you have received from your fellow citizens."

Such is the love story of Laperouse. Alas! the marriage did not bring
many years of happiness to poor Eleonore, much as she deserved them.
Two years afterwards, her hero sailed away on that expedition
from which he never returned. She dwelt at Albi, hoping until hope gave
way to despair, and at last she died, of sheer grief they said, nine
years after the waters of the Pacific had closed over him who had wooed
her and wedded her for herself alone.




Chapter IV.



THE VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION.


King Louis XVI of France was as unfortunate a monarch as was ever born
to a throne. Had it been his happier lot to be the son of a farmer, a
shopkeeper, or a merchant, he would have passed for an excellent man of
business and a good, solid, sober, intelligent citizen. But he
inherited with his crown a system of government too antiquated for the
times, too repressive for the popular temper to endure, and was not
statesman enough to remodel it to suit the requirements of his people.
It was not his fault that he was not a great man; and a great man--a
man of large grasp, wide vision, keen sympathies, and penetrating
imagination--was needed in France if the social forces at work, the