“Were you talking of the Queen of Holland?” said the pleasant voice of Miss Allan, who was searching for the thick pages of The Times among a litter of thin foreign sheets.

‘And yet he came home last night,’ said another; ‘for he spoke to somebody out of that window upstairs.’

Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX`s will, though he gave the order for it and thought it was done as a result of that order; and strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of eighty thousand men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon`s will, though he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it was done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions appear, yet human dignitywhich tells me that each of us is, if not more at least not less a man than the great Napoleondemands the acceptance of that solution of the question, and historic investigation abundantly confirms it.