CHAPTER VIII. The Viscount Murk received very gravely M. Becelaer de Lawoestine’s assurance that Monseigneur the Duke of Orleans was at the moment, and had been for months past, in Paris. “_Enfin_,” said this gentleman, “if report is to be believed, it is the most timely place for him. At least he will not put himself at the head of the emigrants,” he added, with a husky little laugh. He was plump and prosperously healthy, like his wife. They seemed admirably suited to one another--a pigeon pair, indeed. And like a pigeon was the little fat man in his white Austrian uniform. He strutted, he preened himself, he cooed. His place should have been on a roof-ridge of his own happy courts. Ned had a melancholy desire to crumble some bread for him. “You are pale as a very ghost, monsieur,” said this same ruddy count condescendingly. “It is not to be wondered at. You have alighted upon us in stirring times; not to speak of the storm yesterday, that was enough to quell the stoutest courage. I would give up hunting a chimera, if I were you, and return to the profitable peace of my own so prudent island, without more ado--_sans plus de façons_.” “If you were I, monsieur,” said Ned. “But, being myself, I run the chimera to earth in Paris.” Monsieur le comte shrugged his shoulders. “I will wish you success, at least. This chimera hath as many tracks as a mole. But, first, you must get to Paris.” Ned had considered this side of the question lightly. He found, indeed, the conditions of travel curiously changed since he had last crossed the Netherlands border. Now the whole frontier, from Lille to Metz, swarmed with hostile demonstration. The Allies were in movement, Luckner and his ineffectives falling back before them. Amongst them all he hardly knew whom to claim for friends and whom for foes. But he was wrought to a pitch of recklessness, and Providence shows the favouritism of a heathen goddess towards reckless men. His grossly enlarging doubt of the _bonâ fides_ of the mission to which he had been committed; his terror of having been made in a moment accessory to a hideous crime, which he could neither morally condone nor effectually denounce; the feeling--sombre heir to these two--that he was losing his hold of that new sweet sense of responsibility towards life, the consciousness of which had been to him latterly like the talking in his ear of a witch of Atlas--a cicerone to the dear mysteries of the earth he had hitherto but half understood,--these emotions were a long-rowelled spur to prick him forward through difficult places. Once in Paris, there should be no more temporising. From the Duke of Orleans’s own lips he would learn whether or no he had been bidden on a fool’s errand.