"I understand, your Royal Highness. I should have been here long before, but that I have been a prisoner in the Bastille." "In the Bastille! You! So that is where you have been hidden from all human knowledge. But stay--we cannot talk now. What do they intend to me? Do you know? I do not, though I have long known that my presence in Paris is unwelcome." Bertie shook his head mournfully, and then they entered the hall of the mansion which the Prince had hired from a French nobleman. A huge fire burned in the grate at one end of it, and to this Charles Edward advanced, and, holding out his hands to the blaze, warmed them. "Your Highness," said the Duc de Biron, who by no means appeared to relish the task before him, "again I beg you to believe that in what we have now to do no disrespect is intended. Yet, it must be done. I have to ask you for your sword and any other weapons you may have about you." The Prince started and coloured at these words, then, with a calmness which he never lost until the end of his life--when despair and, alas! drink had done their worst with him--he said: "I shall never deliver my sword to you, nor any man. But, since I am helpless---- No, Captain Elphinston," seeing a movement on the latter's part, "do not interfere, I beg you. Since I am helpless, you may take them, and what else I have of arms." At a sign from the duke, De Vaudreville undid the sash of his dress sword--he had been that night to a gala performance at the opera in the Palais Royal--and took the weapon from him, and then, seeing a melancholy smile upon his face, the other, with many profusions of apology and regret, gently felt in his pockets and removed from them two small ivory-handled and silver-inlaid pistols and a little knife with two blades. "Do not be surprised," the Prince said, "at seeing the pistols. Since I was hunted like a wild beast in Scotland--ay, hunted even by dogs--I, a king's son--I have carried them ever. And here in Paris also my life has been sought." "I have to ask your Highness to give a promise that you will make no attempt on your own life nor that of any other person," De Vaudreville said. The Prince shrugged his shoulders and glanced at the pistols and knife in the other's hands; then he said, "I promise. What more?" "Your Highness," said the duke, "will be conducted to Vincennes to-night. De Chatelet has received orders to prepare a room for you. To-morrow you will set out upon your journey. But, for the present, again I ask your Highness to pardon me," and he faltered as he continued, "it is necessary for the greater security that you should be bound." "Bound!" the Prince exclaimed, and now he turned white as death. "Bound! I! The Prince of Wales!" "Alas! sire," said the duke, "it is the King's orders. Yet, I pledge you my word as a peer of France, such orders are issued solely out of regard to your Highness's person, and to prevent you making any attempt on that person."