Royalist, an adherent of the rightful king of France.     

  

       I am still; I boast it openly. But at that time a demonstration had been premature, a government was alarmed, and I had fled.     

       Hereafter I shall tell you more of the secret and formidable society of which I was then a young, enthusiastic member—the Une, Deux, Trois League, or U. D. T's, as we styled ourselves in brief, the forlorn hope of royalty in France. At present it is sufficient to say that we had failed.     

       Baffled hopes, doubt as to the future, fear for the present, were my companions; and they are not gay, these friends.     

       I felt—I confess it now mirthfully enough—suspicious of the porter of the train, of the guard, of the people who eyed me.     

       I was young, and “political offender” had a terrible sound. The Bastile, Siberia, St. Helena; were not these places built, created, discovered, for the sole purpose of returning white-haired, enfeebled unfortunates to their native land, only to find their homes dissolved, their families deceased, themselves forgotten? The truth is that I was already in mourning for myself. The prospect of entering history by the martyr's postern had seemed noble in the heat of action and the excitement of intrigue. Now I only desired my liberty and as little public attention as possible. I commend this personal experience to all conspirators.     

       Such a frame of mind begets suspicions fast, and when I found myself in the same compartment with a young man who had already glanced at me in the Gare du Nord, and taken a longer look on board the steamboat, I felt, I admit, decidedly uncomfortable. From beneath the shade of my travelling-cap I eyed him for the first half-hour with a deep distrust. Yet since he regarded me with that total lack of interest an Englishman bestows upon the unintroduced, and had, besides, an appearance of honesty written on his countenance, I began to feel somewhat ashamed of my suspicions, until at last I even came to consider him with interest as one type of that strange people among whom for a longer or a shorter time I was doomed to dwell, He differed, it is true, both from the busts of Shakespeare and the statues of Wellington, yet he was far from unpleasing. An athletic form, good features, a steady, blue 

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