"First, sire, permit a man who has been made a wretched tool, to implore forgiveness of his rightful sovereign, and a little help to reach a warmer climate before the rigors of a northern winter begin."
"Bellenger, you are entrancing," I said. "Why did I ever take you seriously? Ste. Pélagie was a grim joke, and tipping in the river merely your playfulness. You had better take yourself off now, and keep on walking until you come to a warmer climate."
He wrung his hands with a gesture that touched my natural softness to my enemy.
"Talk, then. Talk, man. What have you to say?"
"This, first, sire. That was a splendid dash you made into France!"
"And what a splendid dash I made out of it again, with a gendarme at my coat tails, and you behind the gendarme!"
"But it was the wrong time. If you were there now;—the French people are so changeable—"
"I shall never be there again. His Majesty the eighteenth Louis is welcome. What the blood stirs in me to know is, have I a right to the throne?"
"Sire, the truth as I know it, I will tell you. You were the boy taken from the Temple prison."
"Who did it?"