"Enter the prince of a fairy tale," said the Marquis du Plessy when the lackey ushered me into the garden. It was a nest of amber at that time of sunset, and he waited for me at a table laid for supper, under a flat canopy of trees which had their tops trained and woven into a mat. I took his hand to kiss, but he rose up and magnificently placed me in a chair opposite himself. "Your benefits are heavy, monsieur," I said. "How shall I acknowledge them?" "You owe me nothing at all," he answered; "as you will see when I have told you a true story. It would sound like a lie if anything were incredible in these fabulous times." "But you do not know anything about me." "I am well instructed in your history, by that charming attendant in fringed leather breeches, who has been acquainted with you much longer than you have been acquainted with yourself." "Yet I am not sure of deserving the marquis' interest." "Has the marquis admitted that he feels any interest in you? Though this I will own: few experiences have affected me like your living eyes staring out of the face of my dead king!" We met each other again with a steady gaze like that in the mortuary chapel. "Do you believe I am ----?" "Do I believe you are ----? Who said there was such a person in existence?" "Louis Philippe." "The Duke of Orleans? Eh, bien! What does he know of the royal family? He is of the cadette branch." "But he told me the princess, the dauphin's sister, believes that the dauphin was taken alive from the Temple and sent to America." "My dear Lazarre, I do not say the Duke of Orleans would lie--far be it from me--though these are times in which we courageously attack our betters. But he would not object to seeing the present pretender ousted. Why, since his father voted for the death of Louis XVI, he and his are almost outlawed by the older branch! Madame Royal, the Duchess of Angouleme, cannot endure him. I do not think she would speak to him!" "He is my friend," I said stoutly. "Remember you are another pretender, and he has espoused your cause. I think him decent myself--though there used to be some pretty stories told about him and the fair sentimentalist who educated him--Madame de Genlis. But I am an old man; I forget gossip." My host gave lively and delicate attention to his food as it was brought, and permitted nothing to be overheard by his lackeys. The evening was warm, and fresh with the breath of June; and the garden, by a contrivance of lamps around its walls, turned into a dream world after sunset faded. It was as impossible to come to close terms with this noble of the old regime as with a butterfly. He alighted on a subject; he waved his wings, and rose. I felt a clumsy giant while he fluttered around my head, smiling, mocking, thrusting his pathos to the quick. "My dear boy, I do not say that I believe in you; I do not observe etiquette with you. But I am going to tell you a little story about the Tuileries. You have never seen the palace of the Tuileries?" I said I had not. "It has been restored for the use of these Bonapartes. When I say these Bonapartes, Lazarre, I am not speaking against the Empire. The Empire gave me back my estates. I was not one of the stringent emigres. My estates are mine, whoever rules in France. You may consider me a betwixt-and-betweener. Do so. My dear boy, I am. My heart is with my dead king. My carcass is very comfortable, both in Paris and on my ancestral lands. Napoleon likes me as an ornament to his bourgeois court. I keep my opinion of him to myself. Do you like garlic, my boy?" I told him I was not addicted to the use of it. "Garlic is divine. God gave it to man. A hint of it in the appropriate dish makes life endurable. I carry a piece in a gold box at the bottom of my vest pocket, that I may occasionally take it out and experience a sense of gratitude for divine benefits." He took out his pet lump, rubbed it on the outside of his wine bottle, poured out a glassful and drank it, smiling adorably at me in ecstasy! "We were speaking of the Tuileries. You should have seen the place when it was sacked after the flight of the royal family. No, you should not have seen it! I am glad you were gone. Mirrors were shattered, and lusters, vases, china, gold candlesticks, rolled about and were trampled on the floor. The paintings were stabbed with pikes; tables, screens, gilt stools, chairs crushed, and carpets cut to pieces; garments of all kinds strewn and torn; all that was not carried off by pillagers being thus destroyed. It was yet a horrible sight days after the mob had done their work, and slaughtered bodies of guards had been carried away, and commissioners with their clerks and assistants began to restore order." "Did you see the Tuileries at that time, monsieur?" "I did. I put on the clothes of one of my peasants, slumped in Jacquot's wooden shoes, and kept my mouth open as well as I could for the dust. The fantastic was yet in my blood. Exile takes that out of everybody except your royal uncle of Provence. But I knew in my heart what I would help do with that mob, if our turn ever came again!" His dark eyes rested on the red wine as on a pool of blood. "Sick of the ruin, I leaned out to look in the garden, from a window in the queen's own apartment. I stepped on a shelf, which appeared fixed under the window; but it moved, and I found that it could be pushed on grooves into the wall. There was a cavity made to hold it. It had concealed two armchairs placed opposite each other, so cunningly that their paneled sides yet looked a part of the thick wall. I sat down in one of them, and though the cushion was stiff, I felt something hard under it." Monsieur du Plessy glanced around in every direction to satisfy himself that no ears lurked within hearing. "Eh, bien! Under the cushion I found the queen's jewel-case! Diamonds--bags of gold coin--a half circlet of gems!