groping finger on the pulse of public opinion that he found himself utterly mistaken and in danger of mortal error. He then wrote, and gave to the public prints, a curious letter, addressed to Marie Louise, asserting that Napoleon was dying in the torments of a frightful agony. This amounted to a recantation. In consequence he was banished from England under the Alien Bill. At once he hurried away to Prince Eugene (Napoleon's treasurer) and from him reclaimed and received, for four years certainly, his arrears of imperial pay and pension. In 1822 he was permitted to return to France. The notoriety of his name is due to two sets of circumstances. Sir Walter Scott told the truth about his conduct, just when the noble general was beginning to swim in the refulgence of the Napoleonic legend. There ensued a wordy warfare. The weapons on one side were official papers; on the other denials, insinuations, and finally the assertion of some vague commission or another given by the great captive, impossible of fulfilment in any way other than by the mysterious course of the plenipotentiary. This mystery is still unsolved and the commission undiscovered, but in France at least the conflict still rages. As late as 1908 a caustic critic was challenged to a duel by the testy and furious family head of the Gourgauds. The other set of circumstances is equally curious. Gourgaud left behind him a journal of his St. Helena life. Its contents are certainly authentic evidence of the writer's character, and as there is no means of checking the authenticity of what is recorded about Napoleon and his Longwood household, the record may possibly be and probably is accurate. The sore spirit of the writer required a confidant, and since there was no congenial soul to receive his outpourings he relieved himself as other sentimental egoists have done in the pages of a journal. From these the most conscientious efforts have been made to construct a psychology of the Emperor. The result is a morbid psychology of a caged falcon, the revival of bitter controversy as to the treatment of the great prisoner by a Tory ministry, and generally of a rather abstracted but intense interest in the Napoleonic legend. Hence the prolonged vogue of a celebrity which should have been ephemeral. The general is in no proper sense a historical factor except as the influence of his behavior in Europe served to quicken the existing lively interest in Napoleon. As far as his earliest testimony went, and many inclined to heed it, the master he had served was in excellent health, was kindly treated, and in general was better off than could have been expected. This of course lashed the imperialists to fury; their information was to the diametrically opposite effect.