"Well as you appear to know him, madame," said Abbe Edgeworth, "and loyally as you urge him, your efforts are wasted." She next accused me-- "You hesitate on account of the Indians!" "If there were no Indians in America, I should do just as I am doing." "All men," the abbe noted, "hold in contempt a man who will not grasp power when he can." "Why should I grasp power? I have it in myself. I am using it." "Using it to ruin yourself!" she cried. "Monseigneur!" The abbe rose. We stood eye to eye. "I was at the side of the king your father upon the scaffold. My hand held to his lips the crucifix of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his death no word of bitterness escaped him. True son of St. Louis, he supremely loved France. Upon you he laid injunction to leave to God alone the punishment of regicides, and to devote your life to the welfare of all Frenchmen. Monseigneur! are you deaf to this call of sacred duty? The voice of your father from the scaffold, in this hour when the fortunes of your house are lowest, bids you take your rightful place and rid your people of the usurper who grinds France and Europe into the blood-stained earth!" I wheeled and walked across the floor from Abbe Edgeworth, and turned again and faced him. "Monsieur, you have put a dart through me. If anything in the universe could move me from my position, what you have said would do it. But my father's blood cries through me to-day--'Shall the son of Louis XVI be forced down the unwilling throats of his countrymen by foreign bayonets?--Russians--Germans--English!--Shall the dauphin of France be hoisted to place by the alien?'--My father would forbid it! . . . You appeal to my family love. I bear about with me everywhere the pictured faces of my family. The father whose name you invoke, is always close to my heart. That royal duchess, whom you are privileged to see daily, monsieur, and I--never--is so dear and sacred to me that I think of her with a prayer. . . . But my life is here. . . . Monsieur, in this new world, no man can say to me--'Come,' or 'Go.' I am as free as the Indian. But the pretender to the throne of France, the puppet of Russia, of England, of the enemies of my country,--a slave to policy and intrigue--a chained wanderer about Europe--O my God! to be such a pretender--gasping for air--for light--as I gasped in Ste. Pelagie!--O let me be a free man--a free man!" The old churchman whispered over and over-- "My royal son!" My arms dropped relaxed. There was another reason. I did not give it. I would not give it. We heard the spring wind following the river channel--and a far faint call that I knew so well--the triangular wild flock in the upper air, flying north. "Honk! honk!" It was the jubilant cry of freedom! "Madame," said Abbe Edgeworth, resting his head on his hands, "I have seen many stubborn Bourbons, but he is the most obstinate of them all. We do not make as much impression on him as that little padlocked book."