"It may have been a foolish whim of mine that I bring with me to this country the three portraits that are so dear to me, and especially foolish to leave the one unveiled. I had, however, my reason for that, but I did not contemplate that the public was to be admitted to my room, as it had to be during our--during Louis' serious accident. All this, however, is beside the point. I will begin by telling you that I am not, as you have so shrewdly suspected, this 'Monsieur de Vaubert' that I call myself here. Truly, 'de Vaubert' is a part of my name, but it is not all. In France I am known as the Marquis Philippe de Vaubert de Fenouil. It is a title that is ancient and honorable. It goes back to the time of Louis XIII--yes, and even before that. When our Louis discovered the 'F' on my handkerchief, he was entirely right in his surmises, and I was not very astute to leave it lying about. _N'est-ce-pas?_" He smiled deprecatingly at his three listeners, with a smile so genuine, so utterly friendly, that they found their dark suspicions melting away, even before his tale was well begun. "To go back to the portrait, however. Yes, it is a very beautiful copy of Madame Lebrun's original. It was executed many years ago by an exceedingly clever copyist, and I doubt if many would know it from the original. It is my dearest possession. I will tell you why. "My little friend, petite Hélène here, by her wonderful ingenuity and perception has deduced the conjecture that the ill-used dauphin, who should have been Louis XVII, did not die in the Temple Tower, as history has recorded it. There have, indeed, been many legends to that effect. But the truest one, the truth, was never known to the world. There are remaining to-day but two families who are in possession of the facts,--my own and that of our friends the Meadows, whose real name, as you perhaps know, is Mettot. All the rest of that wonderful brotherhood which helped to rescue him are dead and gone, and the secret is dead with them. "In order that you may fully understand, I will now give you a short account of the real story of the dauphin's rescue. As you know through your researches, after Simon the Cobbler was released from the care of the young king, the dauphin was placed in a small room and completely isolated from the world by bolts and bars. Not even his jailers saw him, only hearing him speak through an aperture in the door. It was the most inhuman treatment of a child that the world has known, and it is a thousand wonders that the boy survived. But he did. At the end of an awful six months, when Robespierre himself was sent to the guillotine and Barras came into power, the boy was removed from this horrible incarceration and brought to a large, clean room, where he was taken care of by two or three guardians chosen for their humanity and kindliness.