lined, and might have felt
disposed to inflict a mere reprimand, or some slight arrest, when
Monsieur's persuasions prevailed on him to take a severer course.'

'I cannot bring myself to credit this!' cried Fitzgerald.

'It is generally believed, nay, it is doubted by none, and all are
speculating how you came to incur this dislike.'

'It is hard to say,' muttered Gerald bitterly.

'This is for you, Fitzgerald,' said a sergeant of the Corps, entering
the room hastily. 'You are to appear on the parade to-morrow, and hear
it read at the head of your company,' and with these words he threw an
open paper on the table and withdrew.

'Open shame and insult--this is too much,' said Gerald. 'You must
appeal, Gerald; I insist upon it,' cried Dillon.

'No, sir. I have done with princes and royal guards. I could not put on
their livery again with the sense of loyalty that once stirred my heart.
Leave me, I pray, an hour or two to collect my thoughts and grow calm
again. Good-bye for a short while.

CHAPTER VI. A WANDERER

After many vicissitudes and hazards, Fitzgerald succeeded in making his
escape from France, and reaching Coblentz, where a small knot of
devoted Royalists lived, sharing their little resources in common,
and generously contributing every aid in their power to their poorer
brethren. This life, if one of painful and unceasing anxiety, was yet
singularly devoid of incident. To watch the terrible course of that
torrent that now devastated their native country; to see how in that
resistless deluge all was submerged--throne, villa, home, and family; to
sit motionless on the shore, as it were, and survey the shipwreck, was
their sad fate.

According to the various temperaments they possessed did men bear this
season of probation. To some it was like a dreary nightmare, a long half
sleep of suffering and oppression, leaving them devoid of all energy,
or all will for exertion. Others felt stimulated to be up and doing, to
write and plot, and intrigue with their fellow-exiles in Italy and the
north of Germany. The very transmission of the sad tidings which came
from Paris became an accustomed task; while some few, half resigned to a
ruin whose widespread limits seemed to menace the whole of Europe, began
to weave plans for emigrating to a new world beyond the seas.

Gerald halted, and deliberated to which of these two latter he would
attach himself. If the idea of a new colony and a new existence, where
e