"There we find twenty thousand infantry, with all the country royalists, well armed, in great force, who conduct the King to Peronne."
"Better and better. What do you do there?'
"The gathering there brings our whole array up to one hundred and fifty thousand men."
"A very pretty figure," commented the Chief of the Invisibles.
"With the mass we march on Paris, cutting off supplies above and below on the river. Famished Paris capitulates; the Assembly is kicked to pieces, and the King enjoys his own again on the throne of his fathers."
"Amen!" sang Cagliostro. "My dear Beausire," he went on, rising, "your conversation is most agreeable; but as they say of the greatest orators, when they have spoken all that is in them, nothing more is to be got. You are done?"
"Then, good-night: when you want another ten louis call for them at my home, at Bellevue."
"No; they would not know who you meant. Ask for Baron Zannone."
"But that is the banker who cashed up the two millions on the King's brother's notes!" ejaculated Beausire.
"That is not unlikely; only I do such a large business that I have confounded it with the others. That is why it was not clear in my mind but now you remind me, I believe I did something of the kind."
Beausire went his way, stupefied that a banker could forget a matter of two millions, and beginning to believe that he was quite right in siding with the lender rather than with the borrower. He bowed lowly while the count favored him with a slight nod at the cemetery gateway.
The reader will not be much surprised, after the permission Lafayette gave for the King to have his locksmith call to relieve him of a trouble in lockmaking, that Gamain should present himself at the palace with his apprentice who gave the name of Louis Lecomte.
Though there was nothing in the pair aristocratic, King Louis ran to the forge door on hearing the announcement and bade them enter.
"Here I am," returned Gamain, with the familiarity of a crony.
Whether he was less used to royal company, or endowed by more respect for crowned heads under whatever attire they appeared, the boy kept on the sill, at a space from his master, with his cap in his hand near the door closed by the valet behind both.