In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe them, if notan apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at enlisting sympathy infavour of a man who has little to recommend him save his own unconscioushumour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon is an unblushing liar, thief, aforger—anything you will; his vanity is past belief, his scruples arenon-existent. How he escaped a convict settlement it is difficult to imagine,and hard to realize that he died—presumably some years after the eventrecorded in the last chapter of his autobiography—a respected member ofthe community, honoured by that same society which should have raised apunitive hand against him. Yet this I believe to be the case. At any rate, inspite of close research in the police records of the period, I can find nomention of Hector Ratichon. “Heureux le peuple qui n’a pas d’histoire” applies,therefore, to him, and we must take it that Fate and his own sorely troubledcountry dealt lightly with him.
Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt kindly, whynot we? Since time immemorial there have been worse scoundrels unhung thanHector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace— which few possess—ofunruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes starving, always thirsty, henever complains; and there is all through his autobiography what we might callan “Ah, well!” attitude about his outlook on life. Because of this, and becausehis very fatuity makes us smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even acertain amount of recognition.
The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came into myhands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in Paris, when rain,sleet and the north wind drove me for shelter under the arcades of the Odéon,and a kindly vendor of miscellaneous printed matter and mouldy MSS. allowed meto rummage amongst a load of old papers which he was about to consign to therubbish heap. I imagine that the notes were set down by the actual person towhom the genial Hector Ratichon recounted the most conspicuous events of hischequered career, and as I turned over the torn and musty pages, which hungtogether by scraps of mouldy thread, I could not help feeling thehumour—aye! and the pathos—of that drabby side of old Paris whichwas being revealed to me through the medium of this rogue’s adventures. Andeven as, holding the fragments in my hand, I walked home that morning throughthe rain something of that same quaint personality seemed once more to hauntthe dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumière. I seemed to seethe shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-he