at he pleases--I acknowledge that. He has
excess of phosphorus, or he's ultra-electrical; doctors could tell us
better than lawyers.' Temple spoke of the clever young barrister Tenby
as the man whom his father had heard laughing over the trick played upon
'Roy Richmond.' I conceived that I might furnish Mr. Tenby a livelier
kind of amusement, and the thought that I had once been sur le terrain,
and had bitterly regretted it, by no means deterred me from the idea
of a second expedition, so black was my mood. A review of the
circumstances, aided by what reached my ears before the night went over,
convinced me that Edbury was my man. His subordinate helped him to
the instrument, and possibly to the plot, but Edbury was the capital
offender.

The scene of the prank was not in itself so bad as the stuff which a
cunning anecdotist could make out of it. Edbury invited my father to a
dinner at a celebrated City tavern. He kept his guests (Jennings, Jorian
DeWitt, Alton, Wedderburn, were among the few I was acquainted with who
were present) awaiting the arrival of a person for whom he professed
extraordinary respect. The Dauphin of France was announced. A mild,
flabby, amiable-looking old person, with shelving forehead and grey
locks--excellently built for the object, Jorian said--entered. The Capet
head and embonpoint were there. As far as a personal resemblance
might go, his pretensions to be the long-lost Dauphin were grotesquely
convincing, for, notwithstanding the accurate picture of the Family
presented by him, the man was a pattern bourgeois:--a sturdy impostor,
one would have thought, and I thought so when I heard of him; but I have
been assured that he had actually grown old in the delusion that he,
carrying on his business in the City of London, was the identical
Dauphin.

Edbury played his part by leading his poor old victim half way to meet
his other most honoured guest, hesitating then and craving counsel
whether he was right in etiquette to advance the Dauphin so far. The
Dauphin left him mildly to decide the point: he was eminently mild
throughout, and seems to have thought himself in good faith surrounded
by believers and adherents. Edbury's task soon grew too delicate for
that coarse boy. In my father's dexterous hands he at once lost his
assumption of the gallantry of manner which could alone help him to
retain his advantage. When the wine was in him he began to bawl. I could
imagine the sort of dialogue he r