HE Marquis de la Carrabasse, secretary of the U. D. T.

League, and known in their circles as F. II, enters this history so near its end that I shall not stop to give a prolonged account of him. Yet he was a person so remarkable as to merit a few words of description. The inheritor of an ancient title, but little money; a Royalist to the point of fanaticism; a man of wide culture and many ideas, and of the most perfect simplicity of character and honesty of purpose, he had devoted his whole life to the restoration of the monarchy, alternated during lulls in the political weather by an equally feverish zeal for scientific inventions of the most ambitious nature. Yet, owing to the excess of his enthusiasm and fertility of mind over the more prosaic qualities that should regulate them, practical success had hitherto eluded this talented nobleman. His flying-machines had only once risen into the element for which they were intended, and then the subsequent descent had been so precipitate as to incapacitate the inventor for a month. His submarine vessel still reposed at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and the last I heard of his dynamite gun was that the fragments were to be found anywhere within a radius of three miles around its first discharge. As to his merits as a conspirator, my exile bears witness.

Yet he was a man for whom I could not but entertain a lively affection. Of medium height and slender figure, he had a large, well-shaped nose, a black mustache tinged with gray, whose vigorously upward curl had a deceptively truculent air at first sight, and a splendid dark eye, at times piercing and bright and at others dreamy as the eye of a somnambulist. Add to this a manner naturally courteous and simple, which, however, he was in the habit of artificially altering to one of decision and mystery, when he thought the rÔle he was playing suited this transfiguration, and you have the Marquis de la Carrabasse, so far as I can sketch him.

We had only just seated ourselves in my room, when Halfred entered beaming with pleasure at the prospect of seeing me again.

“'Appy to see you back, sir,” he began, joyfully.

“A most hunexpected pleasure, sir. I thought as 'ow you wasn't comin' till hafter the festivities of Christmas, sir.”

But at this point his eye fell upon my friend the Marquis, and his expression changed in the drollest manner. Halfred's British prejudices had become adjusted to me by this time, but evidently the very appearance of this stranger was altogether too foreign for him. He became abnormally solemn, and handed me a budget of letters that had come this evening, with no further comment, while his eye plainly said, “Have a care what company you keep!”

In the mean time my guest had been regarding him with a rapt and thoughtful gaze, and now he said, in the most execrable English:

“Vill you please get me a bread or biskeet?”

“Bread, sir?” replied Halfred, starting and looking hard at him. “Slice of 'am with it?”

“What did he say?” the Marquis asked me, in French.

I explained.

“Ah, yes; some pork; certain! Vich it vill also quite good and so to be.”

What he meant by this riddle I cannot tell; but I can assure you he sent the honest Halfred from the room with a very perturbed countenance.

In a few minutes he had brought us some much-needed refreshments, and, with a last dark glance towards my unconscious visitor, retired for the night.

On our journey the Marquis had kept his counsel with that air of mystery he could assume so effectively, nor had I pressed him with questions; but when our hunger was somewhat abated I began to consider it time that I was taken into his confidence. For I had gathered enough to feel sure that some coup was very shortly to be tried.

“M. le Marquis,” I said, “have you nothing to tell me?”

“First, my dear friend, read your letters,” he replied.

“But they can wait.”

“I beseech you!”

A little struck by his tone, I opened the first, and as I read the contents I could not refrain from an exclamation of astonishment.

“You have unexpected news?” he said.

“'The Bishop of Battersea has much pleasure in accepting M. d'Haricot's kind invitation.'” I read, aloud. “Mon Dieu! I am to have a bishop to dinner in three days' time; and a bishop I have never invited!”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive!”

“Read your other letters. Possibly they will throw light upon this.”

I opened the next, and cried in bewilderment: “Sir Henry Horley has much pleasure also! But I have never asked him; I have only met him once at a country house!”

The Marquis smiled.

“Do not be too sure you have not asked these gentlemen,” he said.

“But I swear—”

“Read this!”

He handed me an invitation-card on which, to my utter consternation, I saw these words engraved: “Monsieur d'Haricot requests the pleasure of————company to dinner to meet—” and here followed a name it would be indecorous to reproduce in these frivolous memoirs, the name of that royal personage for whose cause we loyalists of France were striving!

“What!” I exclaimed. “It is true?”

“What is?”

“That he is to honor me with his company?”

“Scarcely, my dear d'Haricot,” said the Marquis, with a smile. “But I have full authority to take what steps I choose.”

“To employ this ruse?”

“Certainly, if I deem it advisable.”

“But to what end?”

“Listen!” said he, his dark eyes glowing with enthusiasm and his face lighting up with patriotic ardor. “I have asked a party of your most influential friends to dine with you, inducing them by a prospect of this honor. You will tell them that his Highness cannot meet them there, but that he bids them, as they reverence their own sovereign, to assist his righteous cause. When they are inflamed with ardor, you will lead them from the table to the special train which I shall have waiting. A picked force will place themselves under our orders. By next morning the King shall be proclaimed in France.”

