If, sir, at any time you think I can by any means be of the least use with regard to French affairs, having more knowledge of that country than, perhaps, sir, you are aware of, you may command me. There is a circumstance that most certainly may one day or other prove a severe check to the allied Powers should they attempt to enter France; it is a secret or artful menace that Buonaparte reserves for a last manœuvre. When I come to town, which will be in less than a fortnight, I will, sir, if you please, explain my meaning. I need not request, sir, that any communication I give, or my _now_ having taken the liberty to address you, may remain a profound secret. The secret menace to which Mrs. Atkyns here alludes would seem to indicate that, in her opinion, Buonaparte was aware that Louis XVII.—the child supposed to have died in the Temple—was still alive, and was reserving this knowledge in order to make use of it should necessity arise. It was another relative of Sir Spencer’s, the Reverend Mr. Perceval, who took such a great interest in the pretender Naundorff, an individual claiming to be Louis XVII. Mr. Perceval it was who published a book called _The Misfortunes of the Dauphin_, in which the adventures of the Duc de Normandie, as Naundorff styled himself, are fully described. Much of this narrative, however, is very involved and unsatisfactory, whilst the account of the Dauphin’s escape from the prison of the Temple, concealed in a coffin, carries but little conviction. The organiser of this rescue is stated to have been Josephine Beauharnais, afterwards Empress of the French. It is not, in all probability, generally known that there were no less than thirty-six pretended Dauphins, including an American one—Eleazar Williams by name—about whose origin considerable mystery prevails. The story told about him was that he had been brought as a child to America by a French family in 1795, and placed in charge of an Iroquois half-breed, Thomas Williams by name, being as a young man educated by a Mr. Nathaniel Ely, a deacon of the Congregational Church—Eleazar Williams himself afterwards entering the ministry. It was in 1851 that a Mr. Hanson began the investigations which brought Eleazar Williams before the world as the lost Dauphin. The Duchesse d’Angoulême, sister of the child over whose fate such a mystery prevails, is declared, when on her deathbed, to have sent for General Larochejaquelein, a faithful adherent of the Bourbon cause. “General,” she said, “I have a fact—a very important fact to reveal to you—the testament of a dying woman. My brother is not dead. This is the nightmare of my whole life. Promise me to use all possible means to find him. Travel by land and sea to discover some of the old servants or their descendants; for France can never be happy and tranquil until he is seated on the throne of his fathers.”