And here Mr. Napier, on the authority of Count Desmarets, brings a grave charge against Raleigh. Raleigh in his ‘Apology’ protests that he only saw Desmarets once on board of his vessel. Desmarets says in his despatches that he was on board of her several times—whether he saw Raleigh more than once does not appear—and that Raleigh complained to him of having been unjustly imprisoned, stripped of his estate, and so forth; and that he was on that account resolved to abandon his country, and, if the expedition succeeded, offer himself and the fruit of his labour to the King of France. If this be true, Raleigh was very wrong. But Sir Robert Schomburgk points out that this passage, which Mr. Napier says occurs in the last despatch, was written a month after Raleigh had sailed; and that the previous despatch, written only four days after Raleigh sailed, says nothing about the matter. So that it could not have been a very important or fixed resolution on Raleigh’s part, if it was only to be recollected a month after. I do not say—as Sir Robert Schomburgk is very much inclined to do—that it was altogether a bubble of French fancy. It is possible that Raleigh, in his just rage at finding that James was betraying him and sending him out with a halter round his neck, to all but certain ruin, did say wild words—That it was better for him to serve the Frenchman than such a master—that perhaps he might go over to the Frenchman after all—or some folly of the kind, in that same rash tone which, as we have seen, has got him into trouble so often already: and so I leave the matter, saying, Beware of making any man an offender for a word, much less one who is being hunted to death in his old age, and knows it.