of such a person (describing his dress and personal appearance) who had been their guest. Their answer was hesitating and rather mysterious. They knew little of the gentleman, except that he had come from Corsica a short time before; that his name was De Bourlon; but they hinted that he must be a person of consideration, as he had been seen in familiar conversation with some of the greatest personages of Modena, and was allowed the use of one of the Count di the governor's, car

riages.

The next morning the stranger called to thank Signor for his civility. Seen by daylight, and without his hat, his most striking likeness to the Bourbon family instantly struck the Italian, who was now indeed puzzled to know what to make of his new acquaintance. After conversing for some time, the two went out for a walk. In the principal street of Modena they met the military governor, who bowed to the Frenchman in a most respectful manner. On the bastions they met the Grand Duke of Modena himself, who saluted the stranger as sovereigns salute persons of the very highest rank, and went aside with him for several minutes of conversation.

During this walk, Signor observed that the Frenchman was lame, that he seemed occasionally to be in pain, and that his countenance, the general expression of which was frank and open, was now and then clouded and agitated. On separating from his mysterious companion, Signor the chief magistrate of the city, and asked him, as an old and confidential friend, to tell him what he knew about the stranger.

went to

The magistrate knew, or pretended to know, little enough but he used these remarkable words: "Chi sa se non abbiamo qui un altra storia dell' uomo della maschera di ferro?" (who knows whether we have not got here another story of the Man with the Iron-Mask?) and he hinted that it would be as well if Signor shunned the Frenchman.

In spite of this, however, our friend's curiosity and

positive admiration of the stranger's talents, conversation, and manners, induced him to seek his society most eagerly; and in a few days the two became quite intimate, dining together at the hotel, and walking or riding out in the evening: when they rode, the stranger had the governor's carriage.

One day, after a short silence, the Frenchman said, "I see you are wondering who and what I am ;-I will tell you. You may not believe me, but, as sure as we stand here in Modena, I am the son of Louis the Sixteenth-the dauphin who is said to have died in the Temple."

After this startling announcement, he went on to detail the adventures of his life. According to this account, after having applied in vain to the allies, and been attacked by assassins in Paris in 1814, he had not returned to Italy (as reported by Pellico), but in despair had gone to South America, where, fighting for the cause of the independence of the Spanish colonies, he had been severely wounded in the thigh by an obus. He had then returned to the continent of Europe, and visited the island of Corsica, whence he had recently come to Modena (where he had frequently been in former years) to assert his rights to the Grand Duke, whom, he added, he had convinced of their sanctity.

Our friend was not more easy of belief than Pellico proved to be the year after; but he says this narrative was wholly free from visible flaw or contradiction; that it was connected and consistent throughout, and that the Frenchman never swerved from a single point of it.

This opinion is entitled to the more weight, and the adventurer becomes the more extraordinary, from the circumstances that Signor was a lawyer by profession; a man accustomed to weigh and sift evidence, and of great natural shrewdness.

The Frenchman produced a passport which had been visé in Corsica. The name upon it was Charles Louis Bourlon; but he said he had easily changed the letter b of the name Bourbon into an 7, and that he had done so to escape the fangs of the police of his uncle, Louis XVIII.

During several days' familiar intercourse, this strange man, though apparently speaking in the most unpremeditated manner, never let a word escape him that threw discredit on his narrative; and he never did or said anything that could possibly revoke in doubt his being, at all events, a perfect gentleman in manners, feeling, and education.

The first and most natural conclusion Signor

could draw from his strange avowal was, that he was a monomaniac-a man mad on one particular point, but rational enough on all the rest; and he turned his attention in this direction. But the stranger spoke of his royal descent in a dispassionate and most reasonable tone; and on that, as well as on all other subjects, he was less vivacious and flighty than most Frenchinen are in the ordinary circumstances of life. His fund of anecdote, the elegance of his language, whether speaking French or Italian, and the variety of his acquirements, made him a delightful companion. One day that Signor

had invited him to dine at the hotel, an old priest from the country was of the party, and the conversation happened to fall upon the books of the Old Testament. To the astonishment of his entertainer and the priest, this was a subject where the Frenchman was completely at home; he quoted innumerable passages, he compared detached parts, and showed a profound acquaintance not merely with the letter but the spirit of the sacred volume. If rare in Protestant countries, such a thing, for a layman, in Catholic countries is altogether extraordinary.

