in Sicily they were never papal, and are not so now. One may count on one's fingers the clerical bishops; and even in Rome one must look amongst the high ecclesiastical functionaries to find partisans of the temporal power. Leo XIII. demands it, desires it, but fears to resume it, and, whenever he discusses it, finishes by saying that if the civil power were restored to him, it would be so difficult to maintain it that he might, if he became king, before long be obliged to ask for the return of the Italian troops. one hundred and eighty-two to two hundred and fifty-four; nor was this enough, for in a special budget she appropriated the enormous sum of ten hundred and seventy-three millions; and, as if not satisfied with that, by the laws of June and December, 1888, established for the same purpose a credit of seven hundred and seventy millions. All this is amazing, and proves not only the power of ambition, but that of the patriotism of France. Nevertheless, as the number of soldiers is always in proportion to that of the popula tion, it is necessary to remember that the population of France is less than onefourth of that of the States of the Triple Alliance. Italy has good soldiers, says our enemy, and good officers. This is a concession of which we may take note; but he doubts if there is a chief who is capable of directing the soldiers and officers in battle. This may, indeed, be said of France, I have alluded to French intrigues, and judging by the proofs she gave in 1870. I will recall one which proves the insidBut in all these doubts there is one thing iousness of the attitude of the government fairly assured that, if France attacked of the republic towards the government of Italy, Germany would renew the move- Rome, and at the same time shows the rement of 1870, and that Austria would be luctance of Leo XIII. to enter openly into found side by side with King Humbert. undertakings which might cause him to be England, interested in the Mediterranean, accused of being the cause of a war becould not be inactive. The game, to say tween France and Italy. He fears to the least, would not be a sure one for alienate the Italian clergy and provoke a the government of the republic, since the schism which would injure Catholicism. great powers would be opposed to it. But Two years ago Count Lefebvre de Behaine here I am willing to admit an absurdity, was at Paris during the summer, I do not and to suppose for an instant that En- know for what reasons, whether for the gland, Austria, Germany, and Italy were usual congé or for political motives. He defeated by France, defeated by arms and had left Italy after having come to an unby intrigues. It is a magnificent dream derstanding with certain high functionaries for the chauvins to have Europe at their of the Curia, who are the most fanatical feet, Waterloo and Sedan avenged, the advocates of the temporal power. One Treaty of Frankfort of 1871 and what re- day, about the beginning of July, M. Baymains of that of 1815 wiped out! But the lin de Monbel, the chargé d'affaires of the intrigues of France are understood, and Embassy of France to the Vatican, went that her government has long employed to the pope with a telegram, announcing them; they have also often been circum-that it was time to leave, and that in France vented. The military side of the affair is more difficult, if I may be permitted to say So. To conquer the three allied powers, France must have at least four millions of soldiers, and she has not got them; she must moreover, to become mistress of the sea, have a fleet superior to that of Great Britain, Austria, Germany, and Italy. all was ready. The telegram said, "Faites vite, car tout est prêt.” Leo XIII., who prefers the Vatican to an uncertainty, replied that it was necessary to consider, that he must consult the College of Cardinals in a matter of such gravity, and that M. de Monbel must come again in a couple of days. M. de Monbel, who is known in France in the years since 1870 has spent the Roman world as a man of infinite reon her army and fleet four milliards, but source, went to the audience appointed, there is a limit to everything, and her accompanied by the general of the Jesuits. forces are necessarily proportioned to her The pope this time opposed the plar, population. What she has done in the showing his aversion to an act which last twenty years is certainly extraordi- might turn out otherwise than safe for nary, and it has obliged the other govern- him. M. de Monbel then proposed a simments to increase their armaments as ulation of flight, a trip to a neighboring well. The French Parliament has in-shore; but this made the pope still more creased its military budget from four hun hesitating, and nothing was decided. The dred and twenty millions to seven hundred French ministry had prepared a dilemma; and thirty-five, and that of the navy from | if the pope succeeded in escaping and malady which dates from the time of Louis XIV., and which had got into the blood of Thiers, who reproached the ministers of the empire with having, contrary to the traditional policy of France, permitted the constitution of Germany and Italy. taking refuge in France, the Roman ques- | rival State, they will not tolerate. It is a tion would revive, obliging the powers to resolve it; if the Italian government hindered the flight of Leo XIII., it would be proved that he was not free in his movements, and the Catholic powers would be obliged to undertake his defence. In the one case or the other, war would be inev- It is useless to talk of the Confederaitable, and as Italy would have been the cause of it, she could not plead the casus fæderis, and would have been left alone against France. The plan failed, but another was attempted, this time easier to detect. One day there came to Rome one of those people who call themselves agents of the