would not be dissuaded from their belief by the most positive proofs as to the falsity of his tale. Men of exalted position and wealthy persons accorded him their sympathetic aid, and considered themselves well paid for whatever they might do if "the dauphin" condescended to honour them with a bow, or if they were permitted to kiss his royal hand. The imperial police, however, would not stand much nonsense, and shut up the youthful claimant in the asylum of Bicêtre, as an incorrigible lunatic. Hervagault now and for henceforth disappeared from public gaze, but the vacant dauphinship was speedily claimed by Jersat, an old soldier; and upon his being disposed of, Fontolive, a mason at Lyons, started as a claimant for the honours. He in his turn vanished from the scene, and then Bruneau aspired to the title. THE FALSE DAUPHINS: MATHURIN BRUNEAU. Mathurin Bruneau was the son of a maker of wooden shoes, and was born at Vezin, in the department of the Marne-et-Loire. By his eleventh year the precocious rogue had already endeavoured to palm himself off as a nobleman's son, and encouraged, apparently, by the facility with which his claims were acknowledged, he determined to fly at a higher game, ultimately giving forth that he was the Duke of Normandy. Although this impostor never was anything but a vulgar peasant, devoid of education and good manners, he acquired a large following, and really became a source of danger to the Government. In 1817, that is to say, in the early days of the Bourbon restoration, when the throne was in a very precarious condition, this claimant, taking advantage of a famine and the general discontent, had placards posted on the walls and public places of Rouen, denouncing the reigning monarch, Louis the Eighteenth, claiming the crown for himself as the legitimate son of Louis the Sixteenth, and promising, if placed on the throne, to reduce the price of bread to three sous per pound. The long wars of the empire had exhausted France, and reduced the provinces to such a condition of misery that any inflammatory leader was likely to obtain a large retinue of discontented followers, so that even so mean and insignificant a personage as Bruneau was, was dangerous.