e prejudiced that official
against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien's had neither the
presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to relate the
whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment's notice, in a
cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a
demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Ambassador; and
that night Maitland of Gatien's passed, for the first time during his
blameless career, in a police-cell.

It were superfluous to set down in detail all the humiliations endured
by Maitland. Do not the newspapers continually ring with the laments
of the British citizen who has fallen into the hands of Continental
Justice? Are not our countrymen the common butts of German, French,
Spanish, and even Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? When an
Englishman appears, do not the foreign police usually arrest him at a
venture, and inquire afterward?

Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a good deal more than most
of these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the
Juge d'Instruction told him, without mincing matters, was undeniably
_louche_.

In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, of the Hotel Alsace et
Lorraine, had been very naturally excited by seeing the advertisement
about the great-coat in the _Times_, for he made a study of "the journal
of the City."

Here was a notice purporting to be signed by himself, and referring to a
bearskin coat, said (quite untruly) to have been left in his own
hotel. A bearskin coat! The very words breathe of Nihilism, dynamite,
stratagems, and spoils. Then the advertisement was in English, which
is, at present and till further notice, the language spoken by the brave
Irish. M. Dupin, as a Liberal, had every sympathy with the brave Irish
in their noble struggle for whatever they _are_ struggling for; but he
did not wish his hostelry to become, so to speak, the mountain-cave of
Freedom, and the great secret storehouse of nitro-glycerine. With a view
to elucidating the mystery of the advertisement, he had introduced the
police on his premises, and the police had hardly settled down in its
_affut_, when, lo! a stranger had been captured, in most suspicious
circumstances. M. Dupin felt very clever indeed, and his friends envied
him the distinction and advertisement which were soon to be his.

When Maitland appeared, as he did in due course, before the Juge
d'Instruction, he attempted to fall