When Napoleon " caught a Tartar" at Mont St. Jean, and all was settled, the Comte D'Ormalle settled likewise at his Chateau D'Ormalle, on the banks of the Loire, where a settled melancholy appeared to prey upon him, and he betook himself to wandering to and fro, like an unquiet spirit; for he, like Charles Maxwell, had taken his calculations, and was ever balancing, and thinking of a monastery, and— the gentleman with the black coat, Geneva cloak, &c. &c. To these meditations the Comtesse left him undisturbed, and pursued the now indispensable frivolities of the metropolis, where she became the nucleus of a most ancient coterie of the most ancient names and dignified personages; who, utterly despising the mushroom race of nick-named nobility, congregated where they could safely vent the spleen which they had for so many years been bottling up, while in a state of expatriation.

Having thus seen that the Comte D'Ormalle was not in better plight than Charles Maxwell, it becomes our duty to state their ulterior proceedings under such appalling prospects.

CHAPTER V.

IN the long hours which poor Charles Maxwell now habitually spent in solitude, he indulged himself yet, occasionally, in the dreams and visions of hope; and, in one of these reveries, he luckily recollected old Bagsby, the late admiral's lean legal adviser, of whose shrewd exploits he had heard many a singular tale.

"If the old fellow is yet living," thought he; "and has been going on steadily in the same way ever since I saw him last, he must, by this time, be a match even for the gentleman in black himself."

With such reflections he lost no time, but

posted to the old fellow's chambers in Lyon's Inn, where he sat, half buried among piles of dusty books and papers, like a lion ant at the bottom of his inverted cone of crumbling sand, ready to seize on any poor animal unconsciously approaching its verge.

Bagsby was delighted to see our hero; for he had not forgotten the three hundred thousand pounds. So he shook him cordially by the hand, entreated him to be seated, adjusted his own wig, stirred up the four square inches of smoking cinders huddled together in one corner of the grate, bowed and grinned, rubbed his hands and his spectacles, bowed and grinned, and bowed and grinned again.

At length Mr. Maxwell did "a tale unfold," which had an effect almost as tremendous as that described by Shakspeare in the well-known passage, the commencement of which we have just quoted. But old Bagsby had been so long

accustomed to intricate cases, that, let him be thrown where he might, he always contrived, as it were, like a cat, to fall upon his legs, and find some place to cling to. So, after a long pause, he thus addressed his client.

"Hem! my dear Sir, this is an ugly piece of business. Hem-I have certainly heard of this gentleman in black-hem-I remember once fancying that I saw him: but we have many strange characters to deal with in the way of our profession-perhaps I was mistaken. Hem! But, however, to the point-I think I understood that you could yet obtain supplies, money mean, to any amount?"

I

"I can demand any amount," replied Mr. Maxwell," and were it not immediately forthcoming, the contract would then be broken on his part an event of which I have very little expectation."

Hem !-hem-hem," resumed Bagsby, “In