“O Louis—­Louis!”

The wonder of her knowledge and acceptance of me, without a claim being put forward, was around me like a cloud.

“You were so like my father as you stood there—­I could see him again as he parted from us!  What miracle has restored you?  How did you find your way here?  You are surely Louis?”

I sat down beside her, keeping one hand between mine.

“Madame, I believe as you believe, that I am Louis Charles, the dauphin of France.  And I have come to you first, as my own flesh and blood, who must have more knowledge and recollection of things past than I myself can have.  I have not long been waked out of the tranced life I formerly lived.”

“I have wept more tears for the little brother—­broken in intellect and exiled farther than we—­than for my father and mother.  They were at peace.  But you, poor child, what hope was there for you?  Was the person who had you in his charge kind to you?  He must have been.  You have grown to be such a man as I would have you!”

“Everybody has been kind to me, my sister.”

“Could they look in that face and be unkind?  All the thousand questions I have to ask must be deferred until the king sees you.  I cannot wait for him to see you!  Mademoiselle de Choisy, send a message at once to the king!”

The lady in waiting withdrew to the door, and the royal duchess quivered with eager anticipation.

“We have had pretended dauphins, to add insult to exile.  You may not take the king unaware as you took me!  He will have proofs as plain as his Latin verse.  But you will find his Majesty all that a father could be to us, Louis!  I think there never was a man so unselfish!—­except, indeed, my husband, whom you cannot see until he returns.”

Again I kissed my sister’s hand.  We gazed at each other, our different breeding still making strangeness between us, across which I yearned; and she examined me.

Many a time since I have reproached myself for not improving those moments with the most candid and right-minded princess in Europe, by forestalling my enemies.  I should have told her of my weakness instead of sunning my strength in the love of her.  I should have made her see my actual position, and the natural antagonism of the king, who would not so readily see a strong personal resemblance when that was not emphasized by some mental stress, as she and three very different men had seen it.

Instead of making cause with her, however, I said over and over—­“Marie-Therese!  Marie-Therese!”—­like a homesick boy come again to some familiar presence.  “You are the only one of my family I have seen since waking; except Louis Philippe.”

“Don’t speak of that man, Louis!  I detest the house of Orleans as a Christian should detest only sin!  His father doomed ours to death!”

“But he is not to blame for what his father did.”

“What do you mean by waking?”