When he had finished his shaving operations, La Vireville, still humming, looked round the scantily appointed dressing-table for something upon which to wipe his razor. On the threadbare dimity lay, in tempting proximity, a folded paper with worn and soiled edges, but this he refrained from using. It was, in fact, the proclamation in question for the person of 'Monsieur Augustin,' and, as it possessed the merit of being very inaccurate in its description of that person, he had the habit of carrying it upon him--partly, he declared, as an amulet. The Republic one and indivisible had not, he averred, the wits to conceive that a man would voluntarily carry about with him his own death-warrant. "Head of a ci-devant!" he observed now, wiping the razor upon a piece of newspaper, and making a grimace at his image in the glass. "No, Augustin, my friend, you will get a bullet through your heart before ever that ornament rolls into the basket and is shown to an admiring crowd." And indeed this was highly probable. He was about to put down the razor when the tarnished mirror suddenly revealed to him a tiny trickle of blood on his left cheek, just below the short furrowed scar that ran across it. He had cut himself in shaving--the most infinitesimal injury, yet, after standing a moment staring at the glass, he gave a violent exclamation, dabbed at the place with a hasty handkerchief, and threw the scarcely flecked linen from him as though it were a thing accursed. For a Chouan, of all men, the action, with its suggestion of repugnance, was strange. However, in another minute his brow cleared and he proceeded with his toilet. Then once more humming the 'Marseillaise,' he sat down upon the bed and looked over the contents of a letter-case which he drew from his pocket. A missive in a fine large flourishing hand signed "Bouillon" informed him that the writer was eagerly expecting his arrival to confer with him as to the landing of a cargo of arms and ammunition near Cap Fréhel on the Breton coast. And, in fact, it was M. de la Vireville's intention to set out this morning for Southampton, thence to Jersey, on this matter. Another letter was there, from Jersey also, in a feminine hand. The smile which was not cynical came about the émigré's lips as he re-read it, and, being a Frenchman, he lifted and kissed his mother's letter. A third was the several days' old note from the Marquis de Flavigny, telling him of the time of the conference which he had already attended in Mr. Elphinstone's house. "Tudieu!" exclaimed M. de la Vireville as he came upon this. "And I promised to say good-bye to the baby. I wonder have I the time?" He sprang up to put together his few effects, and in a very short space was making his way westwards. (2) Mr. Elphinstone got up from his memoirs when the Chevalier de la Vireville was shown in to him in the library.