It was not without regret that Signor - left Modena and the society of the Frenchman, to return to the country. Some two or three months after, he was again called to Modena on business. He went to the same hotel, and had scarcely dismounted, when the host, with an air of uneasiness, asked whether he had heard what had become of his associate. He had not; but this was the story about a month before, the Frenchman had been suddenly arrested in the city and carried to the state-prison, where he was placed under the care of Signor who had strict orders to treat him with

all possible respect. These instructions came from the Grand Duke in person, who, moreover, supplied the captive's table from his own palace.

When he was first arrested, the keeper of the hotel, with his family, waiters, and other servants, and the people of the house where he last lived, were all summoned before the commissaries of police, and questioned as to the persons who had intimately associated with the French gentleman. Having revealed the very little they had to tell on this head, for the stranger's associates had been few and most respectable, they were dismissed, and advised to hold their tongues as to what had passed.

Men who have passed all their lives in a free country like England, can hardly understand it; but those who have lived any time in despotic countries, and particularly under the smaller and more prying and timid despotisms of Italy, will easily conceive why Signor

was

made uneasy by the foregoing intelligence. As the best step he could take, he went at once to his acquaintance the magistrate, avowed that he had cultivated an intimacy with one who was now a state-prisoner, and that he could hardly have expected there was an impropriety in his so doing, after he had seen the stranger honoured by the first personages of Modena, and even by the sovereign himself. The magistrate reassured him: there was no cause for uneasiness; this was a mystery-a curious story, perhaps a serious one-but it neither concerned the Duke of Modena nor his subjects. Meanwhile, the prisoner had been carried across the frontiers, and (as related before in the words of Silvio Pellico) had been given over to the Austrians, who conveyed him to the fortress of Mantua. For some time, even the Austrians treated him with the greatest respect; but then, in consequence of sudden orders from Vienna, he was removed from the fortress of Mantua to the gaol of Milan, and subjected to the treatment of a common criminal and cut-purse. It was here that Pellico formed his curious acquaintance with him, and here Signor -'s own knowledge of

his adventures ends.

But what follows still more darkens this singular romance of real and modern life. After a long confinement at Milan, during which many of the political prisoners besides Pellico became acquainted with him, the Frenchman was liberated, but escorted out of Lombardy and the Austrian dominions by gens-d'armes. He took the route across the lake of Como and the Alps; and, a few days after his departure from Milan, a person answering to his description was found dead by the road-side in one of the Swiss valleys. The body was pierced by more than one wound; but whether they had been dealt by the hand of a suicide or an assassin, could not be clearly ascertained. No doubt, however, was entertained in Milan that the body thus found was that of the strange man who had called himself the Duke of Normandy and Louis XVII.

In the next story we have to relate, the imposture is of a more bare-faced and vulgar nature; and the dupes of it, for the most part, are neither distinguished by education nor intelligence. The narrative, however, has some striking points, and the manoeuvres of four clever vagabonds contributed to hasten the counter-revolution of a kingdom and the triumph of the celebrated Cardinal Ruffo. For the facts we are chiefly indebted to General Colletta's History of the Kingdom of Naples, which is one of the best of contributions to the modern history of Europe. The writer of this notice, however, may add a few particulars which he picked up himself in travelling through the scene of the adventures in 1816 and 1817 when the story was fresh in the minds of everybody, and but too many simple Apulians were still living who had to blush at their former credulity.

In 1799, a French army, under General Championnet, took possession of nearly all the kingdom of Naples; and a republic, on the model of the French, was proclaimed at the capital. The Bourbon King, Ferdinand, fled with his family and court into Sicily, but they left numerous partisans behind them; for the Neapolitan people hated both the French and the republic, and were