Sire, we are not observing etiquette in Mont-Louis as they observe it
at Mittau. I have been talking very familiarly to my king. I will keep
silent. You speak."

"Madame, you have forbidden me to speak!"

She gave me a startled look, and said,

"Did you know Jerome Bonaparte has come back? He left his wife in
America. She cannot be received in France, because she has committed the
crime of marrying a prince. She is to be divorced for political
reasons."

"Jerome Bonaparte is a hound!" I spoke hotly.

"And his wife a venturesome woman--to marry even a temporary prince."

"I like her sort, madame!"

"Do you, sire?"

"Yes, I like a woman who can love!"

"And ruin?"

"How could you ruin me?"

"The Saint-Michels brought me up," said Eagle. "They taught me what is
lawful and unlawful. I will never do an unlawful thing, to the disgrace
and shame of my house. A woman should build her house, not tear it
down."

"What is unlawful?"

"It is unlawful for me to encourage the suit of my sovereign."

"Am I ever likely to be anything but what they call in Mittau a
pretender, Eagle?"

"That we do not know. You shall keep yourself free from entanglements."

"I am free from them--God knows I am free enough!--the lonesomest, most
unfriended savage that ever set out to conquer his own."

"You were born to greatness. Great things will come to you."

"If you loved me I could make them come!"

"Sire, it isn't healthy to sit in the night air. We must go out of the
dew."

"Oh, who would be healthy! Come to that, who would be such a royal
beggar as I am?"

"Remember," she said gravely, "that your claim was in a manner
recognized by one of the most cautious, one of the least ardent
royalists, in France."

The recognition she knew nothing about came to my lips, and I told her
the whole story of the jewels. The snuffbox was in my pocket. Sophie
Saint-Michel had often described it to her.

She sat and looked at me, contemplating the stupendous loss.

"The marquis advised me not to take them into Russia," I acknowledged.

"There is no robbery so terrible as the robbery committed by those who
think they are doing right."

"I am one of the losing Bourbons."

"Can anything be hidden in that closet in the queen's dressing-room
wall?" mused Eagle. "I believe I could find it in the dark, Sophie told
me so often where the secret spring may be touched. When the De
Chaumonts took me to the Tuileries I wanted to search for i