Latin league, who go and come to and from Paris under the pretext of reconciling the two countries. In fact, he was an agent provocateur. He had been in the Vosges with Garibaldi, had been an officer of artillery, was freely received in the military workshops of France, and, in consequence, was intimate with certain generals of the republic. He had an interview with a high functionary of the Italian government, to whom he confided as a State secret that an expedition against | Italy was already decided on. To put it into effect they waited for an excuse in some question which should be raised. The government of the republic had decided to attack Italy by sea and land; in order to anticipate it, we must reach first the frontier with our army, putting also in movement the entire fleet. Two French divisions were to move, one from Toulon and one from Algiers, for the purpose of destroying one or two of the chief Italian cities with melinite; and seventy thousand troops would cross the frontier on the first sign from Paris. By this information it was hoped to excite the irritable disposition, as they judged it, of the Crispi ministry, which would respond precipitately by hostilities. And as the provocation would have come from Italy, she would have had no right to demand the assistance of the allied powers. The furious Sicilian, as the French journals delight to call him, did not fall into the snare, and did not even communicate the information to his colleagues. The agent returned to Paris, with the conviction that the ministry at Rome had no desire for war. The Italian Confederation - i.e., weakness is the object of the desires of French statesmen. It is the plan of Napoleon III.; in 1859 he wanted it with the federation of princes; to-day they desire it through the republic; a great State, a tion. At the Congress of Vienna they would not even discuss the idea of a federation in Italy, though it was proposed. Attempted in 1820 and 1848, it disappeared in defeat. I have shown in the preceding pages how the project arranged between the two emperors was received, and how, in spite of them, Italian unity was effected. The republic would be still less fortunate, no traditions of it existing in any region of Italy. In the spring of 1870 Mazzini attempted a Republican movement; it failed, although his propaganda had penetrated even into the army. It gave rise to the Barsanti incident, and to the band of Joseph Nathan on the mountains above Lake Como a band which was compelled to disperse by the indifference of the population around, and take refuge in Swit zerland. Distrusted on the Continent, Mazzini made an attempt in Sicily, urged by some agitators, who hoped, by the use of the name of the great patriot, to call to arms the population of Palermo. We all know the result: Mazzini, leaving Naples on the 13th of August, was the next morn. ing, on the arrival of the steamer at Palermo, received by the questor and two delegates, and from there sent to Gaeta. In 1870 there were many reasons for discontent, and especially that the monarchy had not been able to liberate Rome from the government of the priests. Maz zini said that the royal government was helpless before the pope, and that only the people could take possession of their capital. To-day there is not even this motive. The king entered Rome in September, 1870, and remains there. This was an act of the most revolutionary character for a dynasty that holds somewhat from the divine right. The pope, freed from all his grave cares of civil rule, has exercised his high spiritual authority for twenty-one years in absolute independence, blessing and cursing; and this is the greatest proof the royal government can give of toleration towards a pretender, and the best affirmation of the needlessness of the republic, because the supreme pontiff rules freely over the Catholic world. It is time to conclude, and I conclude, begging those Frenchmen who are gifted with common sense, those democrats who also that so soon as these letters were are animated by good-will, all those who presented, his freedom of action would be desire the reign of peace in the world, to to a certain extent restricted, either by a overrule the politicians by profession, and courtesy which would be so constant as to compel them to cease this newspaper war become a species of surveillance, or by which they are waging on Italy in the an injunction which would have no such hope of converting it into a war with can- gloss. He had come to study French non. Italy wishes to live in tranquillity; government in New Caledonia, to gauge she has no jealousies, no envies, no plans the extent of the menace that the convict of aggression; she has need of peace to question bore towards Australia, and to reorganize her internal affairs and com- tell his tale to Australia and such other plete her unity. She has no other ambi- countries as would listen. The task was tion than to co-operate with the other not altogether pleasant, and had its dannations in the progress of civilization. gers, too, of a certain kind. But Blake And this is my desire. Shorland had had both unpleasantness and peril many times in his life, and he borrowed no trouble. Proceeding along the Rue de l'Alma, and listening to the babble of French voices round him, he suddenly paused in an abstracted way that he had, and said to himself, "Somehow it brings back Paris to me, and that last night there, when I bade Glasham goodbye. Poor old boy! I'm glad better days are coming for him. Sure to be better if he marries Clare. Why didn't he do it seven years ago, and save all that other horrible business?" AN ITALIAN STATESMAN. From Macmillan's Magazine. I. WHEN Blake Shorland stepped from the steamer Sauvage upon the quay at Noumea, he proceeded, with the caution and alertness of the trained newspaper correspondent, to take his bearings. So