As I looked back on my journey from Scotland, and my walk round Harrow with Mr. Aulif, I thought that the reason why he did not arrange for our School-armoury to be attacked was that he would not abuse the confidence of a boy who had trusted him. Perhaps it really was that the rifles were too few and the risks too many. * * * * * The year 1870 found me still a Harrow boy, though a tall one; and I spent the Easter holidays with my cousins, the Brentfords, in Paris. They were a remarkable couple, and if I were to mention their real name, they would be immediately recognized. They had social position and abundant means and hosts of friends; but, acting under irresistible impulse, they had severed themselves from their natural surroundings, and had plunged into democratic politics. It was commonly believed that Brentford would not have committed himself so deeply if it had not been for his wife's influence; and, indeed, she was one of those women whom it is difficult to withstand. Her enthusiasm was contagious; and when one was in her company one felt that "the Cause," as she always called it without qualifying epithet, was the one thing worth thinking of and living for. As a girl, she had caught from Mrs. Browning, and Swinburne, and Jessie White-Mario, and the authoress of _Aspromonte_, a passionate zeal for Italian unity and freedom; and, when she married, her enthusiasm fired her husband. They became sworn allies both of Garibaldi and of Mazzini, and through them were brought into close, though mysterious, relations with the revolutionary party in Italy and also in France. They witnessed the last great act of the Papacy at the Vatican Council; and then, early in 1870, they established themselves in Paris. French society was at that moment in a strange state of tension and unrest. The impending calamity of the Franco-German War was not foreseen; but everyone knew that the Imperial throne was rocking; that the soil was primed by Secret Societies; and that all the elements of revolution were at hand, and needed only some sudden concussion to stir them into activity. This was a condition which exactly suited my cousin Evelyn Brentford. She was "at the height of the circumstances," and she gathered round her, at her villa on the outskirts of Paris, a society partly political, partly Bohemian, and wholly Red. "Do come," she wrote, "and stay with us at Easter. I can't promise you a Revolution; but it's quite on the cards that you may come in for one. Anyhow, you will see some fun." I had some difficulty in inducing my parents (sound Whigs) to give the necessary permission; but they admitted that at seventeen a son must be trusted, and I went off rejoicing to join the Brentfords at Paris. Those three weeks, from the 12th of April to the 4th of May, 1870, gave me, as the boys now say, "the time of my life." I met a great many people whose names I already knew, and some more of whom we heard next year in the history