“As we write, it is reported that this person is in England.  It is further affirmed that it is his intention to proceed to Belgium or Switzerland to fight certain journalists who have not had the courtesy to suppress the truth about him, though he never told it of them.  We presume, however, this rumor is false; M. Rochefort must retain enough of the knowledge he acquired when he was esteemed a gentleman to be aware that a meeting between him and a journalist is now impossible.  This is the more to be regretted, because M. Paul de Cassagnac would have much pleasure in taking M. Rochefort’s life and we in lamenting his fall.

“M.  Rochefort, we believe, is already suffering from an unhealed wound.  It is his mouth.”

There was a good deal of such “scurril jesting” in the paper, especially in a department called “Prattle.”  There were verses on all manner of subjects—­mostly the nobility and their works and ways, from the viewpoint of disapproval—­and epigrams, generally ill-humorous, like the following, headed “Novum Organum”: 

  “In Bacon see the culminating prime
   Of British intellect and British crime. 
   He died, and Nature, settling his affairs,
   Parted his powers among us, his heirs: 
   To each a pinch of common-sense, for seed,
   And, to develop it, a pinch of greed. 
   Each frugal heir, to make the gift suffice,
   Buries the talent to manure the vice.”

When the first issue of The Lantern appeared I wrote to Mr. Mortimer, again urging him to modify his plans and alter the character of the journal.  He replied that it suited him as it was and he would let me know when to prepare “copy” for the second number.  That eventually appeared on July 15th.  I never was instructed to prepare any more copy, and there has been, I believe, no further issue of that interesting sheet as yet.

Taking a retrospective view of this singular venture in journalism, one day, the explanation of the whole matter came to my understanding in the light of a revelation, and was confirmed later by Mr. Mortimer.

In the days when Napoleon III was at the zenith of his glory and power there was a thorn in his side.  It was the pen of M. Henri Rochefort, le Comte de Lucay, journalist and communard.  Despite fines, “suppressions,” and imprisonments, this gifted writer and unscrupulous blackguard had, as every one knows, made incessant war upon the Empire and all its personnel.  The bitter and unfair attacks of his paper, La Lanterne, made life at the Tuilleries exceedingly uncomfortable.  His rancor against the Empress was something horrible, and went to the length of denying the legitimacy of the Prince Imperial.  His existence was a menace and a terror to the illustrious lady, even when she was in exile at Chiselhurst and he in confinement on the distant island of New Caledonia.  When the news of his escape from that penal colony arrived