I shook with laughter. It was so like Skenedonk to draw his conclusions and determine on the next step.
"What shall I do with them?"
"The old master can be your secretary, and as for the Indian, you can take him for your servant."
"A secretary and a servant, for an outcast without a penny to his pouch!"
"You see the powers that order us are beginning well with you. Starting with a secretary and a servant, you may end with a full household and a court! I ought to add my poor item of tribute, and this I can do. There is a ship-master taking cargo this month in New York bay, who is a devoted royalist; a Breton sailor. For a letter from me he will carry you and your suite to the other side of the world; but you will have to land in his port."
"And what will the charges be?"
"Nothing, except gratitude, if I put the case as strongly to him as I intend to do. God knows I may be casting a foul lot for you. His ship is staunch, rigged like the Italian salt ships. But it is dirty work crossing the sea; and there is always danger of falling into the hands of pirates. Are you determined?"
I looked him in the eyes, and said I was; thanking him for all his goodness to one who had so little expectation of requiting him. The sweet heartiness of an older man so far beyond myself in princely attainments and world knowledge, who could stoop to such a raw savage, took me by storm.
I asked him if he had any idea who the idiot was that we had seen in Bellenger's camp. He shook his head, replying that idiots were plentiful, and the people who had them were sometimes glad to get rid of them.
"The dauphin clue has been very cleverly managed by—Bellenger, let us say," Louis Philippe remarked. "If you had not appeared, I should not now believe there is a dauphin."