THE JESUIT SETTLEMENT STATEMENT BY HIS MAJESTY THE KING. And there, plainly set forth, was the Royal and authoritative refusal to grant the lands required, ‘Because of the earnest petition of our loving subjects against the said grant,’--and till ‘our loving subjects’’ objections were removed, the lands would be withheld. This public announcement signed by the King in person, created the most extraordinary sensation throughout the whole country. It was the one topic at every social meeting; it was the one subject of every sermon. Preachers stormed and harangued in every pulpit, and Monsignor Del Fortis, lifting up his harsh raucous voice in the Cathedral itself, addressed an enormous congregation one Sunday morning on the matter, and denounced the King, the Queen, and the mysteriously-departed Crown Prince in the most orthodox Christian manner, commending them to the flames of hell, and the mercy of a loving God at one and the same moment. Meanwhile, the newspaper that had been permitted to publish the King’s statement got its circulation up by tens of thousands, the more so as certain brilliant and fiery articles on the political situation began to appear therein signed by one Pasquin Leroy, a stranger to the reading public, but in whom the spirit of a modern ‘Junius’ appeared to have entered for the purpose of warning, threatening and commanding. A scathing and audacious attack upon Carl Pérousse, Secretary of State, in which the small darts of satire flew further than the sharpest arrows of assertion, was among the first of these, and Pérousse himself, maddened like a bull at the first prick of the toreador, by the stinging truths the writer uttered, or rather suggested, lost no time in summoning General Bernhoff to a second interview. “Did I not tell you,” he said, pointing to the signature at the end of the offending article, “to ‘shadow’ that man, and arrest him as a common spy?” Bernhoff bowed stiffly. “You did! But it is difficult to arrest one who is not capable of being arrested. I must be provided first with proofs of his guilt; and I must also obtain the King’s order.” “Proofs should be easy enough for you to obtain,” said Pérousse fiercely; “And the King will sign any warrant he is told. At least, you can surely find this rascal out?--where he lives, and what are his means of subsistence?” “If he were here, I could,” responded Bernhoff calmly; “I have made all the necessary preliminary enquiries. The man is a gentleman of considerable wealth. He writes for his own amusement, and--from a distance. I advise you--” and here the General held up an obstinate-looking finger of warning; “I advise you, I say, to let him alone! I can find no proof whatever that he is a spy.”