At this moment he will have left Elba, to go whither I know not, but assuredly to attempt a landing either at Naples, or on the coast of Tuscany, or perhaps on the shores of France.
Your majesty is well aware that the sovereign of the Island of Elba has maintained his relations with Italy and France ?" "I am, sir," said the king, much agitated; "and recently we have had information that the Bonapartist clubs have had meetings in the Rue Saint-Jacques.

But proceed, I beg of you.

How did you obtain these details ?" "Sire, they are the results of an examination which I have made of a man of Marseilles, whom I have watched for some time, and arrested on the day of my departure.

This person, a sailor, of turbulent character, and whom I suspected of Bonapartism, has been secretly to the Island of Elba.

There he saw the grand-marshal, who charged him with an oral message to a Bonapartist in Paris, whose name I could not extract from him; but this mission was to prepare men's minds for a return (it is the man who says this, sire)--a return which will soon occur." "And where is this man ?" "In prison, sire." "And the matter seems serious to you ?" "So serious, sire, that when the circumstance surprised me in the midst of a family festival, on the very day of my betrothal, I left my bride and friends, postponing everything, that I might hasten to lay at your majesty's feet the fears which impressed me, and the assurance of my devotion." "True," said Louis XVIII., "was there not a marriage engagement between you and Mademoiselle de Saint-Meran ?" "Daughter of one of your majesty's most faithful servants." "Yes, yes; but let us talk of this plot, M.de Villefort." "Sire, I fear it is more than a plot; I fear it is a conspiracy." "A conspiracy in these times," said Louis XVIII., smiling, "is a thing very easy to meditate, but more difficult to conduct to an end, inasmuch as, re-established so recently on the throne of our ancestors, we have our eyes open at once upon the past, the present, and the future.