At the sight of this agitation Louis XVIII. pushed from himviolently the table at which he was sitting.

"What ails you, baron?" he exclaimed. "You appear quiteaghast. Has your uneasiness anything to do with what M. deBlacas has told me, and M. de Villefort has just confirmed?"M. de Blacas moved suddenly towards the baron, but thefright of the courtier pleaded for the forbearance of thestatesman; and besides, as matters were, it was much more tohis advantage that the prefect of police should triumph overhim than that he should humiliate the prefect.

"Sire" - stammered the baron.

"Well, what is it?" asked Louis XVIII. The minister ofpolice, giving way to an impulse of despair, was about tothrow himself at the feet of Louis XVIII., who retreated astep and frowned.

"Will you speak?" he said.

"Oh, sire, what a dreadful misfortune! I am, indeed, to bepitied. I can never forgive myself!"

"Monsieur," said Louis XVIII., "I command you to speak."

"Well, sire, the usurper left Elba on the 26th February, andlanded on the 1st of March."

"And where? In Italy?" asked the king eagerly.

"In France, sire, - at a small port, near Antibes, in theGulf of Juan."

"The usurper landed in France, near Antibes, in the Gulf ofJuan, two hundred and fifty leagues from Paris, on the 1stof March, and you only acquired this information to-day, the4th of March! Well, sir, what you tell me is impossible. Youmust have received a false report, or you have gone mad."

"Alas, sire, it is but too true!" Louis made a gesture ofindescribable anger and alarm, and then drew himself up asif this sudden blow had struck him at the same moment inheart and countenance.

"In France!" he cried, "the usurper in France! Then they didnot watch over this man. Who knows? they were, perhaps, inleague with him."

"Oh, sire," exclaimed the Duc de Blacas, "M. Dandre is not aman to be accused of treason! Sire, we have all been blind,and the minister of police has shared the general blindness,that is all."

"But" - said Villefort, and then suddenly checking himself,he was silent; then he continued, "Your pardon, sire," hesaid, bowing, "my zeal carried me away. Will your majestydeign to excuse me?"

"Speak, sir, speak boldly," replied Louis. "You aloneforewarned us of the evil; now try and aid us with theremedy."

"Sire," said Villefort, "the usurper is detested in thesouth; and it seems to me that if he ventured into thesouth, it would be easy to raise Languedoc and Provenceagainst him."

"Yes, assuredly," replied the minister; "but he is advancingby Gap and Sisteron."

"Advancing - he is advancing!" said Louis XVIII. "Is hethen advancing on Paris?" The minister of police maintaineda silence which was equivalent to a complete avowal.

"And Dauphine, sir?" inquired the king, of Villefort. "Doyou think it possible to rouse that as well as Provence?"

"Sire, I am sorry to tell your majesty a cruel fact; but thefeeling in Dauphine is quite the reverse of that in Provenceor Languedoc. The mountaineers are Bonapartists, sire."

"Then," murmured Louis, "he was well informed. And how manymen had he with him?"

"I do not know, sire," answered the minister of police.

"What, you do not know! Have you neglected to obtaininformation on that point? Of course it is of noconsequence," he added, with a withering smile.

"Sire, it was impossible to learn; the despatch simplystated the fact of the landing and the route taken by theusurper."

"And how did this despatch reach you?" inquired the king.The minister bowed his head, and while a deep coloroverspread his cheeks, he stammered out, -

"By the telegraph, sire." - Louis XVIII. advanced a step,and folded his arms over his chest as Napoleon would havedone.

"So then," he exclaimed, turning pale with anger, "sevenconjoined and allied armies overthrew that man. A miracle ofheaven replaced me on the throne of my fathers afterfive-and-twenty years of exile. I have, during thosefive-and-twenty years, spared no pains to understand thepeople of France and the interests which were confided tome; and now, when I see the fruition of my wishes almostwithin reach, the power I hold in my hands bursts, andshatters me to atoms!"

"Sire, it is fatality!" murmured the minister, feeling thatthe pressure of circumstances, however light a thing todestiny, was too much for any human strength to endure.

"What our enemies say of us is then true. We have learntnothing, forgotten nothing! If I were betrayed as he was, Iwould console myself; but to be in the midst of personselevated by myself to places of honor, who ought to watchover me more carefully than over themselves, - for myfortune is theirs - before me they were nothing - after methey will be nothing, and perish miserably from incapacity- ineptitude! Oh, yes, sir, you are right - it isfatality!"

The minister quailed before this outburst of sarcasm. M. deBlacas wiped the moisture from his brow. Villefort smiledwithin himself, for he felt his increased importance.

"To fall," continued King Louis, who at the first glance hadsounded the abyss on which the monarchy hung suspended, - "to fall, and learn of that fall by telegraph! Oh, I wouldrather mount the scaffold of my brother, Louis XVI., thanthus descend the staircase at the Tuileries driven away byridicule. Ridicule, sir - why, you know not its power inFrance, and yet you ought to know it!"

