Lazarre Part 35

"The same right, monsieur, that you have to call her your niece."

The features of the princess became pinched and sharpened under the softness of her fair hair.

"Sire, if this is not my brother, who is he?"

Louis XVIII may have been tender to her every other moment of his life, but he was hard then, and looked beyond her toward the door, making a sign with his hand.

That strange sympathy which works in me for my opponent, put his outraged dignity before me rather than my own wrong. Deeper, more sickening than death, the first faintness of self-distrust came over me.

What if my half-memories were unfounded hallucinations? What if my friend Louis Philippe had made a tool of me, to annoy this older Bourbon branch that detested him? What if Bellenger's recognition, and the Marquis du Plessy's, and Marie-Therese's, went for nothing? What if some other, and not this angry man, had sent the money to America--

The door opened again. We turned our heads, and I grew hot at the cruelty which put that idiot before my sister's eyes. He ran on all fours, his gaunt wrists exposed, until Bellenger, advancing behind, took him by the arm and made him stand erect. It was this poor creature I had heard scratching on the other side of the inn wall.

How long Bellenger had been beforehand with me in Mittau I could not guess. But when I saw the scoundrel who had laid me in Ste. Pelagie, and doubtless dropped me in the Seine, ready to do me more mischief, smug and smooth shaven, and fine in the red-collared blue coat which seemed to be the prescribed uniform of that court, all my confidence returned.

I was Louis of France. I could laugh at anything he had to say.

Behind him entered a priest, who advanced up the room, and made obeisance to the king, as Bellenger did.

Madame d'Angouleme looked once at the idiot, and hid her eyes: the king protecting her. I said to myself,

"It will soon be against my breast, not yours, that she hides her face, my excellent uncle of Provence!"

Yet he was as sincere a man as ever said to witnesses,

"We shall now hear the truth."

The few courtiers, enduring with hardiness a sight which they perhaps had seen before though Madame d'Angouleme had not, made a rustle among themselves as if echoing,

"Yes, now we shall hear the truth!"

The king again kissed my sister's hand, and placed her in a seat beside his arm-chair, which he resumed.

"Monsieur the Abbe Edgeworth," he said, "having stood on the scaffold with our martyred sovereign, as priest and comforter, is eminently the one to conduct an examination like this, which touches matters of conscience. We leave it in his hands."

Abbe Edgeworth, fine and sweet of presence, stood by the king, facing Bellenger and the idiot. That poor creature, astonished by his environment, gazed at the high room corners, or smiled experimentally at the courtiers, stretching his cracked lips over darkened fangs.

"You are admitted here, Bellenger," said the priest, "to answer his Majesty's questions in the presence of witnesses."

"I thank his Majesty," said Bellenger.

The abbe began as if the idiot attracted his notice for the first time.

"Who is the unfortunate child you hold with your right hand?"

"The dauphin of France, monsieur the abbe," spoke out Bellenger, his left hand on his hip.

"What! Take care what you say! How do you know that the dauphin of France is yet among the living?"

Bellenger's countenance changed, and he took his hand off his hip and let it hang down.

"I received the prince, monsieur, from those who took him out of the Temple prison."

"And you never exchanged him for another person, or allowed him to be separated from you?"

Bellenger swore with ghastly lips--"Never, on my hopes of salvation, monsieur the abbe!"

"Admitting that somebody gave you this child to keep--by the way, how old is he?"

"About twenty years, monsieur."

"What right had you to a.s.sume he was the dauphin?"

"I had received a yearly pension, monsieur, from his Majesty himself, for the maintenance of the prince."

"You received the yearly pension through my hand, acting as his Majesty's almoner, His Majesty was ever too bountiful to the unfortunate. He has many dependents. Where have you lived with your charge?"

"We lived in America, sometimes in the woods; and sometimes in towns."

"Has he ever shown hopeful signs of recovering his reason?"

"Never, monsieur the abbe."

Having touched thus lightly on the case of the idiot, Abbe Edgeworth turned to me.

The king's face retained its granite hardness. But Bellenger's pa.s.sed from shade to shade of baffled confidence; recovering only when the priest said,

"Now look at this young man. Have you ever seen him before?"

"Yes, monsieur, I have; both in the American woods, and in Paris."

"What was he doing in the American woods?"

"Living on the bounty of one Count de Chaumont, a friend of Bonaparte's."

"Who is he?"

"A French half-breed, brought up among the Indians."

"What name does he bear?"

"He is called Lazarre."

"But why is a French half-breed named Lazarre attempting to force himself on the exiled court here in Mittau?"

"People have told him that he resembles the Bourbons, monsieur."

"Was he encouraged in this idea by the friend of Bonaparte whom you mentioned?"

"I think not, monsieur the abbe. But I heard a Frenchman tell him he was like the martyred king, and since that hour he has presumed to consider himself the dauphin."