--since the great necklace was lost such an array had not seen the light in France. The value must be far above a million francs." The marquis fixed his eyes on me and said: "What should I have done with it, Lazarre?" "It belonged to the royal family," I answered. "But everything which belonged to the royal family had been confiscated to the state. I had just seen the belongings of the royal family trampled as by cattle. First one tyrant and then another rose up to tell us what we should do, to batten himself off the wretched commonwealth, and then go to the guillotine before his successor. As a good citizen I should have turned these jewels and stones and coins over to the state. But I was acting the part of Jacquot, and as an honest peasant I whipped them under my blouse and carried them away. In my straits of exile I never decreased them. And you may take inventory of your property and claim it when we rise from the table." My heart came up in my throat. I reached across and caught his hands. "You believe in me--you believe in me!" "Do I observe any etiquette with you, Lazarre? This is the second time I have brought the fact to your notice. I particularly wish you to note that I do not observe any etiquette with you." "What does a boy who has been brought up among Indians know about etiquette! But you accept me, or you could not put the property you have loyally and at such risk saved for my family, into my hands." "I don't accept even your uncle of Provence. The king of Spain and I prefer to call him by that modest title. Since you died or were removed from the Temple, he has taken the name of Louis XVIII, and maintained a court at the expense of the czar of Russia and the king of Spain. He is a fine Latinist; quotes Latin verse; and keeps the mass bells everlastingly ringing; the Russians laugh at his royal masses! But in my opinion the sacred gentleman is either moral slush or a very deep quicksand. It astonishes me," said the Marquis du Plessy, "to find how many people I do disapprove of! I really require very little of the people I am obliged to meet." He smoothed my hands which were yet holding his, and exploded: "The Count of Provence is an old turtle! Not exactly a reptile, for there is food in him. But of a devilish flat head and cruel snap of the jaws!" "How can that be," I argued, "when his niece loves him so? And even I, in the American woods, with mind eclipsed, was not forgotten. He sent me of the money that he was obliged to receive in charity!" "It is easy to dole out charity money; you are squeezing other people's purses, not your own. What I most object to in the Count of Provence, is that assumption of kingly airs, providing the story is true which leaked secretly among the emigres. The story which I heard was that the dauphin had not died, but was an idiot in America. An idiot cannot reign. But the throne of France is not clamoring so loud for a Bourbon at present that the idiot's substitute must be proclaimed and hold a beggar's court. There are mad loyalists who swear by this eighteenth Louis. I am not one of them. In fact, Lazarre, I was rather out of tune with your house!" "Not you!" I said. "I do not fit in these times. I ought to have gone with my king and my friends under the knife. Often I am ashamed of myself for slipping away. That I should live to see disgusting fools in the streets of Paris, after the Terror was over!--young men affecting the Greek and Roman manner--greeting one another by wagging of the head! They wore gray coats with black collars, gray or green cravats, carried cudgels, and decreed that all men should have the hair plaited, powdered, and fastened up with a comb, like themselves! The wearer of a queue was likely to be knocked on the head. These creatures used to congregate at the old Feydeau theater, or meet around the entrance of the Louvre, to talk classical jargon, and wag!" The Marquis du Plessy drew himself together with a strong shudder. I had the desire to stand between him and the shocks of an alien world. Yet there was about him a tenacious masculine strength, an adroitness of self-protection which needed no champion. "Did the Indian tell you about a man named Bellenger?" I inquired. "Bellenger is part of the old story about the dauphin's removal. I heard of him first at Coblenz. And I understand now that he is following you with another dauphin, and objecting to you in various delicate ways. Napoleon Bonaparte is master of France, and in the way to be master of Europe, because he has a nice sense of the values of men, and the best head for detail that was ever formed in human shape. There is something almost supernatural in his grasp of affairs. He lets nothing escape him. The only mistake he ever made was butchering the young Duke d'Enghien--the courage and clearness of the man wavered that one instant; and by the way, he borrowed my name for the duke's incognito during the journey under arrest! England, Russia, Austria and Sweden are combining against Napoleon. He will beat them. For while other men sleep, or amuse themselves, or let circumstance drive them, he is planning success and providing for all possible contingencies. Take a leaf out of the general's book, my boy. No enemy is contemptible. If you want to force the hand of fortune--scheme!