reely across Europe in
every direction; and on my return to England I met neither molestation
nor hindrance, nor did I attract any more attention than an ordinary
traveller. If I owed this immunity to a settled plan I had set down for
my guidance, it is equally true that it impeded my promotion, and
left me in the rank of those who were less secret agents than mere
messengers. My plan was to appear totally ignorant of the countries
through which I journeyed, neither remarking the events, nor being able
to afford any tidings about them. I was not ignorant of the injury this
course of action inflicted on my prospects. I saw myself passed over for
others of less capacity; I noticed the class with which I was associated
as belonging to the humblest members of the walk; and I even overheard
myself quoted as unfit for this, and unequal to that. Shall I own
at once that the career was distasteful to me in the highest degree?
Conceal it how we could, wear what appellation we might, we were only
spies; and any estimation we were held in simply depended on whatever
abilities we could display in this odious capacity. It was, then, in
a sort of compromise with my pride that I stooped to the lowest grade,
rather than win my advancement by the low arts of the eavesdropper.

If I seemed utterly incapable of those efforts which depended on
tact and worldly skill, my employers freely acknowledged that, as a
messenger, I had no equal. No difficulties could arrest my progress; the
most arduous journeys I surmounted with ease; the least-frequented roads
were all familiar to me. Three, four, and even five days consecutively
have I passed in the saddle; and whether over the rude sierras of Spain,
the wild paths of the Apennines, or the hot sands of the desert, no
fatigue ever compelled me to halt. The Royalist partisans were scattered
over the whole globe. Some of them had taken service in the German
armies; some were in the Neapolitan service; some had abjured their
religion, and were high in command over the Sultan's troops; and many
had emigrated to America, where they settled. Wherever they were,
whatever cloth they wore, or the flag they were ranged under, they had
but one cause and one hope,--the restoration of the Bourbons; and
for this were they ever ready to abandon any eminence they might have
gained, or any fame or fortune they had acquired, to rally at a moment
beneath the banner of him they regarded as their true and rightful
so