The gentleman-thief Arsène Lupin returns in this set of ten short stories to confess—or perhaps boast about—his crimes to the unnamed narrator. Mostly set around Lupin’s attempts to frustrate Chief-Inspector Ganimard and pocket some cash in the process, they also show off his knack for escaping from seemingly impossible situations, and even playing the role of the master detective.

In the chronology of Arsène Lupin, these tales were published after, but set before, the darker stories of The Hollow Needle and 813 . They were serialised in Je Sais Tout from 1911, and collected into a single publication in 1913.