a less expensive transaction. Of this your words remove all hope.
I will therefore lay my cards upon the table, as you demand, and as I had
made up my mind to do."

He sat down opposite Valenglay, in the attitude of a man treating with
another on equal terms.

"I shall not be long. A single sentence, Monsieur le President,
will express the bargain which I am proposing to the Prime Minister
of my country."

And, looking Valenglay straight in the eyes, he said slowly, syllable
by syllable:

"In exchange for twenty-four hours' liberty and no more, undertaking on
my honour to return here to-morrow morning and to return here either with
Florence, to give you every proof of her innocence, or without her, to
constitute myself a prisoner, I offer you--"

He took his time and, in a serious voice, concluded:

"I offer you a kingdom, Monsieur le President du Conseil."

The sentence sounded bombastic and ludicrous, sounded silly enough to
provoke a shrug of the shoulders, sounded like one of those sentences
which only an imbecile or a lunatic could utter. And yet Valenglay
remained impassive. He knew that, in such circumstances as the present,
the man before him was not the man to indulge in jesting.

And he knew it so fully that, instinctively, accustomed as he was to
momentous political questions in which secrecy is of the utmost
importance, he cast a glance toward the Prefect of Police, as though M.
Desmalions's presence in the room hindered him.

"I positively insist," said Don Luis, "that Monsieur le Prefet de Police
shall stay and hear what I have to say. He is better able than any one
else to appreciate the value of it; and he will bear witness to its
correctness in certain particulars."

"Speak!" said Valenglay.

His curiosity knew no bounds. He did not much care whether Don Luis's
proposal could have any practical results. In his heart he did not
believe in it. But what he wanted to know was the lengths to which that
demon of audacity was prepared to go, and on what new prodigious
adventure he based the pretensions which he was putting forward so calmly
and frankly.

Don Luis smiled:

"Will you allow me?" he asked.

Rising and going to the mantelpiece, he took down from the wall a
small map representing Northwest Africa. He spread it on the table,
placed different objects on the four corners to hold it in position,
and resumed:

"There is one matter, Monsieur le President, which puzzled Monsieur le
Pre