“Did you see the duchess?”

“Yes.”

“What did she do?”

“Nothing.  She leaned on the women and they took her away.”

“Tell me all you saw.”

“When you went in to hold council, I watched, and saw a priest and Bellenger and the boy that God had touched, all go in after you.  So I knew the council would be bad for you, Lazarre, and I stood by the door with my knife in my hand.  When the talk had gone on awhile I heard something like the dropping of a buck on the ground, and sprang in, and the men drew their swords and the women screamed.  The priest pointed at you and said, ‘God has smitten the pretender!’ Then they all went out of the room except the priest, and we opened your collar.  I told him you had fallen like that before, and the stroke passed off in sleep.  He said your carriage waited, and if I valued your safety I would put you in it and take you out of Russia.  He called servants to help me carry you.  I thought about your jewels; but some drums began to beat, and I thought about your life!”

“But, Skenedonk, didn’t my sister—­the lady I led by the hand, you remember—­speak to me again, or look at me, or try to revive me?”

“No.  She went away with the women carrying her.”

“She believed in me—­at first!  Before I said a word she knew me!  She wouldn’t leave me merely because her uncle and a priest thought me an impostor!  She is the tenderest creature on earth, Skenedonk—­she is more like a saint than a woman!”

“Some saints on the altar are blind and deaf,” observed the Oneida.  “I think she was sick.”

“I have nearly killed her!  And I have been tumbled out of Mittau as a pretender!”

“You are here.  Get some men to fight, and we will go back.”

“What a stroke—­to lose my senses at the moment I needed them most!”

“You kept your scalp.”

“And not much else.  No!  If you refuse to follow me, and wait here at this post-house, I am going back to Mittau!”

“I go where you go,” said Skenedonk.  “But best go to sleep now.”

This I was not able to do until long tossing on the thorns of chagrin wore me out.  I was ashamed like a prodigal, baffled, and hurt to the bruising of my soul.  A young man’s chastened confidence in himself is hard to bear, but the loss of what was given as a heritage at birth is an injustice not to be endured.

The throne of France was never my goal, to be reached through blood and revolution.  Perhaps the democratic notions in my father’s breast have found wider scope in mine.  I wanted to influence men, and felt even at that time that I could do it; but being king was less to my mind than being acknowledged dauphin, and brother, and named with my real name.

I took my fists in my hands and swore to force recognition, if I battered a lifetime on Mittau.

At daylight our post-horses were put to the chaise and I gave the postilion orders myself.  The little fellow bowed himself nearly double, and said that troops were moving behind us to join the allied forces against Napoleon.