this was New Caledonia, the home of outcast, criminal France, the recent refuge of Communist exiles, of Rochefort, Louise Michel, Felix Rastoul, and the rest! Over there to the left was Ile Nou, the convict prison; on the hill was the governor's residence; below, the government establishments with their red-tiled roofs; and hidden away in a luxuriance of tropical vegetation lay the houses of the citizens. He strokes his black moustache thoughtfully for a moment, and puts his hand to his pocket to see that his letters of introduction from the French consul at Sydney to Governor Rapont and his journalistic credentials are there. Then he remembers the advice of the captain of the Sauvage as to the best hotel, and starts towards it. He has not been shown the way, but his instincts direct him. He knows where it ought to be, according to the configuration of the town. It proved to be where he thought, and, having engaged rooms, sent for his portmanteau, and refreshed himself, he set out to explore the place. His prudent mind told him that he ought to proceed at once to Governor Rapont and present his letters of commendation, for he was in a country where feeling was running high against English interference with the deportation of French convicts to New Caledonia, and the intention of France to annex the New Hebrides. But he knew Then he moved on, noticing that he was the object of attention and remark; but he did not dislike that particularly, and it being day-time and in the street he felt himself quite safe. Glancing up at a doorway he saw a familiar Paris name the Café Voisin. Interesting, this! It was in the Café Voisin that he had touched a farewell glass with Luke Glasham, the one bosom friend of his life. He entered this Café Voisin with the thought of how, vague would be the society which he would meet in such a reproduction of a famous Parisian haunt. He thought of a café chantant at Cairo, and said to himself, "It can't be worse than that." He was right. The world has no shambles of ghastly frivolity and debauchery like those of Cairo. The Café Voisin had many visitors, and Blake Shorland saw at a glance who they were; libérés, or ticket-of-leave men, a drunken soldier or two, and a few of that class who with an army are called campfollowers, in an English town roughs, in a French convict settlement récidivistes. He felt at once that he had entered upon an unpleasant experience; but he also felt that the luck would be with him, as it had been with him so many times these late years. He sat down at a small table, and called to a haggard waitress near to bring him a cup of coffee. He then saw that there was another female in the room. paper was snatched from his hand, and a red-faced, unkempt scoundrel yelled in his face, "Spy of the devil! English thief!" Then he rose quickly and stepped back to the wall, feeling for the spring in his sword-stick which he held closely pressed to his side. This same sword-stick had been of use to him on the Fly River in New Guinea. "Down with the English spy!" rang through the room, joined to vile French oaths. Meanwhile the woman had not changed her position, but closely watched the tumult, which she herself had roused. She did not stir when she saw a glass hurled at the unoffending Englishman's head. A hand reached over and seized a Leaning with her elbows on the bar and her chin in her hands, a woman fixed her eyes on him as he opened and made a pretence of reading La Nouvelle Calédonie. Looking up, he met her eyes again; there was hatred in them ff ever he saw it, or what might be called constitutional diablerie. He felt that this woman, whoever she was, had power of an extraordinary kind; too much power for her to be altogether vile, too physically healthy to be of that class to which the girl who handed him his coffee belonged. There was not a sign of gaudiness about her; not a ring, a necklace, or a bracelet. Her dress was of cotton, faintly pink and perfectly clean; her hair was brown, and waving away loosely from her forehead-bottle behind her. The bottle was raised but her eyes! Was there a touch of insanity there? Perhaps because they were rather deeply set, though large, and because they seemed to glow in the shadows made by the brows, the unnatural intensity was deepened. But Blake Shorland could not get rid of the feeling of active malevolence in them. The mouth was neither small nor sensuous, the chin was strong without being coarse, the figure was not suggestive. The hands, confound the woman's eyes! Why could he not get rid of the unpleasant feeling they gave him? She suddenly turned her head, not moving her chin from her hands, however, or altering her position, and said something to a man at her elbow, rather the wreck of a man; one who bore tokens of having been some time the roi gaillard of a lawless court; now only a disreputable citizen of a far from reputable French colony. and still she did not move, though her fingers pressed her cheeks with a spasmodic quickness. Three times Blake Shorland had said, in well-controlled tones, "Frenchmen, I am no spy," but they gave him the lie with increasing uproar. Had not Gabrielle Rouget said that he was an English spy? As the bottle was poised in the air with a fiendish cry of " A baptism! a baptism!" and Blake Shorland was debating on his chances of avoiding it, and on the wisdom of now drawing his weapon and cutting his way through the mob, there came from the door a call of "Hold! hold!" and a young military officer dashed in, his arm raised against the brutal missile in the hands of the ticket-of-leave man, whose patriotism was purely a matter of absinthe, natural evil, and Gabrielle Rouget. "Wretches! scum of France!" he said; "what is this here? And you, Gabrielle, do you sleep? Do you permit murder?" She met the fire in his eyes without flinching, and some one answered for