ny high old chances? "Think of it, oh!
think of it, my royal brother," I said, laying a hand on each of his
royal shoulders. He took my hands off, and told BISMARCK to bring him a
wisp-broom. It was a cruel insult, but I stood unmoved in the midst of
it. "Perhaps at some future hour and place, Your Majesty, we may meet
under different circumstances." That was a proposition he exhibited no
disposition to deny. At this juncture a courier arrived from the front,
breathless with excitement, and speechless too. The King seized him by
the back of the neck and shook him violently, but the poor fellow
couldn't articulate a word, I suggested that cold keys be put down his
back, and his feet thrust into the fire. That brought him to so fast
that I got behind an arm-chair for protection. In a few seconds he
gathered voice enough to say:

"S-S-Sire, P-P-P-Paris is e-eatin' u-u-up the m-m-mon-monkeys."

Fatal news! It was all up with my museum.

Paris reduced to monkeys, and no treaty signed!

Horrible catastrophe!

I offered myself to Satan for a good lie--anything, I didn't care what,
to clinch matters, and bring the King to terms. The Old Boy served me.

"Your Majesty, I forebore to tell you the worst; but it can be kept back
no longer. You must fly from here; fly from Paris. Your worthy queen,
the great, the good, the patriotic AUGUSTA, is now lying at the point
of--"

"Liar!" shouted the King, as he seized a boot-jack from the hands of
BISMARCK and hurled it at me with all his strength. I burst the back of
my coat dodging the missile, which did not, however, interrupt the rapid
utterance of my dreadful communication.

"Spare one moment more to hear what I have just received by telegraph
from Berlin, which is to say that your grandmother--"

"I never had a grandmother!" roared the King, upon the verge of madness,
as the Crown Prince, at the head of six Army Corps surrounded the
building and captured me without firing a shot.

P.S.--It is scarcely necessary in my present exhausted state to say that
my liberation is once more entirely due to the intercession of that man
of all men, the defender of injured innocence, and the champion of all
unfortunates, the most honorable Mr. WASHBURNE, American Minister, &c.
He told them that he had known me from boyhood; that my father died in
the lunatic asylum, and dying, bequeathed his intellectual
characteristics to his son, which was all he had to bequeath. The King
said it was