This singular person was a German, the Westphalian Baron Theodore von Neuhoff--the cleverest and most fortunate of all the adventurers of his time. In his youth he had been a page at the court of the Duchess of Orleans, had afterwards gone into the Spanish service, and then returned to France. His brilliant talents had brought him into contact with all the remarkable personages of the age; among others, with Alberoni, with Ripperda, and Law, in whose financial speculations he had been involved. Neuhoff had experienced everything, seen everything, thought, attempted, enjoyed, and suffered everything. True to the dictates of a romantic and adventurous nature, he had run through all possible shapes in which fortune can appear, and had at length taken it into his head, that for a man of a powerful mind like him, it must be a desirable thing to be a king. And he had not conceived this idea in the vein of the crackbrained Knight of La Mancha, who, riding errant into the world, persuaded himself that he would at least be made emperor of Trebisonde in reward for his achievements; on the contrary, accident threw the thought into his quite unclouded intellect, and he resolved to be a king, to become so in a real and natural way,--and he became a king. In the course of his rovings through Europe, Neuhoff had come to Genoa just at the time when Giafferi, Ceccaldi, Aitelli, and Rafaelli were brought to the city as prisoners. It seems that his attention was now for the first time drawn to the Corsicans, whose obstinate bravery made a deep impression on him. He formed a connexion with such Corsicans as he could find in Genoa, particularly with men belonging to the province of Balagna; and after gaining an insight into the state of affairs in the island, the idea of playing a part in the history of this romantic country gradually ripened in his mind. He immediately went to Leghorn, where Orticoni, into whose hands the foreign relations of the island had been committed, was at the time residing. He introduced himself to Orticoni, and succeeded in inspiring him with admiration, and with confidence in his magnificent promises. For, intimately connected, as he said he was, with all the courts, he affirmed that, within the space of a year, he would procure the Corsicans all the necessary means for driving the Genoese for ever from the island. In return, he demanded nothing more than that the Corsicans should crown him as their king. Orticoni, carried away by the extraordinary genius of the man, by his boundless promises, by the cleverness of his diplomatic, economic, and political ideas, and perceiving that Neuhoff really might be able to do his country good service, asked the opinion of the generals of the island. In their desperate situation, they gave him full power to treat with Neuhoff. Orticoni, accordingly, came to an agreement with the baron, that he should be proclaimed king of Corsica as soon as he put