In 1849 France, indeed, was kind enough to give the world a breathing space. She had herself just come through one of those seething years from which she alone seems to have the power of complete recovery. Paris had been in a state of siege for four months; not threatened by a foreign foe, but torn to pieces by internal dissension. Sixteen thousand had been killed and wounded in the streets. A ministry had fallen. A ministry always does fall in France. Bad weather may bring about such a descent at any moment. A monarchy had been thrown down--a king had fled. Another king; and one who should have known better than to put his trust in a people. Half a dozen generals had attempted to restore order in Paris and confidence in France. Then, at the very end of 1848, the fickle people elected this Napoleon, who was no Bonaparte, President of the new Republic, and Europe was accorded a breathing space. At the beginning of 1849 arrangements were made for it--military arrangements--and the year was almost quiet. It was in the summer of the next year, 1850, that the Marquis de Gemosac journeyed to England. It was not his first visit to the country. Sixty years earlier he had been hurried thither by a frenzied mother, a little pale-faced boy, not bright or clever, but destined to pass through days of trial and years of sorrow which the bright and clever would scarcely have survived. For brightness must always mean friction, while cleverness will continue to butt its head against human limitations so long as men shall walk this earth. He had been induced to make this journey thus, in the evening of his days, by the Hope, hitherto vain enough, which many Frenchmen had pursued for half a century. For he was one of those who refused to believe that Louis XVII had died in the prison of the Temple. Not once, but many times, Dormer Colville laughingly denied any responsibility in the matter. "I will not even tell the story as it was told to me," he said to the Marquis de Gemosac, to the Abbé Touvent and to the Comtesse de Chantonnay, whom he met frequently enough at the house of his cousin, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, in that which is now the Province of the Charente Inférieure. "I will not even tell you the story as it was told to me, until one of you has seen the man. And then, if you ask me, I will tell you. It is nothing to me, you understand. I am no dreamer, but a very material person, who lives in France because he loves the sunshine, and the cuisine, and the good, kind hearts, which no government or want of government can deteriorate." And Madame de Chantonnay, who liked Dormer Colville--with whom she admitted she always felt herself in sympathy--smiled graciously in response to his gallant bow. For she, too, was a materialist who loved the sunshine and the cuisine; more especially the cuisine.