Lazarre | Page 4

of twenty-one guns fired for him?"
"She would be afraid of him."
"But when he comes afoot, with that idiotic face, giving her such a good chance to bait him--how can she resist baiting him? Sally Blake is human."
"Cousin Philippe, this is not our dauphin? Our dauphin is dead! Both my father and you told me he died in the Temple prison nearly two weeks ago!"
The Marquis de Ferrier replaced the boy's stockings reverently, and rose, backing away from him.
"There is your king, Eagle," the old courtier announced to his child. "Louis XVII, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, survives in this wreck. How he escaped from prison we do not know. Why he is here unrecognized in England, where his claim to the throne was duly acknowledged on the death of his father, we do not know. But we who have often seen the royal child cannot fail to identify him; brutalized as he is by the past horrible year of his life."
The boy stood unwinking before his three expatriated subjects. Two of them noted the traits of his house, even to his ears, which were full at top, and without any indentation at the bottom where they met the sweep of the jaw.
The dauphin of France had been the most tortured victim of his country's Revolution. By a jailer who cut his eyebrow open with a blow, and knocked him down on the slightest pretext, the child had been forced to drown memory in fiery liquor, month after month. During six worse months, which might have been bettered by even such a jailer, hid from the light in an airless dungeon, covered with rags which were never changed, and with filth and vermin which daily accumulated, having his food passed to him through a slit in the door, hearing no human voice, seeing no human face, his joints swelling with poisoned blood, he had died in everything except physical vitality, and was taken out at last merely a breathing corpse. Then it was proclaimed that this corpse had ceased to breathe. The heir of a long line of kings was coffined and buried.
While the elder De Ferrier shed nervous tears, the younger looked on with eyes which had seen the drollery of the French Revolution.
"I wish I knew the man who has played this clever trick, and whether honest men or the rabble are behind it."
"Let us find him and embrace him!"
"I would rather embrace his prospects when the house of Bourbon comes again to the throne of France. Who is that fellow at the gate? He looks as if he had some business here."
The man came on among the tombstones, showing a full presence and prosperous air, suggesting good vintages, such as were never set out in the Smithfield alehouse. Instead of being smooth shaven, he wore a very long mustache which dropped its ends below his chin.
A court painter, attached to his patrons, ought to have fallen into straits during the Revolution. Philippe exclaimed with astonishment--
"Why, it's Bellenger! Look at him!"
Bellenger took off his cap and made a deep reverence.
"My uncle is weeping over the dead English, Bellenger," said Philippe. "It always moves him to tears to see how few of them die."
"We can make no such complaint against Frenchmen in these days, monsieur," the court painter answered. "I see you have my young charge here, enjoying the gravestones with you;--a pleasing change after the unmarked trenches of France. With your permission I will take him away."
"Have I the honor, Monsieur Bellenger, of saluting the man who brought the king out of prison?" the old man inquired.
Again Bellenger made the marquis a deep reverence, which modestly disclaimed any exploit.
"When was this done?--Who were your helpers? Where are you taking him?"
Bellenger lifted his eyebrows at the fanatical royalist.
"I wish I had had a hand in it!" spoke Philippe de Ferrier.
"I am taking this boy to America, monsieur the marquis," the painter quietly answered.
"But why not to one of his royal uncles?"
"His royal uncles," repeated Bellenger. "Pardon, monsieur the marquis, but did I say he had any royal uncles?"
"Come!" spoke Philippe de Ferrier. "No jokes with us, Bellenger. Honest men of every degree should stand together in these times."
Eagle sat down on a flat gravestone, and looked at the boy who seemed to be an object of dispute between the men of her family and the other man. He neither saw nor heard what passed. She said to herself--
"It would make no difference to me! It is the same, whether he is the king or not."
Bellenger's eyes half closed their lids as if for protection from the sun.
"Monsieur de Ferrier may rest assured that I am not at present occupied with jokes. I will again ask permission to take my charge away."
"You may not go until you have