He gave a nod of the head toward the sea that lay between him and Germany.
“One old woman, over there, at Frohsdorf, the daughter of Marie Antoinette, awaiting the end of her bitter pilgrimage—and this Comte de Chambord. This man who will not when he may. No, my friend, it has never been so necessary to find Louis XVII as it is now. Necessary for France—for the whole world. This Prince President, this last offshoot of a pernicious republican growth, will drag us all in the mud if he gets his way with France. And those who have watched with seeing eyes have always known that such a time as the present must eventually come. For France will always be the victim of a clever adventurer. We have foreseen it, and for that reason we have treated as serious possibilities these false Dauphins who have sprung up like mushrooms all over Europe and even in America. And what have they proved? What have the Bourbons proved in frustrating their frauds? That the son of Louis XVI did not die in the Temple. That is all. And Madame herself has gathered further strength to her conviction that the little King was not buried in that forgotten corner of the graveyard of Sainte Marguérite. At the same time, she knows that none of these—neither Naundorff, nor Havergault, nor Bruneau, nor de Richemont, nor any other pretender—was her brother. No! The King, either because he did not know he was King, or because he had had enough of royalty, never came forward and never betrayed his whereabouts. He was to be sought; he is still to be sought. And it is now that he is wanted.”
“That is why I offer to tell you this story now. That is my reason for bringing you to Farlingford now,” said Colville, quietly. It seemed that he must have awaited, as the wise do in this world, the propitious moment, and should it never come they are content to forego their purpose. He gave a light laugh and stretched out his long legs, contemplating his strapped trousers and neat boots with the eye of a connoisseur. “And should I be the humble means of doing a good turn to France and others, will France—and others—remember it, I wonder. Perhaps I hold in my hands the Hope of France, Marquis.”
He paused, and lapsed for a moment into thought. It was eight o’clock, and the long northern twilight was fading into darkness now. The bell of Captain Clubbe’s ship rang out the hour—a new sound in the stillness of this forgotten town.
“The Last Hope,” added Dormer Colville, with a queer laugh.
CHAPTER V — ON THE DYKE
Neither had spoken again when their thoughts were turned aside from that story which Colville, instead of telling, had been called upon to hear.
For the man whose story it presumably was passed across the green ere the sound of the ship’s bell had died away. He had changed his clothes, or else it would have appeared that he was returning to his ship. He walked with his head thrown up, with long lithe steps, with a gait and carnage so unlike the heavy tread of men wearing sea-boots all their working days, that none would have believed him to be born and bred in Farlingford. For it is not only in books that history is written, but in the turn of a head, in the sound of a voice, in the vague and dreamy thoughts half formulated by the human mind ‘twixt sleeping and waking.