limit; mon Dieu, there is a limit! Rather than cut another line, or substitute another syllable I will put the contract in the fire." "Dear friend, you have evidently slept ill and are testy this morning," I said. "Compose yourself. I come to exhilarate you with a great scheme." He still eyed me apprehensively, and to pacify him I made haste to explain, "It has nothing to do with any alterations in the play." "Ah!" He breathed relief, and dipped his croissant in his cup. "It is a scheme for booming it." My host was forthwith genial. A smile suffused his munching face, and he offered me a cigarette. "I ask your pardon if I was abrupt," he said. "As you surmise, I passed a bad night. A boom? Well, you know my views on the subject of booming. The ordinary puff preliminary is played out. One needs something novel, Panage, something scholarly. 'Scholarly' is the word. For _Omphale,_ a play of pre-Hellenic times, one needs the boom scholarly, classical, and grandiose." "You voice my own sentiments," said I. "One needs nothing less than a production of 'unrivalled accuracy'--costumes 'copied from designs discovered in Crete and dating back to the dim days of the Minotaur.' That would look tasteful in print, would it not? Alors, what do you say to our going to Crete and discovering them?" "Crete?" stammered Beauregard. Have I mentioned that he was fat and indolent and had never travelled further than Trouville? "What think you of exploring the Minotaur's lair?" I questioned. "Of penetrating to the apartments of Phædra? Of examining with your own eyes the labyrinth of Ariadne?" "I?" he ejaculated. "You and I together, my old one! Our adventures would make pretty reading, hein? Would not all Paris be chattering about your _Omphale?_ What a fever of impatience for the first night! Think of the effect such paragraphs would have on the advance booking."