“The only man in France,” I said, “empowered to treat for abdication of the throne at present, is Napoleon Bonaparte.  Did you bring a message from him?”

Abbe Edgeworth winced, but laughed.

“Napoleon Bonaparte will not last.  All Europe is against him.  I see we have arrived at the message.”

He rose and handed me the paper he held in his hand.  I rose and received it, and read it standing.

It was one brief line:—­

“Louis:  You are recalled. 
Marie-Therese.”

The blood must have rushed over my face.  I had a submerged feeling, looking out of it at the priest.

“Well, Monseigneur?”

“It is like her heavenly goodness.”

“Do you see nothing but her heavenly goodness in it?”

“This is the message?”

“It is a message I crossed the ocean to bring.”

“With the consent of her uncle?”

“Madame d’Angouleme never expresses a wish contrary to the wishes of his majesty.”

“We are then to suppose that Louis XVIII offers me, through you, monsieur, the opportunity to sign away my rights, and failing that, the opportunity of taking them?”

“Supposing you are Monseigneur the dauphin, we will let our supposition run as far as this.”

I saw distinctly the position of Louis XVIII.  Marquis du Plessy had told me he was a mass of superstition.  No doubt he had behaved, as Bellenger said, for the good of the royalist cause.  But the sanction of heaven was not on his behavior.  Bonaparte was let loose on him like the dragon from the pit.  And Frenchmen, after yawning eleven months or so in the king’s august face, threw up their hats for the dragon.  In his second exile the inner shadow and the shadow of age combined against him.  He had tasted royalty.  It was not as good as he had once thought.  Beside him always, he saw the face of Marie-Therese.  She never forgot the hushed mystery of her brother.  Her silence and obedience to the crown, her loyalty to juggling and evasion, were more powerful than resistance.

A young man, brought suddenly before the jaded nation and proclaimed at an opportune moment, might be a successful toy.  The sore old king would oil more than the royalist cause, and the blessing of heaven would descend on one who restored the veritable dauphin.

I never have seen the most stupid man doubt his power to ride if somebody hoists him into the saddle.

“Let us go farther with our suppositions,” I said.  “Suppose I decline?”

I heard Madame de Ferrier gasp.

The priest raised his eyebrows.

“In that case you will be quite willing to give me a signed paper declaring your reasons.”

“I sign no paper.”

“Let me suggest that Monseigneur is not consistent.  He neither resigns his supposed rights nor will he exercise them.”

“I will neither resign them nor exercise them.”