ACT III.
The “Corsican” however had run out his brief second imperial career, when one of the many who had hoped to profit by his rise was prostrated by his fall. The name of this one was Thierry. With the world before him where to choose, he turned his steps to South America, and went in search of a people who might happen to be in want of a king. It was always his fortune, or misfortune, wherever such a servant of the people was required, to present his credentials only after the situation was filled up. He was at Poyais just a week subsequent to the attainment of the caciqueship of that pseudo El Dorado by Gregor M’Gregor. He was in Hayti when the garrison of St. Marc revolted against Christophe the king, and when the citizens and troops of Cape Haytien invited Boyer to relieve them of royalty and the Marquises of Marmalade. He heard the pistol shot at Sans Souci which terminated the career of Christophe and his house; and he witnessed the abject submission of the sable heir-apparent, who has not only since honoured Great Britain with his presence, but who has, at the invitation of the law, submitted (some six or seven years ago) to the rotatory penalties and the weak gruel of Brixton, for forgetting his royal dignity, and, with it, common humanity.
The Haytians were resolved upon enjoying a republic and new rum; and they declined a proposal to accept Thierry, and a promise of French protection. The crown-seeker, disgusted with the bad taste of the dingy republicans, passed over to Mexico. Things were promising there to all adventurers but himself, and Iturbide snatched an imperial crown from his hopes, if not from his hands: the wanderer, nevertheless, continued to look about him, and the opening revolt at Soto la Marina, against this same Iturbide, was hailed in his secret thoughts as an avenue to a throne. He saw the fallen potentate, under the escort of General Bowo, embark at Antiguo, near Vera Cruz, and, with his family and followers, sail in an English ship for Leghorn. With all his throne-mania, however, when Iturbide returned in the following year (1824) to Mexico, to be shot the night after his landing at Padilla, Thierry could not help thinking that if the Mexican republican government had awarded him twenty-five thousand dollars per annum, he would rather, with such a revenue, have risked European fevers at Leghorn, than have reigned in that quarter of the world where the bark grows that cures them.
He wandered further abroad, but the Indian tribes of South America deeply declined him as a prince. The islanders of the Southern Ocean laughed a negative in his face, and sent him away with a lapful of yams and a sentence of perpetual banishment. At length the erratic king-player fell among the Marquesas. The good-natured people were willing to make him whatever he desired; and in return for teaching them some useful matters touching the fashion of garments, and for profitable exercise of his medical experience, they really constituted him king of one of their smallest islands, called Nebuhwa.
But, see what is human nature! The new king became speedily tired of his new dignity; and after a brief but not inglorious reign, he abdicated with but little outlay of ceremony. He embarked one night in a French vessel, one of those political appliances which is always sure to find itself by accident wherever it has been ordered by design. His Majesty’s subjects bore their loss with philosophy, and cared so little for dynasties that they did not seek for a successor. Some old South Sea whalers however shook their heads portentously, vowed that the fellow was a political agent, and that he would turn up again somewhere for the benefit of himself and his employers.
Well! in the summer of 1839, a weary party of New Zealand travellers were on their way from Hokianga to the Bay of Islands. They were one night proceeding up the river in a canoe, to a native settlement, where the foot-track to the Bay of Islands then commenced. They were drenched through with rain, and were desirous of finding food and shelter.
“There is a light on that eminence,” said one of the party, an English medical man, to the natives in the boat; “does any one live there?”
The natives laughed, and intimated that the light came from King Edmond’s palace.
“Who is King Edmond?”
“Not know. Frenchman. Not Wesleyan; not Bishop’s man. Come from Sydney;” were the four distinct replies received from the natives.