e
lackey ushered me into the garden.

It was a nest of amber at that time of sunset, and he waited for me at a
table laid for supper, under a flat canopy of trees which had their tops
trained and woven into a mat.

I took his hand to kiss, but he rose up and magnificently placed me in a
chair opposite himself.

"Your benefits are heavy, monsieur," I said. "How shall I acknowledge
them?"

"You owe me nothing at all," he answered; "as you will see when I have
told you a true story. It would sound like a lie if anything were
incredible in these fabulous times."

"But you do not know anything about me."

"I am well instructed in your history, by that charming attendant in
fringed leather breeches, who has been acquainted with you much longer
than you have been acquainted with yourself."

"Yet I am not sure of deserving the marquis' interest."

"Has the marquis admitted that he feels any interest in you? Though this
I will own: few experiences have affected me like your living eyes
staring out of the face of my dead king!"

We met each other again with a steady gaze like that in the mortuary
chapel.

"Do you believe I am ----?"

"Do I believe you are ----? Who said there was such a person in
existence?"

"Louis Philippe."

"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, tu