me above any suspicion of brigandage whatever.  I hope also, Monsieur, that this conversation, the favour of which your justice will accord me, will convince you that I am not mad enough to engage in political brigandage, or to engage in a struggle with the government to which the proudest sovereigns have yielded....

“A.  Le Chevalier.”

And to prove that he had taken no part in the robbery of June 7th, he added to his letter twenty affirmations of honourable and well-known persons who had either seen or dined with him in Paris each day of the month from the 1st to the 20th.  Among these were the names of his compatriot, the poet Chenedolle, and Dr. Dupuytren whom he had consulted on the advisability of amputating the fingers of his left hand, long useless.  He had even taken care to be seen at the Te Deum sung in Notre-Dame for the taking of Dantzig.  His precautions had been well taken, and once again his aplomb was about to save him, when Real, much embarrassed by this soft spoken prisoner, thought of sending him to Caen, in the hope that confronting him with Flierle, Grand-Charles and the Buquets might have some result.  Caffarelli was convinced that Le Chevalier was the leader in the plot, yet they had searched carefully in his house in the Rue Saint-Sauveur; without finding anything but some private papers.  Flierle had recognised him as the man to whom he acted as secretary and courier, yet Le Chevalier had contemptuously replied that “the German was not the sort to be his servant, and that their only connection was that of benefactor and recipient.”  It was out of the question that any tribunal could be found to condemn a man who on the day of the crime had been sixty leagues from the place where it was committed.  As to convicting him as a royalist who approved of the theft of public funds—­they might as well do the same with all Normandy.  Besides, to Caffarelli, who had no allusions as to the sentiments of the district, and who was always in fear of a new Chouan explosion, the presence of Le Chevalier in prison at Caen was a perpetual nightmare.  Allain might suddenly appear with an army, and make an attempt to carry off his chief similar to that which, under the Directory, saved the lives of the Vicomte de Chambray and Chevalier Destouches, to the amusement and delight of the whole province.  And this is why the prudent prefect, not caring to encumber himself with such a compromising prisoner, in four days, obtained Real’s permission to send him back to Paris, where he was confined in the Temple.  Ah!  What a fine letter he wrote to the Chief of Police, as soon as he arrived there, and how he posed as the unlucky rival of Napoleon!

This profession of faith is too long to be given entirely, but it throws such light on the character of the writer, and on the illusions which the royalists obstinately fostered during the most brilliant period of the imperial regime, that a few extracts are indispensable.