For a while it seemed as if he lived in retirement--his late success enabled this to be an “elegant retirement”--and it is said that he passed it on the Lake of Como, in a villa near that of the once Queen Caroline. There are traditions of a distinguished stranger--a man of rank and a man of letters--who lived there estranged from all the world, and deeply engaged in the education of his two sons. One of these youths, however, not responding to all this parental devotion, involved himself in some scrape, fled from his father’s roof, and escaped into Switzerland. N. F., as soon as he could rally from the first shock of the news, hastened after, to bring him back, borrowing a carriage from a neighbouring nobleman in his haste. With this he crossed the frontier at Chiasso, but never to come back again. The coachman, indeed, brought tidings of the sale of the equipage, which the illustrious stranger had disposed of, thus quitting a neighbourhood he could only associate with a sorrowful past, and a considerable number of debts into the bargain. Another blank occurs here in history, which autobiography alone perhaps could fill. It would be unfair and un-philosophical to suppose that because we cannot trace him he was inactive: we might as reasonably imply that the moon ceased to move when we lost sight of her. At all events, towards the end of autumn of that last year of the war in the Crimea, a stout, well-dressed, portly man, with an air of considerable assurance, swaggered into the Chancellerie of her Majesty’s Legation at Munich, notwithstanding the representations of the porter, who would, if he had dared, have denied him admittance, and asked, in a voice of authority, if there were no letters there for Captain F. The gentleman to whom the question was addressed was an attaché of the Legation, and at that time in “charge” of the mission, the Minister being absent. Though young in years, F. could scarcely, in the length and breadth of Europe, have fallen upon one with a more thorough insight into every phase and form of those mysteries by which the F. category of men exist. Mr L. was an actual amateur in this way, and was no more the man to be angry with F. for being a swindler, than with Ristori for being Medea or Macready being Macbeth. Not that he had the slightest suspicion at the time of F.’s quality, as he assured him that there were no letters for that name. “How provoking!” said the Captain, as he bit his lip. “They will be so impatient in England,” muttered he to himself, “and I know Sidney Herbert is sure to blame _me_.” Then he added aloud, “I am at a dead-lock here. I have come from the Crimea with despatches, and expected to find money here to carry me on to England; and these stupid people at the War Office have forgotten all about it. Is it not enough to provoke a saint?” “I don’t know; I never was a saint,” said the impassive attaché.