"On a given day a sick child who greatly resembled the dauphin was smuggled into the Tower in a basket of clean linen brought by Mère Clouet, laundress for the Temple. This child was so ill that there was no possibility of his recovery. He was speedily substituted for the dauphin, who was carried up to the great unused attic of the Temple. There he was kept for several weeks, unknown to the world and tended only by Jean Mettot. When the sick child at length passed away, the authorities proclaimed that the dauphin was dead and that there was no further need to guard the Tower. It was then that the _real_ dauphin was smuggled out of the Temple in a basket of soiled linen and taken to the home of the Clouets, where he remained for several days. He was finally removed by some of the members of the brotherhood in high authority, and was sent to a distant and obscure corner of France to be cared for and brought up, under an assumed name, by humble people. The brotherhood was then disbanded, being first sworn to secrecy by an inviolable oath never to reveal what had been done. "The boy, Jean Mettot, later became a soldier in Napoleon's army and rose to the rank of officer. He finally married little Yvonne Clouet, and, as you have doubtless surmised, this John Meadows whom you know is his descendant,--his grandson, in short. The original Jean Mettot, however, and my grandfather, the marquis, kept closely in touch with each other for a time, drawn together by their mutual love and loyalty to the little dauphin. It was Jean Mettot alone who, several years after the escape of the dauphin, was summoned by that young man to Havre, in order that the dauphin might bid farewell to his rescuer. The dauphin was sailing for America, never to return. He intended, he said, to live there incognito, in some obscure capacity, as he had no desire ever to return to France and certainly never wished to rule over that nation. "Jean Mettot later attempted to communicate the news of the dauphin's departure to my grandfather, but found that he had suddenly passed away and that his son had assumed the title. As Mettot was not certain whether the secret had been handed down to the son, he did not reveal his news. Many years later, when he was a middle-aged man, the notion took hold of him to go to America and see if he could discover any trace of the dauphin. He had nothing whatever to assist him, except the assumed name of the dauphin, 'Louis Charles Durant,' and the fact that the ship on which he had sailed had been bound for a New England port. I think it was Boston. With only these two points to aid him, he sailed for America to engage in his almost hopeless task.