The page appeared again. January had allayed the sweet paternal ebullition at the news, since he had heretofore given up all his children for lost. He desired now the proof that Flamin was the (nominal) son of the Chamberlain. About the duel he gave himself not the least concern. The proof was easy for the upright soul to produce. The soul appealed directly to the mother, who had this very moment arrived from London, having come to save her son, and to the sister herself. The soul had again the antecedent proposition to prove that both had knowledge of the matter:--Matthieu appealed to the letter of the mother which he had some years before read to the blind lord with the borrowed voice of Clotilda, and to the sister's exclamation during the duel in Maienthal Park, "It is my brother,"--and finally he adduced one more domestic witness in the case, the after-summer, which would now soon appear, and would retouch the maternal mark of the apple, which Le Baut's son bore on his shoulder. Matthieu had too much veneration for his Prince and master to call the sovereign of the son the son's father. He now closed by saying, "He knew not for what reasons Lord Horion had hitherto concealed Flamin's extraction; but whatever they might have been, all excuses his Lordship had were also his own excuses for having himself kept silence so long,--and so much the more, as the proof of this descent must be more difficult for him than for his Lordship.--Only now, by the arrival of the mother, the _facility_ of the proof was made as great as the _necessity_ of it. All that he could do as a family friend of the Chamberlain had been to become Flamin's confidant in order to be his protector." Thereby the Prince was necessarily brought back to the subject of the duel, which he in the beginning, after a few hints, had let drop. It was his way of business to break off soon from an affair of importance to him, to talk quite as long about other things, then to bring that matter forward again, and so pack the important matter away under quite as big layers of unimportant matters, as the booksellers slip contraband books in sheets under white or other paper. Then, too, Flamin's innocence of the murder was now of more consequence to January; he therefore naturally inquired why he had exposed his friend as a victim even to the show of a duel.