BOGUS DIPLOMATIST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15056, 27 July 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

BOGUS DIPLOMATIST.

ADVENTURE OF AN EMBASSY

VALET.

A diverting tale of the adventures of a valet who posed as a diplomatist was told at the trial in Paris of a man named Georges Michaud, at one time a valet at the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Ho was charged with obtaining money under false pretences from a country squire, M. Obrrbech Clausen, who had a chateau in the Department of the Gironde.

Michaud gave himself out to be the son of a Swiss Minister-Plenipotentiary, and posed as being closely acquainted with various notabilities in the diplomatic world. Mine. Oberbech Clausen gave an amusing account of a visit paid by her husband to the Spanish Embassy to ascertain if the accused was in reality on such good terms there as he made out. Her husband was received by the house porter and then by a "flunkey in full uniform," who showed him into one of the receptionrooms, saying that M. Michaud was just finishing his morning toilet. When the valet-diplomat appeared his hair was wet and disordered, as though he had just come out of the bath. He showed M. Clausen all over the Embassy, and behaved exactly as if he were quite at home in the house. His demeanour so impressed his visitor that M. Clausen invited him to stay at his chateau in the country. Michaud was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.