--scheme!--all the time!--out-scheme the other fellow!" The marquis rose from the table. "I am longer winded," he said, "than a man named De Chaumont, who has been importuning Bonaparte, in season and out of season, to reinstate an American emigre, a Madame de Ferrier." "Will Bonaparte restore her lands?" I asked, feeling my voice like a rope in my throat. "Do you know her family?" "I knew Madame de Ferrier in America." "Their estate lies next to mine. And what is the little De Ferrier like since she is grown?" "A beautiful woman." "Ah--ah! Bonaparte's plan will then be easy of execution. You may see her this evening here in the Faubourg St. Germain. I believe she is to appear at Madame de Permon's, where Bonaparte may look in." My host bolted the doors of his private cabinet, and took from the secret part of a wall cupboard the queen's jewel-case. We opened it between us. The first thing I noticed was a gold snuffbox, set with portraits of the king, the queen, and their two children. How I knew them I cannot tell. Their pictured faces had never been put before my conscious eyes until that moment. Other portraits might have been there. I had no doubt, no hesitation. I was on my knees before the face I had seen in spasms of remembrance--with oval cheeks, and fair hair rolled high--and open neck--my royal mother! Next I looked at the king, heavier of feature, honest and straight gazing, his chin held upward; at the little sister, a smaller miniature of the queen; at the softly molded curves of the child that was myself! The marquis turned his back. Before I could speak I rose and put my arms around him. He wheeled, took my hand, stood at a little distance, and kissed it. We said not one word about the portraits, but sat down with the jewel-case again between us. "These stones and coins are also my sister's, monsieur the marquis?" He lifted his eyebrows. "I had ample opportunity, my dear boy, to turn them into the exchequer of the Count of Provence. Before his quarrel with the late czar of Russia he maintained a dozen gentlemen-in-waiting, and perhaps as many ladies, to say nothing of priests, servants, attendants of attendants, and guards. This treasure might last him two years. If the king of Spain and his majesty of Russia got wind of it, and shut off their pensions, it would not last so long. I am too thrifty a Frenchman to dissipate the hoards of the state in foreign parts! Yet, if you question my taste--I will not say my honesty, Lazarre--" "I question nothing, monsieur! I ask advice." "Eh, bien! Then do not be quite as punctilious as the gentleman who got turned out of the debtor side of Ste. Pelagie into an alley. 'This will not do,' says he. So around he posts to the entrance, and asks for admittance again!" "Catch me knocking at Ste. Pelagie for admittance again!" "Then my advice is to pay your tailor, if he has done his work acceptably." "He has done it marvelously, especially in the fitting." "A Parisian workman finds it no miracle to fit a man from his old clothes. I took the liberty of sending your orders. Having heard my little story, you understand that you owe me nothing but your society; and a careful inventory of this trust." We were a long time examining the contents of the case. There were six bags of coin, all gold louis; many unset gems; rings for the hand; and clusters of various sorts which I knew not how to name, that blazed with a kind of white fire very dazzling. The half-way crown was crusted thick with colored stones the like of which I could not have imagined in my dreams. Their names, the marquis told me, were sapphires, emeralds, rubies; and large clear diamonds, like beads of rain. When everything was carefully returned to place, he asked: "Shall I still act as your banker?" I begged him to hide the jewel box again, and he concealed it in the wall. "We go to the Rue Ste. Croix, Lazarre, which is an impossible place for your friend Bellenger at this time. Do you dance a gavotte?" I told him I could dance the Indian corn dance, and he advised me to reserve this accomplishment. "Bonaparte's police are keen on any scent, especially the scent of a prince. His practical mind would reject the Temple story, if he ever heard it; and there are enough live Bourbons for him to watch." "But there is the Count de Chaumont," I suggested. "He is not a man that would put faith in the Temple story, either, and I understand he is kindly disposed towards you." "I lived in his house nearly a year." "He is not a bad fellow for the new sort. I feel certain of him. He is coaxing my friendship because of ancient amity between the houses of Du Plessy and De Ferrier." "Did you say, monsieur, that Bonaparte intends to restore Madame de Ferrier's lands?" "They have been given to one of his rising officers." "Then he will not restore them?" "Oh, yes, with interest! His plan is to give her the officer for a husband."