id he would make Europe ring with the case. It was as bad, it
was worse than Caspar Hauser's, for he was an idiot outright, and _I_
appeared to have the enjoyment of certain faculties. He said it should
appear in the "Times," and be mentioned in the House; and as I listened,
the strangest glow ran through me, a mild and pleasurable enthusiasm, to
think that all the might, majesty, and power of Great Britain was about
to interest itself in behalf of Potts!

The Briton kept his word; the time, too, favored him. It was a moment
when wandering Englishmen were exhuming grievances throughout every
land of Europe; and while one had discovered some case of religious
intolerance in Norway, another beat him out of the field with the
coldblooded atrocities of Naples. My Englishman chanced to be an M.P.,
and therefore he asked, "in his place," if the Foreign Secretary had
any information to afford the House with respect to the case of the man
called Harper, or Harpar, he was not certain which, and who had
been confined for upwards of ten months in a dungeon in Austria, on
allegations of which the accused knew nothing whatever, and attested by
witnesses with whom he had never been confronted.

In the absence of his chief, the Under-Secretary rose to assure
the right honorable gentleman that the case was one which had for a
considerable time engaged the attention of the department he belonged
to, and that the most unremitting exertions of her Majesty's envoy at
Vienna were now being devoted to obtain the fullest information as to
the charges imputed to Harpar, and he hoped in a few days to be able to
lay the result of his inquiry on the table of the House.

It was in about a week after this that Hirsch came to tell me that a
member of her Majesty's legation at Vienna had arrived to investigate
my case, and interrogate me in person. I am half ashamed to say how vain
gloriously I thought of the importance thus lent me. I felt, somehow, as
though the nation missed me. Waiting patiently, as it might be, for
my return, and yet no tidings coming, they said, "What has become of
Potts?" It was clearly a case upon which they would not admit of any
mystification or deceit. "No secret tribunals, no hole-and-corner
commitments with us! Where is he? Produce him. Say, with what is he
charged?" I was going to be the man of the day. I knew it, I felt it;
I saw a great tableau of my life unrolling itself before me. Potts, the
young enthusiast after