ROMANCE OF KING'S WATCHES.

MURAT'S BAFFLING DUPLICATES. SENTIMENTAL EPISODES IN HERO'S CAREER. In an obituary of a Colonel Tchernozouboff in a Russian provincial paper an extraordinary story is retailed in which are bound up two or three romantic episodes. Among the colonel's effects had been found a sold watch, on the c?sj of which was the inscription: "Eleonore a Joachim. Ne m'oublie pas!" Upon this "Do-not-forget-me" watch hung a tale of the great war. In 1812, says the "Pall Mall Gazette," the colonel wis a simple Cossack, in a regiment engaged in harrying the French retrea:; while Murat was King of Naples, and in command of the French cavalry. It was on the eve of Borodino; and Murat, galloping ahead of his squadron, was cut off and surrounded. It looked as though he was doomed. The range was short and the Cossacks were about to fire, when Tchernozouboff intervened. "Present arms!" he cried chivalrously.

{•■Hurrah for the King of the Brave!'

I Murat had time to put spurs to his j horse and ride away. As the King rode off he took out his gold watch,

and gave it as a souvenir to the Cossack who had saved him. Platoff, the Hetman of the Cossacks, admiring Tchernozouboff's chivalry, gave him his commission, and made him his aide-de-camp. The watch was thereafter treasured as an heirloom in the Tchernozouboff family, though they received an offer of no less than 20,000 roubles for it.

It curiously happens that another gold watch is in*existence, bearing an almost identical inscription, but fixing the date of the gift by describing Murat as Captain of Chasseurs. That was Murat's rank in 1797, when Bonaparte sent him from Italy to Switzerland, to select headquarters for him, and thence to Paris with the text of the treaty of Campo Formio. Murat, upon that errand, did not go alone. He took with him the beautiful Countess Gerardi, whom he had met at Brescia, and who had left her home and her husband to accompany him. Her husband followed, and made representations to the Directoire; and the watch of 1797 appears to have changed hands as a peace offering on that occasion; the gift of a previous mistress, with whom he now had to part. But, if Murat gave away the watch in 1797, how could he have it in his pocket in 1812? That is a mystery, of which the most probable solution is that Murat, regretting that he had parted with the souvenir, caused a duplicate of it to be made in order to keep a sentimental memory alive. But Eleonore was not the Countess Gerardi. 'She belonged to an earlier period of Murat's sentimental history; and the establishment of her identity is a task which has hitherto beaten Murat's biographers.