“Potsdam!” M. Auguste seemed genuinely surprised, and even disconcerted.
“Do you mean to say that you didn’t know you were carrying out the instructions of Wilhelm II.?” I demanded, scarcely less surprised.
It was difficult to believe that the vexation showed by the medium was feigned.
“Of course! I see it now!” burst from him. “I wondered what she meant by all that stuff about Germany. And I—a Frenchman!”
It is extraordinary what unexpected scruples will display themselves in the most unprincipled knaves. Low as they may descend, there seems always to be some one point on which they are as sensitive as a Bayard.
M. Auguste, of all men in the world, was a French patriot! It turned out that he was a fanatical Nationalist and anti-Semite. He had howled in anti-Dreyfusite mobs, and flung stones at the windows of Masonic temples in Paris.
I was delighted with this discovery, which gave me a stronger hold on him than any bribe could.
But I had noted the feminine pronoun in his exclamation recorded above. I did not think it referred to the revealing spirit.
“You have been deceived by the woman who has given you your instructions,” I remarked to him, when his excitement had subsided a little. “I fancy I can guess her name.”
“Yes. It is the Princess Y——,” he confessed.