her, He is an English spy ! "Take care, Gabrielle," "the young officer went on, "take care; you go too far!" And waving back the sullen crowd, now joined by the woman, who had not yet spoken, he said, "Who are you, monsieur ? What is it? Immediately a murmur was heard: "A spy, an English spy!" From the mouths of absinthe-drinking libérés it passed to the mouths of rum-drinking récidivistes." It did not escape Blake Shorland's ears, but he betrayed no sign. He sipped his coffee and appeared absorbed in his paper, thinking, however, carefully of the difficulties of his position. He knew that to rise now and make for the door would be of no advantage, for a number of the excited crowd were between him and it. To show fear might precipitate a catastrophe with this drunken mob. He had nerve and coolness, though by nature he was of sensitive mould, and men had called him something of a poet. Presently a dirty outcast passed him and rudely jostled his arm as he drank his coffee. He begged the outcast's pardon quietly and conventionally in French, and went on reading. A moment later the Blake Shorland drew from his pocket his letter of introduction and his credentials. Gabrielle now stood at the young officer's elbow. As the papers were handed over a photograph dropped from among them and fell face upward to the floor. Blake Shorland stooped to pick it up, but as he did so he heard a suppressed cry from Gabrielle Rouget. He looked up. She pointed to the portrait and said gaspingly, "Look, look! My God!" She leaned forward and touched the portrait in 1 his hand. 'Look, look!" she said again. | sented your letters, monsieur; or at least The young officer stretched out his hand: "I am Alençon Barré, lieutenant, at your service. Let us go, monsieur." But there was some unusual devilry working in that drunken crowd. The sight of an officer was not sufficient to awe them into obedience. Bad blood had been fired, and it was fed by some cause unknown to Alençon Barré. but to be understood fully hereafter. The mass surged forward, with cries of "Down with the Englishman!" Alençon Barré drew his sword. "Villains!" he cried, and pressed the point against the breast of the leader, who at this drew back. Then Gabrielle's voice was heard, "No, no, my children," she said; "no more of that to-day, not today. Let the Englishman go." Her face was white and drawn, but her eyes burned with an intense brilliancy. Blake Shorland had been turning over in his mind all the events of the last few moments with the novelist's eye for situations and character, and he thought as he looked at her that just such women had made a hell_of_the Paris Commune. But one thought dominated all others. What did her excitement when she saw the portrait meanthe portrait of Luke Glasham? He felt that he was standing on the verge of a tragedy, at least a tragic possibility. And Blake Shorland acknowledged his error, thanked his rescuer, enjoyed the situation, and was taken to Governor Rapont, by whom he was cordially received and then turned over to the hospitality of the officers of the post. It was conveyed to him later in the evening by letters of commendation from the governor that he should be free to go anywhere in the islands and to see whatever was to be seen, from convict prison to Hôtel Dieu. II. SITTING that night in the rooms of Alençon Barré, this question was put to Blake Shorland by his host: "What did Gabrielle say to you as we left, monsieur? And why did she act so, when she saw the portrait? I do not understand English well, and it was not quite clear." Blake Shorland could think rapidly, and come to conclusions in the same fashion. He had a clear conviction that he ought to take Alençon Barré into his confidence. If Gabrielle Rouget should have any special connection with Luke Glasham there might be need of the active counsel of a friend like this young officer, whose face carried every token of chivalry and gentle birth. Better that Alençon Barré should know all, than that he should know in part and some day unwittingly make trouble. So he raised frank eyes to those of the other, and told the story of the man whose portrait had so affected Gabrielle Rouget. "Monsieur Barré," he said, "I will tell you of this man first, and then perhaps it will be easier to answer your questions." He took the portrait from his pocket, passed it over and continued. "I received this portrait in a, letter from England the day that I left Sydney, and as I was get Alençon Barre's sword again made a clear circle round him, and he said, "Shame, Frenchmen! This gentleman is no spy. He is the friend of the governor, he is my friend. He is English-well!ting aboard the boat. I placed it among Where is the English flag? There are the French-good French-protected. Where is the French flag? There shall the English - good English - be safe." As they moved towards the door Gabrielle glided forward, and, touching the arm of Blake Shorland, said in English, "You will come again, monsieur? You shall be safe altogether. You will come?" And looking at her searchingly, he answered slowly, "Yes, I will come." As they left behind them the turbulent crowd and stepped into the street, Alençon Barré said: "You should have gone at once to the Hôtel du Governeur and pre those papers which you read. It fell out as you know on the floor of the café, and you saw the rest. The man whose face is before you there, and who sent that to me, was my best friend in the days when I was at school and college. Afterwards, when a law-student, and, still later, when I began to practise my profession, we lived together in a rare old house at Fulham, with high garden walls and, but I forget, you do not know London perhaps. Yes! Well, the house is neither here nor there; but I like to think of those days and of that home. Luke Glasham-that was my friend's name - was an artist and a |