In that office there are several great safes; and when we had grown quite happy and gay together, I made Raoul tell me which was the most important of all--where the really sacred and valuable things were kept.

He laughed and pointed out the most interesting one--the one, he said, which held all the deepest secrets of French foreign diplomacy.

I was sure then that the thing I had to get for the British Foreign Secretary must be there, though it was such a new thing that it couldn't have been anywhere for long.

'There are three keys to that safe,' said Raoul.

'One is kept by the President; one is always with the Foreign Secretary; this is the third'; and he showed me a strange little key different to any I had seen before.