gress and the probable
result. You will thus have an opportunity, if not otherwise engaged, to
gain correct information of the insurrection in all quarters."

"Will you be displeased with me, my friend," said Develour, "if I tell you
that not only of M. Delevert, but also of the Red Man have I spoken to Mr.
Filmot; and I have even promised him that he shall hear from that
mysterious being a detail of one of his visits to the emperors?"

"And can M. Develour think still of these things?" replied the old man,
smiling good-humoredly. "How can they interest your friend Mr. Filmot--a
citizen of a country where everything is worked for in a plain
matter-of-fact way? What interest can _he_ feel in the various means that
were employed in an endeavor to make the military genius of the great
warrior an instrument to bring about a permanent amelioration in the
condition of the people?"

"The very mystery in which the whole seems enveloped," said Filmot, "would,
in itself, be enough to interest me in it; particularly so now, when I have
reason to believe myself in the presence of the chief actor--of him whom
hitherto I have always regarded as the creation of an excited imagination."

"And why a creature of the imagination?" inquired M. Delevert. "Is it
because I had it in my power to appear before the Emperor and to leave him
unseen by other eyes? Or is it because of the truth of my predictions?
Neither was impossible; neither required means beyond those which the
scientific student of the book of nature, when properly instructed, can
obtain. I resorted once even to a use of the utmost powers of nature, as
far as they are known to me, in order to entice him, by a palpable proof of
my ability to aid him, to promise that he would become an instrument in the
hands of those who sought to usher in the dawn of a happier age, the age of
true liberty, true equality; an age in which every man and _woman_ would be
able to feel, through the advantages of education and equal political and
moral rights, unhampered by false prejudices, that all human beings were
created free and equal. It was on the night before the battle of
Austerlitz, when he, as was his frequent custom, visited the outpost,
wrapped in his plain gray coat. At the hour of midnight, I presented myself
before him, and offered to show him the plans of the enemy for the
following day, on condition that he would not endeavor to meddle with
anything he should see, except so far as