ith Buonaparte, and filled instead with
wonder that he should have another kinsman who was so remarkably well
informed of events in France. And now it became a very disagreeable
question, whether the young gentleman was not a spy? In short, sir, in
seeking to disserve you, he had accumulated against himself a load of
suspicions."

My visitor now paused, took snuff, and looked at me with an air of
benevolence.

"Good God, sir!" says I, "this is a curious story."

"You will say so before I have done," said he. "For there have two
events followed. The first of these was an encounter of M. de Keroual
and M. de Mauseant."

"I know the man to my cost," said I; "it was through him I lost my
commission."

"Do you tell me so?" he cried. "Why, here is news!"

"O, I cannot complain!" said I. "I was in the wrong. I did it with my
eyes open. If a man gets a prisoner to guard and lets him go, the least
he can expect is to be degraded."

"You will be paid for it," said he. "You did well for yourself and
better for your king."

"If I had thought I was injuring my emperor," said I, "I would have let
M. de Mauseant burn in hell ere I had helped him, and be sure of that! I
saw in him only a private person in a difficulty: I let him go in
private charity; not even to profit myself will I suffer it to be
misunderstood."

"Well, well," said the lawyer, "no matter now. This is a foolish
warmth--a very misplaced enthusiasm, believe me! The point of the story
is that M. de Mauseant spoke of you with gratitude, and drew your
character in such a manner as greatly to affect your uncle's views. Hard
upon the back of which, in came your humble servant, and laid before him
the direct proof of what we had been so long suspecting. There was no
dubiety permitted. M. Alain's expensive way of life, his clothes and
mistresses, his dicing and racehorses, were all explained: he was in
the pay of Buonaparte, a hired spy, and a man that held the strings of
what I can only call a convolution of extremely fishy enterprises. To do
M. de Keroual justice, he took it in the best way imaginable, destroyed
the evidences of the one great-nephew's disgrace--and transferred his
interest wholly to the other."

"What am I to understand by that?" said I.

"I will tell you," says he. "There is a remarkable inconsistency in
human nature which gentlemen of my cloth have a great deal of occasion
to observe. Selfish persons can live without chick or child, they ca