There still remained to Matilda Tone more than fifty years of painful pilgrimage on this earth, before she was re-united to the husband—who had never ceased to be the lover—of her youth. The story of twenty-eight of these years has been told by her son William, and we may fittingly leave the tale to his telling, only taking it up again when his voice, too, was silenced—and to use her own pathetic phrase, his mother was left widowed and childless for twenty years more, “=Lonely and desolate to mourn her dead.=” * * * * * “At the close of this last expedition [_i.e._ Hardy’s], a strict embargo reigned on the coasts of England, and no news could reach to France but through the distant and indirect channel of Hamburg. It was not till the close of November that the report of the action of October 11th, of the capture, trial, defence and condemnation of Tone, and of the wound which he was reported to have inflicted upon himself, reached all at once to Paris. It was also stated at first that this wound which he was reported to have inflicted upon himself was slight, that the law courts had claimed him, that all proceedings were therefore stopped, and that there were strong hopes of his recovery. My mother, then in the most delicate and precarious state of health, a stranger in the land (of which she scarcely spoke the language) and without a friend and adviser (for she had ever lived in the most retired privacy) rallied, however, a courage and spirits worthy of the name she bore. Surmounting all timidity and weakness of body as well as of mind, she threw herself instantly into a carriage, and drove to the minister of foreign affairs (Tallyrand Perigord). She knew that he spoke English and had been acquainted with my father both in America and in France. He received her with the most lively interest. Cases of this kind did not belong to his department, but he promised all the support of his credit with the Government, and gave her an introduction to the Directory. She immediately called on La Reveilliere Lepaux, then president of the Directory, and met with a reception equally favourable and respectful. He gave the most solemn assurances that my father should be instantly claimed; and mentioned in the demand by the name of Tone, by that of Smith, and individually as a French officer, lest his assumed name should occasion any diplomatic delay; he added that the English officers then in the French prisons should be confined as hostages to answer for his safety; and that, if none were equal to him in rank, the difference should be made up in numbers. It was unfortunate that Sir Sidney Smith had then escaped from the Temple. As soon as these papers were drawn, La Reveilliere Lepaux addressed her with them to the minister of