“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!