d
have permanently fixed Victor de Mauleon in one of the good moments
of his life--even now--some moment of exquisite kindness--of superb
generosity--of dauntless courage--you would have secured a very rare
specimen of noble humanity. But so to fix him was impossible.

That impulse of the moment vanished the moment after; swept aside by the
force of his very talents--talents concentrated by his intense sense
of individuality--sense of wrongs or of rights--interests or objects
personal to himself. He extended the royal saying, "L'etat, c'est moi,"
to words far more grandiloquent. "The universe, 'tis I." The Venosta
would have understood him and smiled approvingly, if he had said with
good-humoured laugh, "I dead, the world is dead!" That is an Italian
proverb, and means much the same thing.

BOOK VIII.

CHAPTER I.

On the 8th of May the vote of the plebiscite was recorded,--between
seven and eight millions of Frenchmen in support of the Imperial
programme--in plain words, of the Emperor himself--against a minority of
1,500,000. But among the 1,500,000 were the old throne-shakers-those who
compose and those who lead the mob of Paris. On the 14th, as Rameau was
about to quit the editorial bureau of his printing-office, a note
was brought in to him which strongly excited his nervous system.
It contained a request to see him forthwith, signed by those two
distinguished foreign members of the Secret Council of Ten, Thaddeus
Loubinsky and Leonardo Raselli.

The meetings of that Council had been so long suspended that Rameau
had almost forgotten its existence. He gave orders to admit the
conspirators. The two men entered, the Pole, tall, stalwart, and with
martial stride--the Italian, small, emaciated, with skulking, noiseless,
cat-like step, both looking wondrous threadbare, and in that state
called "shabby genteel," which belongs to the man who cannot work for
his livelihood, and assumes a superiority over the man who can.
Their outward appearance was in notable discord with that of the
poet-politician--he all new in the last fashions of Parisian elegance,
and redolent of Parisian prosperity and extrait de Mousseline!

"Confrere," said the Pole, seating himself on the edge of the table,
while the Italian leaned against the mantelpiece, and glanced round the
room with furtive eye, as if to detect its innermost secrets, or decide
where safest to drop a Lucifer-match for its conflagration,--"confrere,"
said