“Should he desire it, he can also receive his commission in my own regiment, the 13th Chasseurs-à-cheval; and as he will not be called on for duty, he might as well accept an appointment that will at least give him forage for his horses and some other advantages.
“Send me all the new things that are out, and tell me what you and Alphonse are doing. 'Mes amitiés' to our fair friend in the Rue Ponchaule, and the like—indiscriminately— to all the others.
“Yours affectionately,
M. dk St. C.
“You call him 'Le Comte de Creganne,' and so I have written it for the Minister: is this right?”
I read and re-read the letter till I knew every sentence of it by heart; and then, dressing myself with a degree of care the importance of the occasion suggested, I drove off for the Minister's office. It was not the hour of his usual reception; but on sending in my name, which I did as Le Comte de Creganne, I was at once admitted.
His Excellency was all smiles and affability, praised his Royal Highness's selection of a name so greatly honored in literature, and paid me many flattering compliments on my writings,—which, by the way, he confounded with those of half-a-dozen others; and then, after a variety of civil speeches, gently diverged into a modest inquiry as to my native country, rank, and fortune. “We live in days, mon cher Comte,” said he, laughing, “in which high capacity and talent happily take precedence of mere lineage; but still, an illustrious personage has always insisted upon the necessity of those immediately about the person of the princes being of noble families. I am quite aware that you can fulfil every condition of the kind, and only desire such information as may satisfy his Majesty.”
I replied by relating the capture of my property at Malaga, which, among other things, contained all the title-deeds of my estates, and the patent of my nobility. “These alone,” said I, producing the banker's letters addressed to me as Condé de Cregano, “are all that remain to me now to remind me of my former standing; and although, as born a British subject, I might at once apply to my minister to substantiate my claims, the unhappy events of Ireland which enlisted my family in the ranks of her patriots have made us exiles,—proscribed exiles forever.”
This explanation went further than my previous one. The old French antipathy to England found sympathy for Irish rebellion at once; and after a very brief discussion, my appointment was filled up, and I was named Private Secretary to the Duc de St. Cloud, and Lieutenant in the 13th Regiment of Chasseurs-à-cheval.
A new career had now opened before me, and it was one of all others the most to my choice. The war in Africa had become by that time a kind of crusade; it was the only field where Frenchmen could win fame and honor in arms, and the military fever of the nation was at its height. Into this enthusiasm I threw myself ardently; nor did it need the stimulation derived from a new and most becoming uniform to make me fancy myself a very Bayard in chivalry.