n
at once took him by the hand and led him to the king, and speaking in
turn to each of them--

"Sire," he said, "here is the friend. I told you of."

Then turning to Marouin--

"Here," he said, "is the King of Naples, exile and fugitive, whom I
confide to your care. I do not speak of the possibility that some day he
may get back his crown, that would deprive you of the credit of your fine
action.... Now, be his guide--we will follow at a distance. March!"

The king and the lawyer set out at once together. Murat was dressed in a
blue coat-semi-military, semi-civil, buttoned to the throat; he wore
white trousers and top boots with spurs; he had long hair, moustache, and
thick whiskers, which would reach round his neck.

As they rode along he questioned his host about the situation of his
country house and the facility for reaching the sea in case of a
surprise. Towards midnight the king and Marouin arrived at Bonette; the
royal suite came up in about ten minutes; it consisted of about thirty
individuals. After partaking of some light refreshment, this little
troop, the last of the court of the deposed king, retired to disperse in
the town and its environs, and Murat remained alone with the women, only
keeping one valet named Leblanc.

Murat stayed nearly a month in this retirement, spending all his time in
answering the newspapers which accused him of treason to the Emperor.
This accusation was his absorbing idea, a phantom, a spectre to him; day
and night he tried to shake it off, seeking in the difficult position in
which he had found himself all the reasons which it might offer him for
acting as he had acted. Meanwhile the terrible news of the defeat at
Waterloo had spread abroad. The Emperor who had exiled him was an exile
himself, and he was waiting at Rochefort, like Murat at Toulon, to hear
what his enemies would decide against him. No one knows to this day what
inward prompting Napoleon obeyed when, rejecting the counsels of General
Lallemande and the devotion of Captain Bodin, he preferred England to
America, and went like a modern Prometheus to be chained to the rock of
St. Helena.

We are going to relate the fortuitous circumstance which led Murat to the
moat of Pizzo, then we will leave it to fatalists to draw from this
strange story whatever philosophical deduction may please them. We, as
humble annalists, can only vouch for the truth of the facts we have
already related and of those which