be a public funeral. Such a ceremony would have been of
incalculable value at that time. But, at the last minute, their courage
failed them. The boy was thrown into a forgotten corner of a Paris
churchyard, at nine o'clock one night, without witnesses. The spot
itself cannot now be identified. Do you tell me that that was the
Dauphin? Bah! my friend, the thing was too childish!"

"The ignorant and the unlettered," observed Colville, with the air of
making a concession, "are always at a disadvantage--even in crime."

"That the Dauphin was, in the mean time, concealed in the garret of the
Tower appears to be certain. That he was finally conveyed out of the
prison in a clothes-basket is as certain, Monsieur, as it is certain
that the sun will rise to-morrow. And I believe that the Queen knew,
when she went to the guillotine, that her son was no longer in the
Temple. I believe that Heaven sent her that one scrap of comfort,
tempered as it was by the knowledge that her daughter remained a
prisoner in their hands. But it was to her son that her affections were
given. For the Duchess never had the gift of winning love. As she is
now--a cold, hard, composed woman--so she was in her prison in the
Temple at the age of fifteen. You may take it from one who has known her
all his life. And from that moment to this--"

The Marquis paused, and made a gesture with his hands, descriptive of
space and the unknown.

"From that moment to this--nothing. Nothing of the Dauphin."

He turned in his seat and looked questioningly up toward the crumbling
church, with its square tower, stricken, years ago, by lightning; with
its grass-grown graveyard marked by stones all grey and hoary with
immense age and the passage of cold and stormy winters.

"Who knows," he added, "what may have become of him? Who can say where
he lies? For a life begun as his began was not likely to be a long
one. Though troubles do not kill. Witness myself, who am five years his
senior."

Colville looked at him in obedience to an inviting gesture of the hand;
looked as at something he did not understand, something beyond his
understanding, perhaps. For the troubles had not been Monsieur de
Gemosac's own troubles, but those of his country.

"And the Duchess?" said the Englishman at length, after a pause, "at
Frohsdorf--what does she say--or think?"

"She says nothing," replied the Marquis de Gemosac, sharply. "She is
silent, because the world is listening for ever