nsufficiency in Vautrin, and thought to himself that if he were really
a great nobleman, he would be more equal to the occasion, and give
a tone to the feast. He determined, therefore, to test him, and thus
provide amusement, at any rate, for himself. So, at the end of the
second course, he suddenly said from his end of the table,--

"Monsieur le comte, you are too young, of course, to have known Gustavus
III., whom Scribe and Auber have set in opera, while the rest of us
glorify him in a _galop_."

"I beg your pardon," replied Vautrin, jumping at the chance thus given
him, "I am nearly sixty years of age, which makes me thirteen in 1792,
when our beloved sovereign was killed by the assassin Ankarstroem, so
that I can well remember that period."

Thus, by means of a little volume entitled "Characters and Anecdotes of
the Court of Sweden," printed in 1808, and bought on the quays in the
interests of his Swedish incarnation, the chief of the detective police
evaded the trap. He did better. The faucet being open, he poured forth
such an abundance of erudition and detailed circumstances, he related
so many curious and secret anecdotes, especially relating to the _coup
d'etat_ by which, in 1772, Gustavus III. had freed his crown,--in short,
he was so precise and so interesting that as they left the table Emile
Blondet said to Bixiou,--

"I thought, as you did, that a foreign count in the hands of a marriage
agent was a very suspicious character; but he knows the court of
Sweden in a way that it was quite impossible to get out of books. He is
evidently a man well born; one might make some interesting articles out
of the stories he has just told."

"Yes," said Bixiou, "and I mean to cultivate his acquaintance; I could
make a good deal out of him in the Charivari."

"You have better find out first," said Desroches, "whether he has enough
French humor to like being caricatured."

Presently the first notes of the piano gave notice that the Signora
Luigia was about to mount the breach. She first sang the romance in
"Saul" with a depth of expression which moved the whole company, even
though that areopagus of judges were digesting a good dinner, as to
which they had not restrained themselves. Emile Blondet, who was more
of a political thinker than a man of imagination, was completely carried
away by his enthusiasm. As the song ended, Felicien Vernou and Lousteau
went up to Sir Francis Drake and reproached him for wishing to