commission.'

'Do you tell me so?' he cried. 'Why, here is news!'

'Oh, I cannot complain!' said I. 'I was in the wrong. I did it
with my eyes open. If a man gets a prisoner to guard and lets him
go, the least he can expect is to be degraded.'

'You will be paid for it,' said he. 'You did well for yourself and
better for your king.'

'If I had thought I was injuring my emperor,' said I, 'I would have
let M. de Mauseant burn in hell ere I had helped him, and be sure
of that! I saw in him only a private person in a difficulty: I
let him go in private charity; not even to profit myself will I
suffer it to be misunderstood.'

'Well, well,' said the lawyer, 'no matter now. This is a foolish
warmth--a very misplaced enthusiasm, believe me! The point of the
story is that M. de Mauseant spoke of you with gratitude, and drew
your character in such a manner as greatly to affect your uncle's
views. Hard upon the back of which, in came your humble servant,
and laid before him the direct proof of what we had been so long
suspecting. There was no dubiety permitted. M. Alain's expensive
way of life, his clothes and mistresses, his dicing and racehorses,
were all explained: he was in the pay of Buonaparte, a hired spy,
and a man that held the strings of what I can only call a
convolution of extremely fishy enterprises. To do M. de Keroual
justice, he took it in the best way imaginable, destroyed the
evidences of the one great-nephew's disgrace--and transferred his