"The preservation of those documents, thro all these years of vicissitudes is the knot which I cannot unravel. Whence come they? I conjecture they procede from Barras (with his mania for collections), and that he gave them to Josephine. She in turn placed them with Montmorin, who planned his escape and who was subsequently killed in a skirmish. Those papers constituted an infernal magazine which threatened to explode at any moment. Volpetti rested not in his search for them, but they were skilfully concealed. As a last resort, he insinuated into the life of the individual a woman, excellent hearted and who was persuaded that she rendered a veritable service by advising him to deliver the papers to Le Coq." "And did he?" inquired the King in graceful irony. "I wager that the woman attained her ends." "Yes, your Majesty, he delivered certain papers, but the most important ones he kept--the devil knows where. He preserves them to this day in a casket." "Next to woman, the gravest perils to man are documents," murmured the King in persistent irony. "Realizing the impossibility of recovering the papers from Le Coq, the individual subsided. He is of a pacific temperament, tending to inaction and retirement. He married and devoted himself to his trade of watch-making--" "'Tis a family proclivity," observed the King. "I was saying he is devoted to watch-making and the care of his several children, among whom there is a daughter, who as a contrast to her father's impassivity, is action and energy incarnate. It was his ill fortune to be indicted as an incendiary and counterfeiter and to serve sentence at hard labor in Silesia--" "Did this ill fortune come to him in consequence of the cautious policy of my astute friend and Minister, Lecazes? Let us have no figures of rhetoric here." "Your Majesty, when matters arrange themselves in favorable combinations, a wise man loses no time in hesitation. The sentence passed was so favorable to our cause, was so strong a card to reserve, should the individual carry his claims before a tribunal. Think of it! Counterfeiter, incendiary!--sufficient, I should think, to deter members of the nobility from advocating his cause, should they be inclined to do so. Should we complain if hams be rained into our mouths? Shall we bewail the great number of impostors and dupes who have appeared from all quarters, finally occasioning so much skepticism among the people that one more or less makes no difference to them?" Again the King smiled. "Come," said he, delighting to pierce the diplomatic artifices of his minister, "I agree that we have no reason to complain; above all when it appears that among the horde of spurious Dauphins there is one bearing marks not unknown to us. Let us talk as men who have learned to vanquish their conscience; surely we shall not display such bad taste as to become pedantic moralists." Lecazes smiled in his turn.