for loving a king. He found
exile easy to bear in Paris, and especially so as he had never
relinquished the idea that some day the King would return to his own
again. So firmly did he believe in this, and so keenly was his heart
set upon it, that Louis had never dared to let him know that for
himself exile in Paris and the Riviera was vastly to be preferred to
authority over a rocky island hung with fogs, and inhabited by dull
merchants and fierce banditti.

The conduct of the King during their residence in Paris would have
tried the loyalty of one less gay and careless than Kalonay, for he was
a sorry monarch, and if the principle that "the King can do no wrong"
had not been bred in the young Prince's mind, he would have deserted
his sovereign in the early days of their exile. But as it was, he made
excuses for him to others and to himself, and served the King's idle
purposes so well that he gained for himself the name of the King's
jackal, and there were some who regarded him as little better than the
King's confidential blackguard, and man Friday, the weakest if the most
charming of his court of adventurers.

At the first hint which the King gave of his desire to place himself
again in power, Kalonay had ceased to be his Jackal and would have
issued forth as a commander-in-chief, had the King permitted him; but
it was not to Louis's purpose that the Prince should know the real
object of the expedition, so he assigned its preparation to Erhaupt,
and despatched Kalonay to the south of the island. At the same time
Madame Zara had been sent to the north of the island, ostensibly to
sound the sentiment of the old nobility, but in reality to make capital
out of the presence there of Kalonay and Father Paul.

The King rose hurriedly when the slim figure of the Prince and the
broad shoulders and tonsured head of the monk appeared at the farthest
end of the garden-walk.

"They are coming!" he cried, with a guilty chuckle; "so I shall run
away and finish dressing. I leave you to receive the first shock of
Kalonay's enthusiasm alone. I confess he bores me. Remember, the
story Madame Zara told them in the yacht is the one she told us this
morning, that none of the old royalists at the capital would promise us
any assistance. Be careful now, and play your parts prettily. We are
all terribly in earnest."

Kalonay's enthusiasm had not spent itself entirely before the King
returned. He had still a number of amusing