some other advantages.

"Send me all the new things that are out, and tell me what
you and Alphonse are doing. 'Mes amities' to our fair
friend in the Rue Ponchaule, and the like--indiscriminately--
to all the others.

"Yours affectionately,

M. dk St. C.

"You call him 'Le Comte de Creganne,' and so I have written
it for the Minister: is this right?"

I read and re-read the letter till I knew every sentence of it by heart;
and then, dressing myself with a degree of care the importance of the
occasion suggested, I drove off for the Minister's office. It was not
the hour of his usual reception; but on sending in my name, which I did
as Le Comte de Creganne, I was at once admitted.

His Excellency was all smiles and affability, praised his Royal
Highness's selection of a name so greatly honored in literature, and
paid me many flattering compliments on my writings,--which, by the
way, he confounded with those of half-a-dozen others; and then, after a
variety of civil speeches, gently diverged into a modest inquiry as to
my native country, rank, and fortune. "We live in days, mon cher Comte,"
said he, laughing, "in which high capacity and talent happily take
precedence of mere lineage; but still, an illustrious personage has
always insisted upon the necessity of those immediately about the person
of the princes being of noble families. I am quite aware that you can
fulfil every condition of the kind, and only desire such information as
may satisfy his Majesty."

I replied by relating the capture of my property at Malaga, which,
among other things, contained all the title-deeds of my estates, and
the patent of my nobility. "These alone," said I, producing the banker's
letters addressed to me as Conde de Cregano, "are all that remain to me
now to remind me of my former standing; and although, as born a British
subject, I might at once apply to my minister to substantiate my claims,
the unhappy events of Ireland which enlisted my family in the ranks of
her patriots have made us exiles,--proscribed exiles forever."

This explanation went further than my previous one. The old French
antipathy to England found sympathy for Irish rebellion at once; and
after a very brief discussion, my appointment was filled up, and I was
named Private Secretary to the Duc de St. Cloud, and Lieutenant in the
13th Regiment of Chasseurs-a-cheval.

A new career had now opened before me, and it was