tribunal, when Balbi offered to compromise; and one of his agents informed one of Mr. E.'s counsel (but took care to do so without witnesses) that as Balbi had given to General Wirion thirty thousand francs (above twelve hundred pounds sterling) for his permission to exccute this plot against an Englishman, and had been at some other expences, he would deliver back to Mr. E. three of the bills if he would pay the fourth. Be it remembered, that he had before declared that he had never received the three first. This proposition was rejected with indignation. Mr. E.'s friends had engaged some of the most eloquent barristers in France to plead his cause. Not only all Verdun, but the whole neighbourhood were in expectation of the event, when General Wirion, fearing that the part which he had acted in the transaction, would be exposed in the court, just saved himself by an act of despotism; and in June, 1907, a few days before the trial was to take place, the young man, and the other detenus, who had been active in his favor, were ordered off to different towns, without being allowed to. see each other before their departure. He himself was sent to Saar-louis, near Strasburg; one of his friends to Tours, a second to Orleans, &c. Had they, from motives of health or of choice, requested to have the permission to reside at these towns, it would have been denied to them. Thus all further examination into the affair has been stopped. Balbi, for some time afterward, continued to show his unblushing countenance at Verdun. W. whose name as already related had been omitted in the list of the new members of the Carron Club, was making a rapid fortune by money lending. Though only those who were forced by absolute necessity, or excited by a spirit of dissipation bordering upon madness to have recourse to his assistance, condescended to speak to him, like the Usurer in Horace, he consoled himself with his self-approbation. His conscience was in his money-bags. He used to boast that he had acquired ten thousand pounds, and that he intended to double the sum. It was whispered, though perhaps unjustly, that he was engaged as a spy of the police; but he was certainly favored by the French government; and it may seem incredible, that while so many of the most respectable detenus were confined within the walls of Verdun, W. was permitted to make a journey to Bitsche, and Saar-louis, where the victims of extortion of every kind were languishing in a prison, in order to collect his debts, or make new arrangements with his debtors; and to persuade them to purchase any little comfort or indulgeuce, by adding so much per cent. to the bills that they had already given him. In December, 1808, he was tried before the tribunal at Metz, on the accusation of having altered into six thousand livres a draft for one thousand livres, which he had from Sir Beaumont Dixie, upon Perregaux, the banker at Paris. If convicted, it was supposed that he would have been sent to the gallies; but even if criminal, with money in his pockets, he would not have suffered in France, and therefore it is less surprising that he has escaped. Balbi, who was some way implicated in the affair, made his escape on board a privateer to America. VILLAS. GENERAL WIRION made the greatest difficulty to permit any detenu to sleep out of the town of Verdun. In the summer of 1804 this indulgence was granted to a very few: these as usual were his favorites. They hired houses in the neighboring villages, and of course paid more for any ruined chateau or farm-house during a few months than the proprietors at another time could expect for a year's rent; but they had scarcely been at the expence and trouble of fitting them up, when their permission was recalled.— One gentleman, among the rest, had expended more than a hundred pounds upon his house and garden. Of all the English one alone was permitted to lodge at a neighboring village. Humanity might conclude that it was some invalid who required country air. Was it not some detenu who had come to France as a friend, who was prepossessed in favor of the nation, among whom he had come to |