When a Cobbler Ruled the KingSeaman, Augusta Huiell
General
When a Cobbler Ruled the King
Seaman, Augusta Huiell
Louis XVII, of France, 1785-1795 -- Fiction
When the basket was filled, the two municipals carried it upstairs,
telling the sentries who challenged them that they were going to place
in the lumber room all the old truck that Laurent had left behind him,
in order to clear the premises for Lasne. The sentries, after a hasty
examination, passed them on without trouble. The attic of the Tower was
a vast space more than half filled with every manner of cast-off
articles that could have accumulated in a century past. Here they
removed the rubbish from the basket, and lifted out the boy. Approaching
the wooden partition they knocked softly, in the manner of the
Brotherhood.
"All right!" whispered a familiar voice from behind, and on removing a
board the curly head of Jean appeared.
"Hand him in!" he said. With incredible difficulty they managed to
squeeze the unconscious child through the small aperture. Behind the
partition was a tiny space not more than six or seven feet in any
direction. Within this space was a mattress on the floor, and nothing
else. Jean laid the boy on the mattress, covered him, and called once
more, "All right!" The two men drew the board into place, and no one
would have suspected either that there was any space behind it, or what
that space contained. Then they left the garret room, rejoicing in the
success of the second great step, and Jean was left alone with his
charge.
All night he sat by the bed watching. But morning came and no change had
occurred. The drug still held the boy in its deadening grip. Jean ate
his breakfast of half a loaf of bread, and washed it down with a pitcher
of water. Then he continued his watch. About noon the little king came
to himself, but so deathly ill was he from the effects of the opium,
that he noticed neither his changed surroundings nor his companion for
many hours. Meanwhile Jean nursed him tenderly, and forced him to
swallow a healing draught that had been left for the purpose by
Saintanac. Toward night Louis Charles recovered himself sufficiently to
be conscious of some radical change in his surroundings.
"Why is it so dark?" he demanded. "And who are you?" Then Jean put his
arms around the boy, and whispered the whole story in his ear.
"I am Jean," he ended, "who has loved you ever since I first saw you in
your little garden at the Tuileries! Will you not trust me?" For a time
it seemed as if the child could hardly comprehend it all. The news was
so sudden, so confusing! It was too wonderful! It was beyond belief that
he should be free at last, and that his long-lost friend should be one
of the chief actors in that scheme of release! But something else
troubled him.
"What of my mother and sister and aunt?" he inquired. "Will they also be
released with me? I do not wish to go if they remain!" Jean was silent a
moment. What should he reply? But the time was not yet ripe to reveal
all the truth to this loving child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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