"Sire, sire," murmured the minister, "for pity's" -

"Approach, M. de Villefort," resumed the king, addressingthe young man, who, motionless and breathless, was listeningto a conversation on which depended the destiny of akingdom. "Approach, and tell monsieur that it is possible toknow beforehand all that he has not known."

"Sire, it was really impossible to learn secrets which thatman concealed from all the world."

"Really impossible! Yes - that is a great word, sir.Unfortunately, there are great words, as there are greatmen; I have measured them. Really impossible for a ministerwho has an office, agents, spies, and fifteen hundredthousand francs for secret service money, to know what isgoing on at sixty leagues from the coast of France! Well,then, see, here is a gentleman who had none of theseresources at his disposal - a gentleman, only a simplemagistrate, who learned more than you with all your police,and who would have saved my crown, if, like you, he had thepower of directing a telegraph." The look of the minister ofpolice was turned with concentrated spite on Villefort, whobent his head in modest triumph.

"I do not mean that for you, Blacas," continued LouisXVIII.; "for if you have discovered nothing, at least youhave had the good sense to persevere in your suspicions. Anyother than yourself would have considered the disclosure ofM. de Villefort insignificant, or else dictated by venalambition," These words were an allusion to the sentimentswhich the minister of police had uttered with so muchconfidence an hour before.

Villefort understood the king's intent. Any other personwould, perhaps, have been overcome by such an intoxicatingdraught of praise; but he feared to make for himself amortal enemy of the police minister, although he saw thatDandre was irrevocably lost. In fact, the minister, who, inthe plenitude of his power, had been unable to unearthNapoleon's secret, might in despair at his own downfallinterrogate Dantes and so lay bare the motives ofVillefort's plot. Realizing this, Villefort came to therescue of the crest-fallen minister, instead of aiding tocrush him.

"Sire," said Villefort, "the suddenness of this event mustprove to your majesty that the issue is in the hands ofProvidence; what your majesty is pleased to attribute to meas profound perspicacity is simply owing to chance, and Ihave profited by that chance, like a good and devotedservant - that's all. Do not attribute to me more than Ideserve, sire, that your majesty may never have occasion torecall the first opinion you have been pleased to form ofme." The minister of police thanked the young man by aneloquent look, and Villefort understood that he hadsucceeded in his design; that is to say, that withoutforfeiting the gratitude of the king, he had made a friendof one on whom, in case of necessity, he might rely.

"'Tis well," resumed the king. "And now, gentlemen," hecontinued, turning towards M. de Blacas and the minister ofpolice, "I have no further occasion for you, and you mayretire; what now remains to do is in the department of theminister of war."

"Fortunately, sire," said M. de Blacas, "we can rely on thearmy; your majesty knows how every report confirms theirloyalty and attachment."

"Do not mention reports, duke, to me, for I know now whatconfidence to place in them. Yet, speaking of reports,baron, what have you learned with regard to the affair inthe Rue Saint-Jacques?"

"The affair in the Rue Saint-Jacques!" exclaimed Villefort,unable to repress an exclamation. Then, suddenly pausing, headded, "Your pardon, sire, but my devotion to your majestyhas made me forget, not the respect I have, for that is toodeeply engraved in my heart, but the rules of etiquette."

"Go on, go on, sir," replied the king; "you have to-dayearned the right to make inquiries here."

"Sire," interposed the minister of police, "I came a momentago to give your majesty fresh information which I hadobtained on this head, when your majesty's attention wasattracted by the terrible event that has occurred in thegulf, and now these facts will cease to interest yourmajesty."

"On the contrary, sir, - on the contrary," said LouisXVIII., "this affair seems to me to have a decidedconnection with that which occupies our attention, and thedeath of General Quesnel will, perhaps, put us on the directtrack of a great internal conspiracy." At the name ofGeneral Quesnel, Villefort trembled.

"Everything points to the conclusion, sire," said theminister of police, "that death was not the result ofsuicide, as we first believed, but of assassination. GeneralQuesnel, it appears, had just left a Bonapartist club whenhe disappeared. An unknown person had been with him thatmorning, and made an appointment with him in the RueSaint-Jacques; unfortunately, the general's valet, who wasdressing his hair at the moment when the stranger entered,heard the street mentioned, but did not catch the number."As the police minister related this to the king, Villefort,who looked as if his very life hung on the speaker's lips,turned alternately red and pale. The king looked towardshim.

"Do you not think with me, M. de Villefort, that GeneralQuesnel, whom they believed attached to the usurper, but whowas really entirely devoted to me, has perished the victimof a Bonapartist ambush?"

"It is probable, sire," replied Villefort. "But is this allthat is known?"

"They are on the track of the man who appointed the meetingwith him."

"On his track?" said Villefort.

