"Who may not be in accord with our views, Your Majesty would say? But if you will permit, Madame, I believe I know quite a different man. Moreover, he has already made an impression on His Highness, during our brief stay at an hacienda in the Huasteca. Now he is here. I brought him to commend as a future loyal follower." "Pray, who is the paragon?" "A priest, Madame, a German priest, who perhaps would not refuse the Bishopric of Durango. The hope of that rich see would insure his devotion. His name is Fischer. He is a clerical, he is an imperialist, he is resourceful. Our Jacqueline will have much to do to outwit him. This corpulent padre, Madame, would wheedle the sulky pope himself into a good humor with us. If I might venture so far as to present him before----" "Oh, I suppose so," said Charlotte wearily. PART SECOND THE ROSE THAT WAS A THORN IN THE LAND OF ROSES "The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born." --Emerson. CHAPTER I MEAGRE SHANKS "... and should a man full of talk be justified?"--_Book of Job_. At the hotel in the City of Mexico where Driscoll stopped, the entrance was big enough for a stage coach to drive through. But as to height, it did not seem any too great for the attenuation of Mr. Daniel Boone, who therein had propped himself at his ease, delightfully suggesting a tropical gentleman lounging on a veranda under the live oaks. One shoulder was impinged on the casing of the archway, from which contact his spare frame drifted out and downward, to the supporting base of one boot sole. The other boot crossed it over, and the edge of the toe rested on the pavement of the Calle de los Plateros, familiarly so-called. Mr. Boone hailed from Boonville, but in Missouri, with Kentucky for ancestral State, such was not a strained coincidence by any means. An individual there of the name of Boone, and a bit of geography likewise distinguished, are bound to fall together occasionally. For instance, a flea's hop over the map, and Mr. Boone and Boonville both might have claimed the county of Boone. Under the circumstances, Daniel's Christian name was the most obviously Christian thing his parents could do, and followed (to precede thereafter) as a matter of course.