The blood must have rushed over my face. I had a submerged feeling, looking out of it at the priest.

"Well, Monseigneur?"

"It is like her heavenly goodness."

"Do you see nothing but her heavenly goodness in it?"

"This is the message?"

"It is a message I crossed the ocean to bring."

"With the consent of her uncle?"

"Madame d'Angouleme never expresses a wish contrary to the wishes of his majesty."

"We are then to suppose that Louis XVIII offers me, through you, monsieur, the opportunity to sign away my rights, and failing that, the opportunity of taking them?"

"Supposing you are Monseigneur the dauphin, we will let our supposition run as far as this."

I saw distinctly the position of Louis XVIII. Marquis du Plessy had told me he was a ma.s.s of superst.i.tion. No doubt he had behaved, as Bellenger said, for the good of the royalist cause. But the sanction of heaven was not on his behavior. Bonaparte was let loose on him like the dragon from the pit. And Frenchmen, after yawning eleven months or so in the king's august face, threw up their hats for the dragon. In his second exile the inner shadow and the shadow of age combined against him. He had tasted royalty. It was not as good as he had once thought. Beside him always, he saw the face of Marie-Therese. She never forgot the hushed mystery of her brother. Her silence and obedience to the crown, her loyalty to juggling and evasion, were more powerful than resistance.

A young man, brought suddenly before the jaded nation and proclaimed at an opportune moment, might be a successful toy. The sore old king would oil more than the royalist cause, and the blessing of heaven would descend on one who restored the veritable dauphin.

I never have seen the most stupid man doubt his power to ride if somebody hoists him into the saddle.

"Let us go farther with our suppositions," I said. "Suppose I decline?"

I heard Madame de Ferrier gasp.

The priest raised his eyebrows.

"In that case you will be quite willing to give me a signed paper declaring your reasons."

"I sign no paper."

"Let me suggest that Monseigneur is not consistent. He neither resigns his supposed rights nor will he exercise them."

"I will neither resign them nor exercise them."

"This is virtually resigning them."

"The abbe will pardon me for saying it is not. My rights are mine, whether I use them or not."

"Monseigneur understands that opportunity is a visitor that comes but once."

"I understand that the most extraordinary thing has happened to-day that will ever go unrecorded in history. One Bourbon offers to give away a throne he has lost and another Bourbon refuses it."

"You may well say it will go unrecorded in history. Excepting this lady,"--the abbe bowed toward Eagle,--"there is no witness."

"Wise precautions have been taken," I agreed. "This sc.r.a.p of paper may mean anything or nothing."

"You decline?" he repeated.

"I think France is done with the Bourbons, monsieur the abbe. A fine spectacle they have made of themselves, cooling their heels all over Europe, waiting for Napoleon's shoes! Will I go sneaking and trembling to range myself among impotent kings and wrangle over a country that wants none of us? No, I never will! I see where my father slipped. I see where the eighteenth Louis slipped. I am a man tenacious beyond belief.

You cannot loose my grip when I take hold. But I never have taken hold, I never will take hold--of my native country, struggling as she is to throw off hereditary rule!"

"You are an American!" said Abbe Edgeworth contemptuously.

"If France called to me out of need, I would fight for her. A lifetime of peaceful years I would toss away in a minute to die in one achieving battle for her. But she neither calls me nor needs me. A king is not simply an appearance--a continuation of hereditary rights!"

"Your position is incredible," said the priest.

"I do not belittle the prospect you open before me. I see the practical difficulties, but I see well the magnificence beyond them."

"Then why do you hesitate?"

"I don't hesitate. A man is contemptible who stands shivering and longing outside of what he dare not attempt. I would dare if I longed.

But I don't long."

"Monseigneur believes there will be complications?"

"I know my own obstinacy. A man who tried to work me with strings behind a throne, would think he was struck by lightning."

"Sire," Madame de Ferrier spoke out, "this is the hour of your life.

Take your kingdom."

"I should have to take it, madame, if I got it. My uncle of Provence has nothing to give me. He merely says--'My dear dauphin, if Europe knocks Napoleon down, will you kindly take hold of a crank which is too heavy for me, and turn it for the good of the Bourbons? We may thus keep the royal machine in the family!'"

"You have given no adequate reason for declining this offer," said the priest.

"I will give no reason. I simply decline."

"Is this the explanation that I shall make to Madame d'Angouleme? Think of the tender sister who says--'Louis, you are recalled!"

"I do think of her. G.o.d bless her!"

"Must I tell her that Monseigneur planted his feet like one of these wild cattle, and wheeled, and fled from the contemplation of a throne?"

"You will dress it up in your own felicitous way, monsieur."

"What do you wish me to say?"

"That I decline. I have not pressed the embarra.s.sing question of why I was not recalled long ago. I reserve to myself the privilege of declining without saying why I decline."

"He must be made to change his mind, monsieur!" Madame de Ferrier exclaimed.

"I am not a man that changes his mind every time the clock strikes."

I took the padlocked book out of my breast and laid it upon the table. I looked at the priest, not at her. The padlocked book seemed to have no more to do with the conversation, than a hat or a pair of gloves.