For a minute I was too staggered to answer him.

“But, my dear Marquis,” I replied, when I had recovered my breath, “I cannot induce these sober and law-abiding Englishmen to follow me, perhaps to battle.”

“Not all, perhaps, but some, certainly. My dear friend, you have the gift of tongues; you can move, persuade, influence to admiration. I myself would try, but you know the English language better, I think, than I, and then I am unknown to these gentlemen. Ah, you will not desert us, d'Haricot! Your King demands this service of you!”

“Of me?”

“Yes; he mentioned your name when I spoke to him of our schemes.”

“He wished me to perform this act?”

“I had not then arranged it. But is it for you to choose the nature of your service?”

“If it is put to me thus, I shall endeavor to do my best,” I replied. “But I confess I do not care for this scheme of yours.”

No use in protesting; the Marquis rose and embraced me with such flattering words as I hesitate to reproduce.

“It is done! It is accomplished already!” he cried.

I disengaged myself and endeavored to reflect. “This is all very well,” I said. “But of what use to us is a bishop?”

“We wish the support of the English Church.”

“And Sir Henry Horley?”

“Also of the nobility.”

“But he is scarcely a nobleman, only a baronet,” I explained. “And, besides, I only know him slightly. He is not my friend.”

“Embrace him; make him your friend.”

I fancied I saw myself; but what was the good in arguing with an enthusiasm like this?

I proceeded to read my other answers, and I did not know whether to feel more astonished at the list of guests or at the curious knowledge of my movements and acquaintances which my visitor must somehow have acquired. The acceptances included Lord Thane, with whom I had only the very slightest acquaintance, Mr. Alderman Guffin, at whose house I had once dined, one or two people of social position whom I had met through Lumme or Shafthead, and General Sholto.

“Ah, the General!” I said. “Well, he, at least, is an old soldier.”

“Be kind to him; he is our brightest hope,” said the Marquis.

I looked at him in astonishment. “What do you know of him?”

I could have sworn he blushed. “What do I not know of all your friends?” he replied.

Could it be from the inquiries of Hankey he had learned all this, and took so much interest in my gallant neighbor? I remembered now how the General had once met that disreputable individual. Yet it did not seem to me altogether a complete explanation.

But conceive of my astonishment when, among the few refusals, I found one from Fisher!

“What do you know of him?” I asked.

“He is a philanthropist. I regret that he cannot accept,” said the Marquis, with an air of calm mystery yet with another suggestion of flush in his face. He knew of my philanthropic escapade, then—and how?

“Well,” I said, at last, “I am prepared to assist you in any way I can. In the two days left I shall arrange my affairs—and now I must send some explanation of my disappearance to Lady Shafthead.”

He rose and grasped my arm.

“Not a word to her,” he said. “I do not trust the member of Parliament. We must run no risk.”

I protested, but no; he implored me—commanded me.

“A line to my friend Dick Shafthead, then?” I suggested. “He, at least, is beyond suspicion.”

“My friend, we are serving the King,” he replied.

“Very well,” I said, though my heart sank a little at this sudden rupture with those kind friends.

My visitor rose to depart, and just then his eye fell on two immense packing-cases placed against the wall.

“Ah,” he said, “they are safe, I see.”

I took a lamp in my hand and came up to examine the latest arrived of those mysterious gifts, whose source I now plainly perceived.

“I should not let that lamp fall upon this box of bonbons,” he remarked, lightly, and yet with a note of warning.

“Why not, Marquis?”

“The little packet may explode,” he laughed.

Involuntarily I started.

“It contains, then—?”

“The munitions of war,” he answered.

“And the other?”

“Was to try you, my dear friend. It contains only bricks. Forgive me for putting you to this test. I should not have doubted you.”

“But to try me?” I said. “How would you have known if I had called in a detective?”

The Marquis looked at me.

“I had not thought of that,” he confessed.

It was my turn to look at him, and, I fear, not altogether with a flattering eye.

“Why was it addressed to Mr. Balfour?” I asked.

“A ruse,” he replied, with his air of confident mystery returning somewhat. “A mere ruse, my dear friend.”

“I perceive,” I said, a little dryly. “Well, you can trust me for my own sake not to explode this box; also to make the preparations for this dinner.”

“My friend, I make them.”

“You?”

“Read your invitation again.”

I looked at the card sent out in my name, and then I noticed that an address was placed in one corner, “Twenty-two Beacon Street, Strand.”

“What is the meaning of this?”

“It is a house I have hired for two weeks,” he replied. “The dinner, as you see, takes place there. Hankey and I make all preparations.”

“And I do nothing?”

“You prepare yourself for the hour of action. Brave friend, au revoir!”

“Au revoir, Marquis.”