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Updated: August 13, 2024
I could not prove that Bellenger dragged me to the parapet and threw me into the river. If I had known it I should have laughed at his doing so, for I could swim like a fish, through or under water, and sit on the lake bottom holding my breath until Skenedonk had been known to dive for me. When next I sensed anything at all it was a feeling of cold.
"What reason have you to believe," responded Bellenger, "that the Count de Provence and the Count d'Artois have any interest in this boy?" Philippe laughed, and kicked the turf. "We have seen him many a time at Versailles, my friend. You are very mysterious." "Have his enemies, or his friends set him free?" demanded the old Frenchman. "That," said Bellenger, "I may not tell."
"The dauphin clue has been very cleverly managed by Bellenger, let us say," Louis Philippe remarked. "If you had not appeared, I should not now believe there is a dauphin." I wanted to tell him all the thoughts tossing in my mind; but silence is sometimes better than open speech. Facing adventure, I remembered that I had never known the want of food for any length of time during my conscious life.
I pushed forward as two or three heavy coaches checked their headlong speed, and officers parted the crowd. "There he is!" admitted the baker behind me. Something struck me in the side, and there was Bellenger the potter, a man I thought beyond the seas in America. His head as I saw it that moment put the emperor's head out of my mind.
"The wonderful vase," said the other yawning, "might perhaps interest me more if some facts were not pressing for discussion. I am a man of benevolent disposition, Bellenger." "Your royal highness " "Stop! I have been a revolutionist, like my poor father, whose memory you were about to touch and I forbid it. But I am a man whose will it is to do good.
And I knew there had been double dealing with me. You represented some invisible power tricking me. I was beside myself, and faced it out in Mittau. I have been used shamefully, and thrown aside when I am failing. Hiding out in the hills ruined my health." "Let us get to facts, if you have facts. Do you know anything about me, Bellenger?" "Yes, sire." "Who am I?" "Louis XVII of France."
Bellenger might have returned to Paris, and set Napoleon's spies on the least befriended Bourbon of all; or the police upon a man escaped from Ste. Pélagie after choking a sacristan. The Indian and I were not skilled in disguises as our watchers were. Our safety lay in getting out of Paris. Skenedonk undertook to stow our belongings in the post-chaise at the last minute.
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.
I stopped in the shade when we two were alone on the second span, and wheeled, certain of catching my man under the flare of a cresset. I caught him, and knew that it was Bellenger following me. My mind was made up in an instant. I walked back to settle matters with him, though slaughter was far from my thoughts. I had done him no harm; but he was my enemy, and should be forced to let me alone.
I said I understood. "Monsieur is not a bad man. But Bellenger, who took charge of the dauphin, has in some manner and for some reason, provided himself with a substitute, and he utterly denies you. Further: supposing that you are the heir of France, restored to your family and proclaimed of what use is it to present yourself before the French people now? They are besotted with this Napoleon.
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