* * * * *

Next day at dejuner I was full of my evening’s adventure; but my host and hostess received it with mortifying composure.  “Nothing could be more likely,” said my cousin Evelyn.  “General Cluseret was here, though he did not stay long.  Perhaps he really did not remember you.  When he saw you before, you were a boy, and now you look like a young man.  Or perhaps he did not wish to be cross-examined.  He is pretty busy here just now, but in 1867 he was constantly backwards and forwards between Paris and London trying to organize that Irish insurrection which never came off.  England is not the only country he has visited on business of that kind, and he has many travelling names.  He thinks it safer, for obvious reasons, to travel without luggage.  If you had been able to open that leather case in the train you would probably have found nothing in it except some maps, a toothbrush, and a spare revolver.  Certainly that Irish affair was a fiasco; but depend upon it you will hear of General Cluseret again.”

And so indeed I did, and so did the whole civilized world, and that within twelve months of the time of speaking; but there is no need to rewrite in this place the history of the Commune.

II

A CRIMEAN EPISODE

It was eight o’clock in the evening of the 5th of April, 1880, and the Travellers’ Club was full to overflowing.  Men who were just sitting down to dinner got up from their tables, and joined the excited concourse in the hall.  The General Election which terminated Lord Beaconsfield’s reign was nearing its close, and the issue was scarcely in doubt; but at this moment the decisive event of the campaign was announced.  Members, as they eagerly scanned the tape, saw that Gladstone was returned for Midlothian; and, as they passed, the news to the expectant crowd behind them, there arose a tumult of excited voices.

“I told you how it would be!” “Well, I’ve lost my money.”  “I could not have believed that Scotsmen would be such fools.”  “I’m awfully sorry for Dalkeith.”  “Why couldn’t that old windbag have stuck to Greenwich?” “I blame Rosebery for getting him down.”  “Well, I suppose we’re in for another Gladstone Premiership.”  “Oh, no fear.  The Queen won’t speak to him.”  “No, Hartington’s the man, and, as an old Whig, I’m glad of it.”  “Perhaps Gladstone will take the Exchequer.”  “What! serve under Hartington?  You don’t know the old gentleman’s pride if you expect that;” and so on and so forth, a chorus of excited and bewildering exclamations.  Amid all the hurly-burly, one figure in the throng seemed quite unmoved, and its immobility attracted the notice of the throng.  “Well, really, Vaughan, I should have thought that even you would have felt excited about this.  I know you don’t care much about politics in a general way, but this is something out of the common.  The Duke of Buccleuch beaten on his own ground, and Gladstone heading straight for the Premiership!  Isn’t that enough to quicken your pulse?”