“What!” I exclaimed. “It is true?”
“What is?”
“That he is to honor me with his company?”
“Scarcely, my dear d'Haricot,” said the Marquis, with a smile. “But I have full authority to take what steps I choose.”
“To employ this ruse?”
“Certainly, if I deem it advisable.”
“But to what end?”
“Listen!” said he, his dark eyes glowing with enthusiasm and his face lighting up with patriotic ardor. “I have asked a party of your most influential friends to dine with you, inducing them by a prospect of this honor. You will tell them that his Highness cannot meet them there, but that he bids them, as they reverence their own sovereign, to assist his righteous cause. When they are inflamed with ardor, you will lead them from the table to the special train which I shall have waiting. A picked force will place themselves under our orders. By next morning the King shall be proclaimed in France.”
For a minute I was too staggered to answer him.
“But, my dear Marquis,” I replied, when I had recovered my breath, “I cannot induce these sober and law-abiding Englishmen to follow me, perhaps to battle.”