ald.

'Perhaps not. The good public were growing tired of being always
spectators; they wanted, besides, to see what was behind the scenes; and
they found the whole machinery even more a sham than they expected, and
so they smashed the stage and scattered the actors.'

Gerald had now covered the table with the materials of his frugal meal,
and brought forth his last two bottles of Bordeaux, long reserved to
celebrate the first piece of good fortune that might betide him.

'It is easy to see,' cried De Noe, 'that you serve a Prince; your fare
is worthy of Royalty, my dear Fitzgerald. If you had supped with me,
your meal had been a mess of _haricot_, washed down with the light wines
of the "Pays Latin.'"

'And why, or how, do you suspect in whose service I am?' asked Gerald
eagerly.

'My dear friend, every man of the emigration is known to the police, and
I am one of its agents. I am frank with you, just to show you that you
may be as candid with me. Like you, I came to Paris as a secret agent of
"the family." I plotted, and schemed, and intrigued to obtain access
to information. All my reports, however, were discouraging. I had no
tidings to tell but such as boded ill. I saw the game was up; and I was
honest enough or foolish enough to say so. The orgies of the Revolution
were only beginning, and no one wished to come back to the rigid decency
and decorous propriety of the Monarchy. These were not pleasant things
to write back; they were less pleasant, too, to read; besides that, a
man who spent some three thousand francs a month ought, surely, to have
had something more agreeable to report, and they intimated as much to
me. Well, I endeavoured to obey. I frequented certain coteries at the
Abbe Clery's; I went of an evening to D'Allonville's; and I even used
to pass a Sunday at St. Germains with old Madame de St. Leon. I
familiarised my mind with all the favourite expressions, and filled my
letters with the same glowing fallacies that they ever repeated to each
other. This finished me; they called me a knave, and dismissed me. I
had then to choose between becoming a secret agent of the police, or
throwing myself into the Seine. I took the humbler part, and became a
spy. They assigned me the theatres, the small, low "spectacles" of the
populace, and for this I had to become an actor. It was a vow of poverty
I took, my dear Chevalier; but I always hoped I was to rise to a higher
order, which did not enjoin fasts nor d