I hurried Merton away to an inn, where the wound his own act had made serious was dressed. Although in much pain, he insisted on our leaving him at once. Lieutenant West and I crossed the Channel that night. At noon next day Mr. Adams had the papers and this queer tale which, as I said, is unaccountably left out of his biography. I have often wondered where, to-day, are those papers. The count remained with Porthos at a farm-house near by. He made a slow recovery, the colonel complaining bitterly that M. Merton's methods lacked the refinement of the French duel. The papers contained, among other documents, a rough draft of a letter dated October 15, 1862, from M. Drouyn de Lhuys proposing intervention to the courts of England and Russia. It appeared in the French journals about November 14, when the crisis had passed. Mr. Adams acted on the manly instructions of Mr. Seward, and Mr. Gladstone lived to change his opinions on this matter, as in time he changed almost all his opinions. Madame Bellegarde, unknown to history, had saved the situation. The English minister declined the French proposals. Soon after I returned, Madame Bellegarde reappeared, and, as soon as he was well enough, Merton went to see her. She had been released, as we supposed she would be, with a promise to say nothing of her examination, and she kept her word. I thought it as well not to call upon her, but when Merton told me of his visit I was malicious enough to ask whether he had returned to her the ribbon. To this he replied that I had a talent for observation and that I had better ask her. She had been ordered to leave France for six months. I am under the impression that he wrote to her and she to him. The thrust in his arm, which would otherwise have been of small moment, his own decisive act had converted into a rather bad open wound, and, as it healed very slowly, under advice he resigned from the army and for a time remained in Paris, where we were much together. In December he left for Italy. I was not surprised to receive in the spring an invitation to the marriage of the two actors in this notable affair. I ought to add that Le Moyne lost his place in the Foreign Office, but, being of an influential family, was later employed in the diplomatic service. Circumstances, as Alphonse remarked, made it desirable for him to disappear. Merton was additionally generous and my valet married and became the prosperous master of a well-known restaurant in New York. XVI Late in 1868 Merton rejoined the army, and I did not see him again until in 1869, when I was American minister at The Hague. In June of that year Colonel and Mrs. Merton became my guests. When I told Mrs. Merton that Count le Moyne was the French ambassador in Holland, she said to her husband: "I told you we should meet, and really I should like to tell him how sorry I was for him." "I fancy," said I, "that the count will hardly think a return to that little corner of history desirable."