tom of extreme
agitation. Some minutes after, the soldier resumed, still answering his
inward thoughts: "What can it be? It is hardly possible to be the
letters, they are too infamous; he despises them. And yet But no, no--he
is above that!"

And Dagobert again began to walk with hasty steps. Suddenly, Spoil-sport
pricked up his ears, turned his head in the direction of the staircase
door, and growled hoarsely. A few seconds after, some one knocked at the
door.

"Who is there?" said Dagobert. There was no answer, but the person
knocked again. Losing patience, the soldier went hastily to open it, and
saw the servant's stupid face.

"Why don't you answer, when I ask who knocks!" said the soldier, angrily.

"M. Dagobert, you sent me away just now, and I was afraid of making you
cross, if I said I had come again."

"What do you want? Speak then--come in, stupid!" cried the exasperated.
Dagobert, as he pulled him into the room.

"M. Dagobert, don't be angry--I'll tell you all about it--it is a young
man."

"Well?"

"He wants to speak to you directly, Mr. Dagobert."

"His name?"

"His name, M. Dagobert?" replied Loony, rolling about and laughing with
an idiotic air.

"Yes, his name. Speak, idiot!"

"Oh, M. Dagobert! it's all in joke that you ask me his name!"

"You are determined, fool that you are, to drive me out of my senses!"
cried the soldier, seizing Loony by the collar. "The name of this young
man!"

"Don't be angry, M. Dagobert. I didn't tell you the name because you know
it."

"Beast!" said Dagobert, shaking his fist at him.

"Yes, you do know it, M. Dagobert, for the young man is your own son. He
is downstairs, and wants to speak to you directly--yes, directly."

The stupidity was so well assumed, that Dagobert was the dupe of it.
Moved to compassion rather than anger by such imbecility, he looked
fixedly at the servant, shrugged his shoulders, and said, as he advanced
towards the staircase, "Follow me!"

Loony obeyed; but, before closing the door, he drew a letter secretly
from his pocket, and dropped it behind him without turning his head,
saying all the while to Dagobert, for the purpose of occupying his
attention: "Your son is in the court, M. Dagobert. He would not come
up--that's why he is still downstairs!"

Thus talking, he closed the door, believing he had left the letter on the
floor of Marshal Simon's room. But he had reckoned without Spoil-sport.
Whether he thought it more pru