How is/was Ausable different from other secret agents? | The midnight visitor

 Ausable in The Midnight Visitor

Question.1 How is Ausable different from other secret agents?

(or)

2. What great qualities made Ausable a successful secret agent? (CBSE 2013)

(or)

3. How was Ausable different from other secret agents? (CBSE 2011)

(or)

4. How is Ausable different from other secret agents? How does he deal with Max? (CBSE 2012)

Answer:

Ans (Q. 1&3) :

We have an image of a secret agent as a very fit guy living in an apartment at secret location. However, Ausable does not fit in this definition of a secret agent. On first appearance he is a fat man. And his room is in a gloomy and outdated hotel. This picture did not present any romantic adventure to Fowler. 

Even, Ausable was not able to speak other languages fluently. Nor he had a bunch of pretty girls who could pass him the secret messages but only a telephone to make appointments. Thus, Ausable was indeed different from other secret agents.

Ans (Q.2 What great qualities made Ausable a successful secret agent?)

Though, Ausable was in many ways different from other secret agents, he had some inbuilt qualities which made him a successful secret agent.

Ausable's main weapon was his clever and witty mind. By which he influenced others in believing his stories. The way he manipulated Max in a made up story was indeed a trait of a secret agent.

His cleverness, presence of mind and focus with calmness are the qualities which made Ausable a successful secret agent.

Don't miss : All Questions & Answer | The Midnight Visitor | Chapter-3

Ans (Q.4 How is Ausable different from other secret agents? How does he deal with Max?)

Ausable was a secret agent. But he didn't seem like one. He did not fit in any way to the definition of a secret agent. 

Ausable was in many ways different from a typical secret agent. First of all, unlike other secret agents who sometimes lived in a grand house or underneath the surface, Ausable's room was in a musty corridor of a gloomy French hotel. It was a small room on the sixth and top floor.  It didn't made any setting for a romantic adventure as Fowler had anticipated. 

Above all, Ausable was extremely fat, whereas a secret agent is supposed to be a fit person. A secret agent must be fluent in multiple languages. However, in spite of living in Paris for over twenty years, Ausable spoke French and German with difficulty. And he was also not able to  leave his American accent. 

A secret agent usually gets his messages passed secretly to him by beautiful girls. But, Ausable got only a routine telephone call for making an appointment.

Therefore, Fowler was disappointed to meet Ausable as he did not look like an secret agent in any way. However, at the end he took him as one when Ausable manipulated Max with his wit. Thus, Ausable was different from the other secret agents in many ways.

Though Ausable did not fit to other traits of a conventional secret agent, the thing that made him  successful secret agent was his sharp wit. He manipulated Max by inventing some stories and convincing him to act on them, so that he could get rid of him permanently.

Ausable : a secret agent :

Ausable is a character in the story named The Midnight Visitor. He is a secret agent in that story, who is quite different from the conventional notion of secret agents.

The story The Midnight Visitor is included in the syllabus of class-10 English book Foot Prints without Feet in chapter-3.

.