"I am, at least, fearful of it. Napoleon, in the Island of
Elba, is too near France, and his proximity keeps up the
hopes of his partisans. Marseilles is filled with half-pay
officers, who are daily, under one frivolous pretext or
other, getting up quarrels with the royalists; from hence
arise continual and fatal duels among the higher classes of
persons, and assassinations in the lower."

"You have heard, perhaps," said the Comte de Salvieux, one
of M. de Saint-Meran's oldest friends, and chamberlain to
the Comte d'Artois, "that the Holy Alliance purpose removing
him from thence?"

"Yes; they were talking about it when we left Paris," said
M. de Saint-Meran; "and where is it decided to transfer
him?"

"To Saint Helena."

"For heaven's sake, where is that?" asked the marquise.

"An island situated on the other side of the equator, at
least two thousand leagues from here," replied the count.

"So much the better. As Villefort observes, it is a great
act of folly to have left such a man between Corsica, where
he was born, and Naples, of which his brother-in-law is
king, and face to face with Italy, the sovereignty of which
he coveted for his son."