nt. At that moment I believed--I
almost believed--that I was in very truth the King; and, with a look of
laughing triumph, I raised my eyes to the beauty-laden balconies again
. . . and then I started. For, looking down on me, with her handsome
face and proud smile, was the lady who had been my fellow
traveller--Antoinette de Mauban; and I saw her also start, and her lips
moved, and she leant forward and gazed at me. And I, collecting myself,
met her eyes full and square, while again I felt my revolver. Suppose
she had cried aloud, "That's not the King!"

Well, we went by; and then the Marshal, turning round in his saddle,
waved his hand, and the Cuirassiers closed round us, so that the crowd
could not come near me. We were leaving my quarter and entering Duke
Michael's, and this action of the Marshal's showed me more clearly than
words what the state of feeling in the town must be. But if Fate made me
a King, the least I could do was to play the part handsomely.

"Why this change in our order, Marshal?" said I.

The Marshal bit his white moustache.

"It is more prudent, sire," he murmured.

I drew rein.

"Let those in front ride on," said I, "till they are fifty yards ahead.
But do you, Marshal, and Colonel Sapt and my friends, wait here till
I have ridden fifty yards. And see that no one is nearer to me. I will
have my people see that their King trusts them."

Sapt laid his hand on my arm. I shook him off. The Marshal hesitated.

"Am I not understood?" said I; and, biting his moustache again, he gave
the orders. I saw old Sapt smiling into his beard, but he shook his
head at me. If I had been killed in open day in the streets of Strelsau,
Sapt's position would have been a difficult one.

Perhaps I ought to say that I was dressed all in white, except my boots.
I wore a silver helmet with gilt ornaments, and the broad ribbon of the
Rose looked well across my chest. I should be paying a poor compliment
to the King if I did not set modesty aside and admit that I made a very
fine figure. So the people thought; for when I, riding alone, entered
the dingy, sparsely decorated, sombre streets of the Old Town, there
was first a murmur, then a cheer, and a woman, from a window above a
cookshop, cried the old local saying:

"If he's red, he's right!" whereat I laughed and took off my helmet that
she might see that I was of the right colour and they cheered me again
at that.

It was more interesting riding thus alone,