months after he had sailed, they were petitioning
France to send over troops to help them. The Corsicans sent a
counter-embassy. 'If,' said they to King Louis, 'your Majesty force
us to yield to Genoa, then let us drink this bitter cup to the health
of the Most Christian King, and die.' King Louis admired the speech
but nibbled at the opportunity. Our own Government meanwhile had
either lost heart or suffered itself to be persuaded by the Genoese
Minister in London. In the July after my Emilia's marriage, our late
Queen Caroline, as regent for the time of Great Britain, issued a
proclamation forbidding any subject of King George to furnish arms or
provisions to the Corsican malcontents.

"And now you know, my dear Prosper, why I cast away the career on
which I had started with some ambition. My lady lacked help, which
as a British subject I was prohibited from offering. My conscience
allowed me to disobey: but not to disobey and eat His Majesty's
bread. I flung up my post, and as a private man hunted across Europe
for King Theodore."

I ran him to earth in Amsterdam. He was in handsome lodgings, but
penniless. It was the first time I had conversed with him; and he, I
believe, had never seen my face. I found him affable, specious,
sanguine, but hollow as a drum. For _her_ sake I took up and renewed
the campaign among the Jew bankers.

"To be short, he sailed back for Corsica in a well-found ship, with
cannon and ammunition on board, and some specie--the whole cargo
worth between twenty and thirty thousand pounds. He made a landing
at Tavagna and threw in almost all his warlike stores. His wife
hurried to meet him: but after a week, finding that the French were
pouring troops into the island, and becoming (they tell me) suddenly
nervous of the price on his head, he sailed away almost without
warning. They say also that on the passage he murdered the man whom
his creditors had forced him to take as supercargo, sold the vessel
at Leghorn, and made off with the specie--no penny of which had
reached his queen or his poor subjects. She--sad childless soul--
driven with her chiefs and counsellors into the mountains before the
combined French and Genoese, escaped a year later to Tuscany, and hid
herself with her sorrows in a religious house ten miles from
Florence.

"So ended this brief reign: and you, Prosper, have met the chief
actor in it. A very few words will tell the rest. The French
overran the isl