* * * * *

Next day at _déjuner_ 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_