y all went out of
the room except the priest, and we opened your collar. I told him you
had fallen like that before, and the stroke passed off in sleep. He said
your carriage waited, and if I valued your safety I would put you in it
and take you out of Russia. He called servants to help me carry you. I
thought about your jewels; but some drums began to beat, and I thought
about your life!"

"But, Skenedonk, didn't my sister--the lady I led by the hand, you
remember--speak to me again, or look at me, or try to revive me?"

"No. She went away with the women carrying her."

"She believed in me--at first! Before I said a word she knew me! She
wouldn't leave me merely because her uncle and a priest thought me an
impostor! She is the tenderest creature on earth, Skenedonk--she is
more like a saint than a woman!"

"Some saints on the altar are blind and deaf," observed the Oneida. "I
think she was sick."

"I have nearly killed her! And I have been tumbled out of Mittau as a
pretender!"

"You are here. Get some men to fight, and we will go back."

"What a stroke--to lose my senses at the moment I needed them most!"

"You kept your scalp."

"And not much else. No! If you refuse to follow me, and wait here at
this post-house, I am going back to Mittau!"

"I go where you go," said Skenedonk. "But best go to sleep now."

This I was not able to do until long tossing on the thorns of chagrin
wore me out. I was ashamed like a prodigal, baffled, and hurt to the
bruising of my soul. A young man's chastened confidence in himself is
hard to bear, but the loss of what was given as a heritage at birth is
an injustice not to be endured.

The throne of France was never my goal, to be reached through blood and
revolution. Perhaps the democratic notions in my father's breast have
found wider scope in mine. I wanted to influence men, and felt even at
that time that I could do it; but being king was less to my mind than
being acknowledged dauphin, and brother, and named with my real name.

I took my fists in my hands and swore to force recognition, if I
battered a lifetime on Mittau.

At daylight our post-horses were put to the chaise and I gave the
postilion orders myself. The little fellow bowed himself nearly double,
and said that troops were moving behind us to join the allied forces
against Napoleon.

At once the prospect of being snared among armies and cut off from all
return to Paris, appalled me as a greater present ca