pistol clutched in each hand. The unhappy man had been overcome by
fatigue and had fallen asleep. Marouin hesitated a moment to bring him
back to his wandering, tormented life, but there was not a minute to
lose. He woke him.

They went down to the beach at once. A morning mist lay over the sea.
They could not see anything two hundred yards ahead. They were obliged
to wait. At last the first sunbeams began to pierce this nocturnal mist.
It slowly dispersed, gliding over the sea as clouds move in the sky. The
king's hungry eye roved over the tossing waters before him, but he saw
nothing, yet he could not banish the hope that somewhere behind that
moving curtain he would find his refuge. Little by little the horizon
came into view; light wreaths of mist, like smoke, still floated about
the surface of the water, and in each of them the king thought he
recognised the white sails of his vessel. The last gradually vanished,
the sea was revealed in all its immensity, it was deserted. Not daring
to delay any longer, the ship had sailed away in the night.

"So," said the king, "the die is cast. I will go to Corsica."

The same day Marshal Brune was assassinated at Avignon.




II--CORSICA

Once more on the same beach at Bonette, in the same bay where he had
awaited the boat in vain, still attended by his band of faithful
followers, we find Murat on the 22nd August in the same year. It was no