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."
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