France is more than a point on the map in the novel: it connects the exile and death of Count Stylptitch, the criminal past of King Victor, and the cross-border investigation that tests Anthony Cade’s identity. Paris provides both the political backstory and the setting for an old pursuit, while Dinard offers a practical check on a mistaken theory about Mademoiselle Brun. Across these episodes, French places hold evidence that can clarify identities—but also show how readily identity can be staged or misread.

Political exile and the memoirs

After the assassination of King Nicholas IV, Count Stylptitch went to live in Paris. According to Anthony Cade, those who hoped he might later return as president failed to persuade him: he remained committed to monarchy, although he was said to be involved in the political maneuvering taking place across the Balkans. His Paris exile therefore places him outside Herzoslovakia without removing him from its politics. The memoirs he left behind would later make that distance consequential.

The manuscript reached Anthony through a parcel that had followed him across his travels. He had read in a newspaper that Count Stylptitch had recently died in Paris; the parcel contained the memoirs and a note offering Anthony a thousand pounds if he delivered them to a London publisher by October 13. The manuscript’s journey from a deceased exile in Paris into Anthony’s hands turns a private commission into a political risk.

That risk lies in the proposed restoration of the monarchy. George Lomax explains that Herzoslovakians wish to restore the crown and are prepared to offer it to Prince Michael, who has the support of the British government. In return for a loan of about a million, Prince Michael is prepared to grant concessions to Isaacstein and Co. Lomax fears publication of Count Stylptitch’s memoirs could ruin the arrangement. France is thus linked to a diplomatic and financial contest whose participants are trying to keep a dead man’s account from disrupting a prospective royal settlement.

Paris and the making of King Victor

Paris is also the setting for an earlier criminal history. M. Lemoine describes King Victor as a daring multilingual master of disguise whose real name is unknown. Nearly eight years earlier, a series of robberies in Paris had been carried out under the name Captain O’Neill. French investigators suspected that Captain O’Neill was King Victor, but could not establish the proof they needed.

A young actress, Angèle Mory, who worked at the Folies Bergère, was also suspected of being connected to those operations. The authorities again lacked proof. This unresolved history matters because it links disguise not simply to a single alias but to a network of suspected identities and associations. It also supplies the background for M. Lemoine’s later pursuit: he has sought King Victor before, without securing the evidence to bring that pursuit to a decisive end.

The account of Queen Varaga provides a further Paris connection. Anthony says that before becoming queen she had been a music-hall performer in Paris and that her royal identity was manufactured through a supposed Romanov ancestry. The narrative’s political history therefore associates Paris with two different forms of performance: the public entertainment world in which Queen Varaga began her career, and the criminal disguises attributed to King Victor. In both cases, a performed identity travels into political life, where its consequences become much larger than its origins.

Dinard and a mistaken suspicion

Anthony’s investigation leads him to Dinard to question the Comtesse de Breteuil. He expects that she will deny ever knowing Mademoiselle Brun, which would support his theory that the governess is an impostor involved in the case. Instead, the Comtesse confirms that Mademoiselle Brun had been a mainstay of her household for seven years. Anthony has to abandon the theory unless he is prepared to suspect the Comtesse as well.

Virginia Revel independently supports the correction: she knows the Comtesse and considers her beyond suspicion, and recalls having seen Mademoiselle Brun at the château. Her recollection is not of a close acquaintance but of a familiar face of the kind encountered among governesses and companions. That ordinary, imperfect recognition reinforces the practical result of Anthony’s visit: Mademoiselle Brun is genuine, and his ingenious suspicion has led him away from the truth rather than toward it.

Dinard consequently functions as a place of verification rather than revelation. Anthony travels there confident that a single interview will expose a false identity; instead, the interview confirms the governess’s history and forces him to revise his judgment. The episode contrasts the documentary and testimonial checks available to investigators with the ease of forming a theory from appearances.

French investigation and the test of identity

France returns through M. Lemoine’s unofficial work in England. He says that he arrived on the morning after Prince Michael’s murder but chose not to present himself openly as Battle’s colleague. By remaining unofficial, he could observe without alerting the people he was pursuing, even though his presence and conduct might make him look suspicious. His explanation shows that the investigation depends on managing appearances as carefully as collecting facts.

Lemoine later confronts Anthony with the possibility that he is King Victor. Anthony laughs at the suggestion and challenges the detective’s certainty, reminding him that King Victor had previously evaded proof. Lemoine answers that he has requested fingerprints and Bertillon measurements from France, records that could provide a test beyond either man’s claims. The planned comparison turns the French investigation’s old failure into a present evidentiary method.

Anthony’s response complicates the accusation. He argues that King Victor has already served his sentence and that an old suspicion cannot substitute for evidence. When Lemoine brings up the American fraud in which someone posed as Prince Nicholas Obolovitch, Anthony denies being in America and insists he can prove it. He further reasons that if King Victor impersonated Prince Nicholas there, the impersonator was not the real prince. The dispute exposes a central difficulty of the investigation: a name, an appearance, and a criminal history do not necessarily identify the person who performed a particular act.

The final explanation confirms why the French materials mattered, while separating the men from the identities initially assigned to them. Anthony recounts that he went to Dover and that Hiram Fish followed, believing him to be King Victor. They discovered a stranger being held there, and his account revealed the recurring device of the real person being kidnapped while an impostor takes his place. Battle had already suspected that the French colleague was not what he claimed and had wired to Paris for fingerprints and other identifying information. The records from France therefore become part of a wider chain of verification, helping expose the false Lemoine and clarify the mistaken pursuit of Anthony.

Significance

The French locations and institutions repeatedly make identity a question of evidence rather than reputation. Paris holds the memoirs, the criminal past attributed to Captain O’Neill, and the origins of Queen Varaga’s public persona. Dinard corrects Anthony’s unsupported theory about Mademoiselle Brun. French police records offer a physical means of testing a suspicion that had resisted proof for years. Together, these episodes make France a connective setting for the novel’s political and investigative plots: a place of exile and performance, but also a source of testimony and records capable of unsettling a convincing disguise.