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very well, and passed a resolution which enabled him to hold property in
this State, and to thus become, in fact, a Jerseyman.

But although our ex-king was now established on the free soil of
America, he did not feel altogether safe. His family had come to grief;
and there was reason to fear, that, as a member of that family, England,
or France, or Spain, might demand him as a prisoner, to be taken across
the ocean to answer the charge of unlawful occupation of a throne.

It is quite possible that the people of the neighborhood imagined that
the ex-king was in greater fear of molestation from his former royal
brethren than was really the case. Their reasons for supposing that he
was anxious to defend himself against surprise and capture had some
ground, for there were some strange things about that ex-royal
estate,--things that were not known in any other part of New Jersey.
There was a tall building called a belvedere, from which the country and
the river might be surveyed for a long distance in every direction; but,
stranger far than that, there were subterranean passages which led from
the house to unfrequented parts of the grounds. These passages were well
built, arched with brick, and high enough for people to walk upright in
them; and although persons of quiet and unimaginative minds thought
that they were constructed for the purpose of allowing the occupants to
go down to the lake or to the other portions of the grounds without
getting wet if it should happen to be raining, there were many people
who believed that for sudden showers a good stock of umbrellas would be
cheaper and quite as useful, and that these costly passages could be
meant for nothing else than to give opportunity for escape, in case
foreign emissaries or officers of the law should come in search of an
ex-king who was wanted on the other side of the Atlantic.

For whatever reason these passages were built, the spectacle of an
ex-king, carrying a crown and his royal robes in a hand bag, slipping
out from among some bushes to tramp along the dusty road to Trenton or
Burlington, was never seen. Nobody ever thought it worth while to come
to New Jersey to demand him or his property.

During his residence at Bordentown, which continued for about fourteen
years, Joseph Bonaparte was very popular with the people of the
neighborhood. They looked upon him as a friend and neighbor; but at the
same time they did not lose sight of the fact, that althou