‘Yes,’ resumed the other, ‘the great question is what will you do with your Prince if you fail to make him a king? He will always be a puissance; it remains to be seen in whose hands and for what objects.’
The baronet sighed, and looked a picture of hopeless dullness.
‘Come, I will tell you a story, not for the sake of the incident, but for the illustration; though even as a story it has its point. You knew Gustave de Marsay, I think?’
‘Le beau Gustave? to be sure I did. Ah! it was upwards of forty years ago,’ sighed he sorrowfully.
‘It could not be less. He has been living in a little Styrian village about that long, seeing and being seen by none. His adventure was this: He was violently enamoured of a very pretty woman whom he met by chance in the street, and discovered afterward to be the wife of a “dyer,” in the Rue de Marais. Whether she was disposed to favour his addresses or acted in concert with her husband to punish him, is not very easy to say; the result would recline to the latter supposition. At all events, she gave him a rendezvous at which he was surprised by the dyer himself—a fellow strong as a Hercules and of an ungovernable temper. He rushed wildly on De Marsay, who defended himself for some time with his rapier; a false thrust, however, broke the weapon at the hilt, and the dyer springing forward, caught poor Gustave round the body, and actually carried him off over his head, and plunged him neck and heels into an enormous tank filled with dye-stuff. How he escaped drowning—how he issued from the house and ever reached his home he never was able to tell. It is more than probable the consequences of the calamity absorbed and obliterated all else; for when he awoke next day he discovered that he was totally changed—his skin from head to foot being dyed a deep blue! It was in vain that he washed and washed, boiled himself in hot baths, or essayed a hundred cleansing remedies, nothing availed in the least—in fact, many thought that he came out only bluer than before. The most learned of the faculty were consulted, the most distinguished chemists—all in vain. At last a dyer was sent for, who in an instant recognised the peculiar tint, and said, “Ah! there is but one man in Paris has the secret of this colour, and he lives in the Rue de Marais.”
‘Here was a terrible blow to all hope, and in the discouragement it inflicted three long months were passed, De Marsay growing thin and wretched from fretting, and by his despondency occasioning his friends the deepest solicitude. At length, one of his relatives resolved on a bold step. He went direct to the Rue de Marais and demanded to speak with the dyer. It is not very easy to say how he opened a negotiation of such delicacy; that he did so with consummate tact and skill there can be no doubt, for he so worked oh the dyer’s compassion by the picture of a poor young fellow utterly ruined in his career, unable to face the world, to meet his regiment, even to appear before the enemy, being blue! that the dyer at last confessed his pity, but at the same time cried out, “What can I do? there is no getting it off again!”
‘"No getting it off again! do you really tell me that?” exclaimed the wretched negotiator.
‘"Impossible! that’s the patent,” said the other with an ill-dissembled pride. “I have spent seven years in the invention. I only hit upon it last October. Its grand merit is that it resists all attempts to efface it.”
‘"And do you tell me,” cries the friend, in terror, “that this poor fellow must go down to his grave in that odious—well, I mean no offence—in that unholy tint?”
‘"There is but one thing in my power, sir.”