"Yes, the servant has given his description. He is a man offrom fifty to fifty-two years of age, dark, with black eyescovered with shaggy eyebrows, and a thick mustache. He wasdressed in a blue frock-coat, buttoned up to the chin, andwore at his button-hole the rosette of an officer of theLegion of Honor. Yesterday a person exactly correspondingwith this description was followed, but he was lost sight ofat the corner of the Rue de la Jussienne and the RueCoq-Heron." Villefort leaned on the back of an arm-chair,for as the minister of police went on speaking he felt hislegs bend under him; but when he learned that the unknownhad escaped the vigilance of the agent who followed him, hebreathed again.

"Continue to seek for this man, sir," said the king to theminister of police; "for if, as I am all but convinced,General Quesnel, who would have been so useful to us at thismoment, has been murdered, his assassins, Bonapartists ornot, shall be cruelly punished." It required all Villefort'scoolness not to betray the terror with which thisdeclaration of the king inspired him.

"How strange," continued the king, with some asperity; "thepolice think that they have disposed of the whole matterwhen they say, `A murder has been committed,' and especiallyso when they can add, `And we are on the track of the guiltypersons.'"

"Sire, your majesty will, I trust, be amply satisfied onthis point at least."

"We shall see. I will no longer detain you, M. de Villefort,for you must be fatigued after so long a journey; go andrest. Of course you stopped at your father's?" A feeling offaintness came over Villefort.

"No, sire," he replied, "I alighted at the Hotel de Madrid,in the Rue de Tournon."

"But you have seen him?"

"Sire, I went straight to the Duc de Blacas."

"But you will see him, then?"

"I think not, sire."

"Ah, I forgot," said Louis, smiling in a manner which provedthat all these questions were not made without a motive; "Iforgot you and M. Noirtier are not on the best termspossible, and that is another sacrifice made to the royalcause, and for which you should be recompensed."

"Sire, the kindness your majesty deigns to evince towards meis a recompense which so far surpasses my utmost ambitionthat I have nothing more to ask for."

"Never mind, sir, we will not forget you; make your mindeasy. In the meanwhile" (the king here detached the cross ofthe Legion of Honor which he usually wore over his bluecoat, near the cross of St. Louis, above the order ofNotre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel and St. Lazare, and gave it toVillefort) - "in the meanwhile take this cross."

"Sire," said Villefort, "your majesty mistakes; this is anofficer's cross."

"Ma foi," said Louis XVIII., "take it, such as it is, for Ihave not the time to procure you another. Blacas, let it beyour care to see that the brevet is made out and sent to M.de Villefort." Villefort's eyes were filled with tears ofjoy and pride; he took the cross and kissed it.

"And now," he said, "may I inquire what are the orders withwhich your majesty deigns to honor me?"

"Take what rest you require, and remember that if you arenot able to serve me here in Paris, you may be of thegreatest service to me at Marseilles."

"Sire," replied Villefort, bowing, "in an hour I shall havequitted Paris."

"Go, sir," said the king; "and should I forget you (kings'memories are short), do not be afraid to bring yourself tomy recollection. Baron, send for the minister of war.Blacas, remain."

"Ah, sir," said the minister of police to Villefort, as theyleft the Tuileries, "you entered by luck's door - yourfortune is made."

"Will it be long first?" muttered Villefort, saluting theminister, whose career was ended, and looking about him fora hackney-coach. One passed at the moment, which he hailed;he gave his address to the driver, and springing in, threwhimself on the seat, and gave loose to dreams of ambition.

Ten minutes afterwards Villefort reached his hotel, orderedhorses to be ready in two hours, and asked to have hisbreakfast brought to him. He was about to begin his repastwhen the sound of the bell rang sharp and loud. The valetopened the door, and Villefort heard some one speak hisname.

"Who could know that I was here already?" said the youngman. The valet entered.

"Well," said Villefort, "what is it? - Who rang? - Whoasked for me?"

"A stranger who will not send in his name."

"A stranger who will not send in his name! What can he wantwith me?"

"He wishes to speak to you."

"To me?"

"Yes."

"Did he mention my name?"

"Yes."

"What sort of person is he?"

"Why, sir, a man of about fifty."

"Short or tall?"

"About your own height, sir."

"Dark or fair?"

"Dark, - very dark; with black eyes, black hair, blackeyebrows."

"And how dressed?" asked Villefort quickly.

"In a blue frock-coat, buttoned up close, decorated with theLegion of Honor."

"It is he!" said Villefort, turning pale.

"Eh, pardieu," said the individual whose description we havetwice given, entering the door, "what a great deal ofceremony! Is it the custom in Marseilles for sons to keeptheir fathers waiting in their anterooms?"

"Father!" cried Villefort, "then I was not deceived; I feltsure it must be you."

"Well, then, if you felt so sure," replied the new-comer,putting his cane in a corner and his hat on a chair, "allowme to say, my dear Gerard, that it was not very filial ofyou to keep me waiting at the door."

"Leave us, Germain," said Villefort. The servant quitted theapartment with evident signs of astonishment.