Chapter 57

Among the contributors to the Syndicate at that time was a picturesque European with a title and an apparently endless flow of gossip. He pretended to have been a member of the Court of Napoleon III and in the confidence of the Emperor. This relation accounted for his having been invited to join a strange secret party made up by the Emperor, who was worried over a rumor that the body of Napoleon I did not lie under the dome of the Invalides. It was not known who did lie there or what had become of Napoleon. To reas…