the Frenchman, "I never said it was all up with me.
I have a plank still to cling to, though it be only a plank. My case
is simply this: I have come over to this country to prefer a claim to
a large property, and I have nothing to sustain it but my right. I know
well you Englishmen have a theory that your laws are so admirably and
so purely administered that if a man asks for justice,--be he poor, or
unknown, or a foreigner, it matters not,--he is sure to obtain it. I
like the theory, and I respect the man who believes in it, but I don't
trust it myself. I remember reading in your debates, how the House of
Lords sat for days over a claim of a French nobleman who had been ruined
by the great Revolution in France, and for whose aid, with others,
a large sum had once been voted, of which, through a series of
misadventures, not a shilling had reached him. That man's claim, upheld
and maintained by one of the first men in England, and with an eloquence
that thrilled through every heart around, was rejected, ay, rejected,
and he was sent out of court a beggar. They could n't call him an
impostor, but they left him to starve!" He paused for a secondhand in a
slower voice continued, "Now, it may be that my case shall one of these
days be heard before that tribunal, and I ask you, does it not call for
great courage and great trustfulness to have a hope on the issue?"

"I'll stake my head on it, they'll deal fairly by you," said Jack,
stoutly.

"The poor baron I spoke of had powerful friends: men who liked him
well, and fairly believed in his claim. Now I am utterly unknown, and as
devoid of friends as of money. I think nineteen out of twenty Englishmen
would call me an adventurer to-morrow; and there are few titles that
convey less respect in this grand country of yours."

"There you are right; every one here must have a place in society, and
be in it."

"My landlady where I lodged thought me an adventurer; the tailor who
measured me whispered adventurer as he went downstairs; and when a
cabman, in gratitude for an extra sixpence, called me 'count,' it was to
proclaim me an adventurer to all who heard him."

"You are scarcely fair to us," said Jack, laughing. "You have been
singularly unlucky in your English acquaintance."

"No. I have met a great deal of kindness, but always after a certain
interval of doubt--almost of mistrust. I tell you frankly, you are the
very first Englishman with whom I have ventured to talk freel