On the advent of this Austrian Archduchess to share the Imperial throne, Viennese influence at the Court of Napoleon began to count in Paris as an important enough factor. Sufficiently important, at any rate, to put a term to the activities of the man who had been to a great extent responsible for the debâcle of Austria's military and political schemes in 1805. Schulmeister accordingly disappeared from Paris, selling his estate near Paris and retiring to his splendid property at Meinau, where his popularity with the Alsatians was so great as to justify the belief that the spy was generously endowed with many qualities other than those which had led him to adopt the trade of espionage. "He is a spy," his countrymen used to say, "but surely also a gallant man." In 1814, during the invasion of France, a regiment of Austrian artillery was especially detailed to demolish his mansion and to destroy as much of his personal property as possible. The spy returned to Paris during the Hundred Days, only to be arrested when Napoleon left for Belgium. He was released on paying over so large a ransom that his fortune was permanently crippled. On the return of the Bourbons, all his attempts to play a social rôle were severely frowned down by the friends of his prosperous days, and with the small remnants of a fortune which unfortunate speculations had now reduced to the vanishing point, he returned to Alsace, there to live a life of lean days and pathetic obscurity. As late as 1840 he was the keeper of a _bureau de tabac_, one of those tobacco stalls which are given to Frenchmen as a solatium for public services in the lower grades. He was alive in 1850 when the Prince-President toured through Alsace, but refused to bring himself to the notice of the nephew of Napoleon. The President called on him, however, vouchsafing him an honour which he had never received from the great Captain—namely, a handshake. He died in 1853 and was buried near his wife and parents in the cemetery of Saint Urbain in Strassburg. V NATHAN HALE