The opening of III. THE LILIES
My first step was to pay a visit to the Préfecture de Police. I was received with the utmost courtesy and many half-spoken, half-intimated expressions of sympathy that were touching and unexpected. All that my sensitive pride most shrank from in my misfortune was ignored with a tact and delicacy that were both soothing and encouraging. I had felt more than once, when exposing my miserable and extraordinary situation to the police agents at home, that it required the strongest effort of professional gravity on their part not to burst out laughing in my face. No such struggle was to be seen in the countenances of the French police. They listened with interest, real or feigned, to my story, and invited what confidence I had to give by the matter-of-fact simplicity with which they set to work to put the few pieces of the puzzle together, and to endeavor to read some clew in them. I returned to my hotel after this interview more cheered and sanguine than the incident itself reasonably warranted.