.

"Yes," he said at length, "a hard thing. But this is a hard world,
Monsieur Colville, and will not allow either men or women to be angels.
I have known and served the Duchess all my life, and I confess that she
has never lost sight of the fact that, should Louis XVII. be found,
she herself would never be Queen of France. One is not a Bourbon for
nothing."

"One is not a stateswoman and a daughter of kings for nothing," amended
Colville, with his tolerant laugh; for he was always ready to make
allowances. "Better, perhaps, that France should be left quiet, under
the regime she had accepted, than disturbed by the offer of another
regime, which might be less acceptable. You always remind me--you, who
deal with France--of a lion-tamer at a circus. You have a very slight
control over your performing beasts. If they refuse to do the trick you
propose, you do not press it, but pass on to another trick; and the bars
of the cage always appear to the onlooker to be very inadequate. Perhaps
it was better, Marquis, to let the Dauphin go; to pass him over, and
proceed to the tricks suitable to the momentary humour of your wild
animals."

The Marquis de Gemosac gave a curt laugh, which thrilled with a note of
that fearful joy known to those who seek to control the uncontrollable.

"At that time," he admitted, "it might be so. But not now. At that
time there lived Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and his sons, the Duc
d'Angouleme and the Duc de Berri, who might reasonably be expected to
have sons in their turn. There were plenty of Bourbons, it seemed. And
now--where are they? What is left of them?"

He gave a nod of the head toward the sea that lay between him and
Germany.

"One old woman, over there, at Frohsdorf, the daughter of Marie
Antoinette, awaiting the end of her bitter pilgrimage--and this Comte de
Chambord. This man who will not when he may. No, my friend, it has
never been so necessary to find Louis XVII. as it is now. Necessary for
France--for the whole world. This Prince President, this last offshoot
of a pernicious republican growth, will drag us all in the mud if he
gets his way with France. And those who have watched with seeing eyes
have always known that such a time as the present must eventually come.
For France will always be the victim of a clever adventurer. We
have foreseen it, and for that reason we have treated as serious
possibilities these false Dauphins who have sprung up like mushrooms all
over Eu