"Go on, my friend. You were saying that twelve years later, happening to be in Brussels—"
"By the merest chance, cavalier. Before retiring to England King Theodore spent the most of his exile in Flanders and the Low Countries: and in Brussels, as it happened, I had word of him and learned—but without making myself known to him—that he was seeking his two children."
"Seeking them in Brussels?"
"At a venture, no doubt, cavalier. Put the case that you were seeking two children, of whom you knew only that they were alive and somewhere in Europe—like two fleas, as you might say, in a bundle of straw—"
I looked at Marc'antonio and saw that he was lying, but politely forbore to tell him so.
"Then Theodore knew that his children were alive?" said I musing.
"Yet he gave my father to understand that he had no children."
"Mbe, but he was a great liar, that Theodore? Always when it profited, and sometimes for the pleasure of it."
"Nevertheless, to disinherit his own son!"
Marc'antonio's shoulders went up to his ears. "He knew well enough what comedy he was playing. Disinherit his own son? We Corsicans, he might be sure, would never permit that: and meanwhile your father's money bought him out of prison. Ajo, it is simple as milking the she-goat yonder!"
"If you knew my father better, Marc'antonio, you would find it not altogether so simple as you suppose. King Theodore might have told my father that these children lived, and my father would yet have bought his freedom for their sake; yes, and helped him to the last shilling and the last drop of blood to restore them to the Queen their mother."