iege, sometimes at another, standing with a telescope in his hand,
as if he spied the assistance which he said he expected" from his
allies, the other monarchs of Europe. Couriers, who had been despatched
by himself, were constantly arriving from Leghorn, bringing him
despatches, as he pretended, from the great powers. The Genoese set a
price on his head. He replied in a manifesto, with all the calmness and
dignity of an injured monarch.

At the end of eight months, he "perceived that the people began to cool
in their affections towards him, and he therefore wisely determined to
leave them for a little, and try his fortune again upon the continent."
He went to Amsterdam, where he was thrown into prison for debt. But even
in prison he made fresh dupes. He induced some merchants, particularly
Jews, to pay his debts, and to furnish him with a ship, arms, and
provisions. He undertook in return, that they, and they alone, should
carry on the whole foreign trade of Corsica. When he reached the island
he did not venture to land; but contented himself with disembarking his
stores, and with putting to death the supercargo, "that he might not
have any trouble from demands being made upon him." In the end he
retired to London. "I believe I told you that King Theodore is here,"
wrote Horace Walpole in 1749, to Sir Horace Mann, our Envoy at Florence.
"I am to drink coffee with him to-morrow at Lady Schaub's."

The rest of the story of this adventurer is so strange that, though it
scarcely bears on Corsica, I shall venture to continue it. In the summer
of the next year Walpole writes to his friend, "I believe I told you
that one of your sovereigns, and an intimate friend of yours, King
Theodore, is in the King's Bench prison." The unfortunate monarch
languished there for some years. Walpole, with a kindliness which was
natural to him, raised a subscription for his majesty. He advocated his
cause in a paper in "The World," with the motto _Date obolum Belisario_.
But he wrote to his former correspondent, "His majesty's character is so
bad, that it only raised fifty pounds; and though that was so much above
his desert, it was so much below his expectation, that he sent a
solicitor to threaten the printer with a prosecution for having taken so
much liberty with his name--take notice, too, that he had accepted the
money! Dodsley, you may believe, laughed at the lawyer; but that does
not lessen the dirty knavery.... I have done with counte