ing about among a mass of newspapers and letters, the first mail
we circus people had received for nearly two months.

There were letters for all who were accustomed to look for letters
from families, relatives, or friends at home. I never received
letters--I had received none of that kind in nearly a score of years,
yet that curious habit of expectancy had not perished in me, and I
found myself standing with the others while Byram distributed the
letters, one by one, until the last home-stamped envelope had been
given out, and all around me the happy circus-folk were reading in
homesick contentment. I know of no lonelier man than he who lingers
empty-handed among those who pore over the home mail.

But there were newspapers enough and to spare--French, English,
American; and I sat down by my lion's cage and attempted to form some
opinion of the state of affairs in France. And, as far as I could read
between the lines, this is what I gathered, partly from my own
knowledge of past events, partly from the foreign papers, particularly
the English:

When, on the 3d of September, the humiliating news arrived that the
Emperor was a prisoner and his army annihilated, the government, for
the first time in its existence, acted with promptness and decision
in a matter of importance. Secret orders were sent by couriers to the
Bank of France, to the Louvre, and to the Invalides; and, that same
night, train after train rushed out of Paris loaded with the
battle-flags from the Invalides, the most important pictures and
antique sculptures from the Louvre, the greater part of the gold and
silver from the Bank of France, and, last but by no means least, the
crown and jewels of France.

This Speed and I already knew.

These trains were despatched to Brest, and at the same time a telegram
was directed to the admiral commanding the French iron-clad fleet in
the Baltic to send an armored cruiser to Brest with all haste
possible, there to await further orders, but to be fully prepared in
any event to take on board certain goods designated in cipher. This we
knew in a general way, though Speed understood that Lorient was to be
the port of departure.

The plan was a good one and apparently simple; and there seemed to be
no doubt that jewels, battle-flags, pictures, and coin were already
beyond danger from the German armies, now plodding cautiously
southward toward the capital, which was slowly recovering from its
revolutionary convulsi