that hour he has been lost to France. Some of his companions in
arms returned after a number of years. All with one exception
declared that he was killed in the battle at St. Heliers. One,
however, maintains that he was still living and in the prison
hospital when his comrades were set free.

"It is of him I write to you. He is--as you will perchance
remember--the Comte de Tournay. He was then not more than seventeen
years of age, slight of build, with brownish hair, dark grey eyes,
and had over the right shoulder a scar from a sword thrust. It
seemeth little possible that, if living, he should still remain in
that Isle of Jersey. He may rather have returned to obscurity in
France or have gone to England to be lost to name and remembrance
--or even indeed beyond the seas.

"That you may perchance give me word of him is the object of my
letter, written in no more hope than I live; and you can well guess
how faint that is. One young nobleman preserved to France may yet
be the great unit that will save her.

"Greet my poor countrymen yonder in the name of one who still waits
at a desecrated altar; and for myself you must take me as I am, with
the remembrance of what I was, even

"Your faithful friend and loving kinsman,

"CHANIER."

"All this, though in the chances of war you read it not till
wintertide, was told you at Rouen this first day of September 1792."