‘I will tell you,’ says he.  ’There is a remarkable inconsistency in human nature which gentlemen of my cloth have a great deal of occasion to observe.  Selfish persons can live without chick or child, they can live without all mankind except perhaps the barber and the apothecary; but when it comes to dying, they seem physically unable to die without an heir.  You can apply this principle for yourself.  Viscount Alain, though he scarce guesses it, is no longer in the field.  Remains, Viscount Anne.’

‘I see,’ said I, ’you give a very unfavourable impression of my uncle, the Count.’

‘I had not meant it,’ said he.  ’He has led a loose life—­sadly loose—­but he is a man it is impossible to know and not to admire; his courtesy is exquisite.’

‘And so you think there is actually a chance for me?’ I asked.

‘Understand,’ said he:  ’in saying as much as I have done, I travel quite beyond my brief.  I have been clothed with no capacity to talk of wills, or heritages, or your cousin.  I was sent here to make but the one communication:  that M. de Keroual desires to meet his great-nephew.’

‘Well,’ said I, looking about me on the battlements by which we sat surrounded, ’this is a case in which Mahomet must certainly come to the mountain.’

‘Pardon me,’ said Mr. Romaine; ’you know already your uncle is an aged man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up, and his death shortly looked for.  No, no, there is no doubt about it—­it is the mountain that must come to Mahomet.’

‘From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant,’ said I; ’but you are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men’s secrets, and I see you keep that of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a truculent patriotism, to say the least.’

‘I am first of all the lawyer of your family!’ says he.

‘That being so,’ said I, ’I can perhaps stretch a point myself.  This rock is very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a devil of a fall from almost any part of it, and yet I believe I have a pair of wings that might carry me just so far as to the bottom.  Once at the bottom I am helpless.’

‘And perhaps it is just then that I could step in,’ returned the lawyer.  ’Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess, and on which I offer no opinion—­’

But here I interrupted him.  ’One word ere you go further.  I am under no parole,’ said I.

‘I understood so much,’ he replied, ’although some of you French gentry find their word sit lightly on them.’

‘Sir, I am not one of those,’ said I.

‘To do you plain justice, I do not think you one,’ said he.  ‘Suppose yourself, then, set free and at the bottom of the rock,’ he continued, ’although I may not be able to do much, I believe I can do something to help you on your road.  In the first place I would carry this, whether in an inside pocket or my shoe.’  And he passed me a bundle of bank notes.