but princes of the blood-royal in disguise. Help
yourselves, I say, and give us something else."

"I fear, Mr Cutts," said Mandeville, in a deep and chokey voice, "that
you have had too little experience of the vicissitudes of the world to
appreciate our situation. You spoke of a prince. Know, sir, that you see
before you one who has known that dignity, but who never shall know it
more! O Amalia, Amalia!--dear wife of my bosom--where art thou now!
Pardon me, kinsman--your hand--I do not often betray this weakness, but
my heart is full, and I needs must give way to its emotion." So saying,
the unfortunate Mandeville bowed down his head and wept; at least, so I
concluded, from a succession of severe eructations.

I did not know what to make of him. Of all the hallucinations I ever had
witnessed, this was the most strange and unaccountable. Cutts, with
great coolness, manufactured a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, which
he placed at the elbow of the ex-potentate, and exhorted him to make a
clean breast of it.

"What's the use of snivelling about the past?" said he. "It's a
confounded loss of time. Come, Mandeville, toss off your liquor like a
Trojan, and tell us all about it, if you have any thing like a rational
story to tell. We'll give you credit for the finer feelings, and all
that sort of nonsense--only look sharp."

Upon this hint the Surveyor spoke, applying himself at intervals to the
reeking potable beside him. I shall give his story in his own words,
without any commentary.

"I feel, gentlemen, that I owe to you, and more especially to my
new-found kinsman, some explanation of circumstances, the mere
recollection of which can agitate me so cruelly. You seemed surprised
when I told you of the rank which I once occupied, and no doubt you
think it is a strange contrast to the situation in which you now behold
me. Alas, gentlemen! the history of Europe, during the last half
century, can furnish you with many parallel cases. Louis Philippe has,
ere now, like myself, earned his bread by mathematical exertion--Young
Gustavson--Henry of Bourbon, are exiles! the sceptre has fallen from the
hands of the chivalrous house of Murat! Minor principalities are changed
or absorbed, unnoticed amidst the war and clash of the great world
around them! Thrones are eclipsed like stars, and vanish from the
political horizon!

"Do not misunderstand me, gentlemen--I claim no such hereditary honours.
I am the last representative