FOREWORD

In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe
them, if not an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at
enlisting sympathy in favour of a man who has little to recommend him
save his own unconscious humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon
is an unblushing liar, thief, a forger--anything you will; his vanity
is past belief, his scruples are non-existent. How he escaped a
convict settlement it is difficult to imagine, and hard to realize
that he died--presumably some years after the event recorded in the
last chapter of his autobiography--a respected member of the
community, honoured by that same society which should have raised a
punitive hand against him. Yet this I believe to be the case. At any
rate, in spite of close research in the police records of the period,
I can find no mention 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 troubled country dealt lightly with him.

Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt
kindly, why not we? Since time immemorial there have been worse
scoundrels unhung than Hector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace--
which few possess--of unruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes
starving, always thirsty, he never complains; and there is all through
his autobiography what we might call an "Ah, well!" attitude about his
outlook on life. Because of this, and because his very fatuity makes
us smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even a certain
amount of recognition.

The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came
into my hands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in