“Have you made that vase yet?”

“No, sire.  I succeed in nothing.”

“You succeed in tracking me.”

He swam before my eyes, and I pointed to the surgeon’s camp-chair.

“Not in your presence, sire.”

“Have you lost your real dauphin?” I inquired.

“I have the honor of standing before the real dauphin.”

“So you swore at Mittau!”

“I perjured myself.”

“Well, what are you doing now?”

“Sire, I am a man in failing health.  Before the end I have come to tell you the truth.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

“Sire”—­said Bellenger.

“Your king is Louis XVIII,” I reminded him.

“He is not my king.”

“Taken your pension away, has he?”

“I no longer receive anything from that court.”

“And your dauphin?”

“He was left in Europe.”

“Look here, Bellenger!  Why did you treat me so?  Dauphin or no dauphin, what harm was I doing you?”

“I thought a strong party was behind you.  And I knew there had been double dealing with me.  You represented some invisible power tricking me.  I was beside myself, and faced it out in Mittau.  I have been used shamefully, and thrown aside when I am failing.  Hiding out in the hills ruined my health.”

“Let us get to facts, if you have facts.  Do you know anything about me, Bellenger?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Who am I?”

“Louis XVII of France.”

“What proof can you give me?”

“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. Pelagie 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?”

“Agents of the royalist party whose names would mean nothing to you if I gave them.”

“I was placed in your hands?”

“You were placed in my hands to be taken to America.”