stepped ashore, and turned
to Dormer Colville to say in an undertone:

"Ah--but you need say nothing."

"I promised you," answered Colville, carelessly, "that I should tell you
nothing till you had seen him."

CHAPTER III. THE RETURN OF "THE LAST HOPE"

Not only France, but all Europe, had at this time to reckon with one
who, if, as his enemies said, was no Bonaparte, was a very plausible
imitation of one.

In 1849 France, indeed, was kind enough to give the world a breathing
space. She had herself just come through one of those seething years
from which she alone seems to have the power of complete recovery.
Paris had been in a state of siege for four months; not threatened by a
foreign foe, but torn to pieces by internal dissension. Sixteen thousand
had been killed and wounded in the streets. A ministry had fallen. A
ministry always does fall in France. Bad weather may bring about such a
descent at any moment. A monarchy had been thrown down--a king had fled.
Another king; and one who should have known better than to put his trust
in a people.

Half a dozen generals had attempted to restore order in Paris and
confidence in France. Then, at the very end of 1848, the fickle people
elected this Napoleon, who was no Bonaparte, President of the new
Republic, and Europe was accorded a breathing space. At the beginning of
1849 arrangements were made for it--military arrangements--and the year
was almost quiet.

It was in the summer of the next year, 1850, that the Marquis de Gemosac
journeyed to England. It was not his first visit to the country. Sixty
years earlier he had been hurried thither by a frenzied mother, a little
pale-faced boy, not bright or clever, but destined to pass through days
of trial and years of sorrow which the bright and clever would
scarcely have survived. For brightness must always mean friction, while
cleverness will continue to butt its head against human limitations so
long as men shall walk this earth.

He had been induced to make this journey thus, in the evening of his
days, by the Hope, hitherto vain enough, which many Frenchmen had
pursued for half a century. For he was one of those who refused to
believe that Louis XVII. had died in the prison of the Temple.

Not once, but many times, Dormer Colville laughingly denied any
responsibility in the matter.

"I will not even tell the story as it was told to me," he said to
the Marquis de Gemosac, to the Abbe Touvent and to th