"Then Theodore knew that his children were alive?" said I musing. "Yet he gave my father to understand that he had no children." "Mbe, but he was a great liar, that Theodore? Always when it profited, and sometimes for the pleasure of it." "Nevertheless, to disinherit his own son!" Marc'antonio's shoulders went up to his ears. "He knew well enough what comedy he was playing. Disinherit his own son? We Corsicans, he might be sure, would never permit that: and meanwhile your father's money bought him out of prison. Ajo, it is simple as milking the she-goat yonder!" "If you knew my father better, Marc'antonio, you would find it not altogether so simple as you suppose. King Theodore might have told my father that these children lived, and my father would yet have bought his freedom for their sake; yes, and helped him to the last shilling and the last drop of blood to restore them to the Queen their mother." "Verily, cavalier, I knew your father to be a madman," said Marc'antonio, gravely, after considering my words for awhile. "But such madness as you speak of, who could take into account?" "Eh, Marc'antonio? What acquaintance have you with my father, that you should call him mad?" "I remember him well, cavalier, and his long sojourning with my late master the Count Ugo at his palace of Casalabriva above the Taravo, and the love there was between him and my young mistress that is now the Queen Emilia. Lovers they were for all eyes to see but the old Count's. Mbe! we all gossiped of it, we servants and clansmen of the Colonne--even I, that kept the goats over Bicchivano, on the road leading up to the palace, and watched the two as they walked together, and was of an age to think of these things. A handsomer couple none could wish to see, and we watched them with good will; for the Englishman touched her hand with a kind of worship as a devout man touches his beads, and they told me that in his own country he owned great estates--greater even than the Count's. Indeed, cavalier, had your father thought less of love and more of ambition there is no saying but he might have reached out for the crown, and his love would have come to him afterwards. But, as the saying goes, while Peter stalked the mufro Paul stole the mountain: and again says the proverb, 'Bury not your treasure in another's orchard.' Along came this Theodore, and with a few lies took the crown and the jewel with it. So your father went away, and has come again after many years; and at the first I did not recognize him, for time has dealt heavily with us all. But afterwards, and before he spoke his name, I knew him--partly by his great stature, partly by his carriage, and partly, cavalier, by the likeness your youth bears to his as I remember it. So you have the tale." "And in the telling, Marc'antonio," said I, "it appears that you, who champion his children, bear Theodore's memory no good will."