nly
because they wished to be rid of their everlasting adversary.

"As a proof, we have the confidences made by Valenglay, who was Prime
Minister at the time and whom the chances of politics have just replaced
at the head of the government. And there is the mysterious incident on
the island of Capri when the German Emperor, just as he was about to be
buried under a landslip, was saved by a hermit who, according to the
German version, was none other than Arsene Lupin."

To this came a fresh objection:

"Very well; but read the newspapers of the time: ten minutes
afterward, the hermit flung himself into the sea from Tiberius' Leap."
And the answer:

"Yes, but the body was never found. And, as it happens, we know that a
steamer picked up a man who was making signals to her and that this
steamer was on her way to Algiers. Well, a few days later, Don Luis
Perenna enlisted in the Foreign Legion at Sidi-bel-Abbes."

Of course, the controversy upon which the newspapers embarked on this
subject was carried on discreetly. Everybody was afraid of Lupin; and the
journalists maintained a certain reserve in their articles, confined
themselves to comparing dates and pointing out coincidences, and
refrained from speaking too positively of any Lupin that might lie hidden
under the mask of Perenna.

But, as regards the private in the Foreign Legion and his stay in
Morocco, they took their revenge and let themselves go freely.

Major d'Astrignac had spoken. Other officers, other comrades of
Perenna's, related what they had seen. The reports and daily orders
concerning him were published. And what became known as "The Hero's
Idyll" began to take the form of a sort of record each page of which
described the maddest and unlikeliest of facts.

At Mediouna, on the twenty-fourth of March, the adjutant, Captain Pollex,
awarded Private Perenna four days' cells on a charge of having broken out
of camp past two sentries after evening roll call, contrary to orders,
and being absent without leave until noon on the following day. Perenna,
the report went on to say, brought back the body of his sergeant, killed
in ambush. And in the margin was this note, in the colonel's hand:

"The colonel commanding doubles Private Perenna's award, but mentions his
name in orders and congratulates and thanks him."

After the fight of Ber-Rechid, Lieutenant Fardet's detachment being
obliged to retreat before a band of four hundred Moors, Private Perenna
as