THE WAIF KNOWS ITS OWN COURSE.

All this had occurred owing to the circumstance of a soldier having found a bottle on the beach.  We will relate the facts.  In all facts there are wheels within wheels.

One day one of the four gunners composing the garrison of Castle Calshor picked up on the sand at low water a flask covered with wicker, which had been cast up by the tide.  This flask, covered with mould, was corked by a tarred bung.  The soldier carried the waif to the colonel of the castle, and the colonel sent it to the High Admiral of England.  The Admiral meant the Admiralty; with waifs, the Admiralty meant Barkilphedro.

Barkilphedro, having uncorked and emptied the bottle, carried it to the queen.  The queen immediately took the matter into consideration.

Two weighty counsellors were instructed and consulted—­namely, the Lord Chancellor, who is by law the guardian of the king’s conscience; and the Lord Marshal, who is referee in Heraldry and in the pedigrees of the nobility.  Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, a Catholic peer, who is hereditary Earl Marshal of England, had sent word by his deputy Earl Marshal, Henry Howard, Earl Bindon, that he would agree with the Lord Chancellor.  The Lord Chancellor was William Cowper.  We must not confound this chancellor with his namesake and contemporary William Cowper, the anatomist and commentator on Bidloo, who published a treatise on muscles, in England, at the very time that Etienne Abeille published a history of bones, in France.  A surgeon is a very different thing from a lord.  Lord William Cowper is celebrated for having, with reference to the affair of Talbot Yelverton, Viscount Longueville, propounded this opinion:  That in the English constitution the restoration of a peer is more important than the restoration of a king.  The flask found at Calshor had awakened his interest in the highest degree.  The author of a maxim delights in opportunities to which it may be applied.  Here was a case of the restoration of a peer.  Search was made.  Gwynplaine, by the inscription over his door, was soon found.  Neither was Hardquanonne dead.  A prison rots a man, but preserves him—­if to keep is to preserve.  People placed in Bastiles were rarely removed.  There is little more change in the dungeon than in the tomb.  Hardquanonne was still in prison at Chatham.  They had only to put their hands on him.  He was transferred from Chatham to London.  In the meantime information was sought in Switzerland.  The facts were found to be correct.  They obtained from the local archives at Vevey, at Lausanne, the certificate of Lord Linnaeus’s marriage in exile, the certificate of his child’s birth, the certificate of the decease of the father and mother; and they had duplicates, duly authenticated, made to answer all necessary requirements.