"I do not suppose, Monsieur le Sénateur, that you have ever seen one of our dossiers—in fact I may tell you that very few people outside this building ever do see one. By the way, a great deal of nonsense is talked about them. Roughly speaking, a dossier is not a history of the individual in question; it simply records what is being said of him. For instance, the day that I became Prefect of Police my dossier was brought to me—"
He smiled wearily.
"Your dossier?" repeated the Senator in amazement.
"Yes, my dossier. I have had it bound, and I keep it as a curiosity. Everything that had ever been written about me in the days when I was a Member of the Chamber of Deputies is there. And what really made me feel angry was the fact that I had been confused with more than one of my namesakes, in fact certain misdeeds that these worthy folk had committed were actually registered in my dossier!"
He stopped speaking for a moment, and took up the blue envelope.
"But now let us consider this Mr. John Dampier. You will see that he bears the number '16909,' and that his envelope is blue. Had this gentleman ever had anything to do with the police, were he, to put it plainly, of the criminal class, this envelope would be yellow. As for the white envelopes, they, Monsieur le Sénateur, have to deal with a very different sort of individual. We class them briefly under the general word 'Morals.'"
As he spoke the Prefect was looking swiftly through the Dampier dossier, and not till he had glanced at every item did he hand the envelope to his American visitor.
Senator Burton could not but admire the intelligent way the dossier had been prepared, and kept up to date.
On the top sheet were carefully gummed various entries from the biographical dictionaries in which mention was made of John Dampier and his career. There followed a eulogistic newspaper article containing an account of the picture which had won the artist his Médaille d'Honneur at the Salon two years before. Then came a piece of foolscap headed "General remarks," and here were written the following words:—"Lives quietly; is popular with his fellow artists; has few debts; does not frequent the British Colony."
The Senator looked up quickly. "Well, there is not much to learn from this!" he said. And then, "I notice, Monsieur le Préfet, that there was another entry which has been removed."