the opinion of Europe, had proclaimed alliance with the new Government.
He felt himself privileged in being thus selfish; and he had made the
alliance that he might pursue, unchecked, the one remaining object of his
life.

This object had now grown from a habit into a passion. It was now his
one ambition to arrange a new succession excluding the Vaufontaines, a
detested branch of the Bercy family. There had been an ancient feud
between his family and the Vaufontaines, whose rights to the succession,
after his eldest son, were to this time paramount. For three years past
he had had a whole monastery of Benedictine monks at work to find some
collateral branch from which he might take a successor to Leopold John,
his imbecile heir--but to no purpose.

In more than a little the Duke was superstitious, and on the day when he
met Philip d'Avranche in the chamber of M. Dalbarade he had twice turned
back after starting to make the visit, so great was his dislike to pay
homage to the revolutionary Minister. He had nerved himself to the
distasteful duty, however, and had gone. When he saw the name of the
young English prisoner--his own name--staring him in the face, he had
had such a thrill as a miracle might have sent through the veins of a
doubting Christian.

Since that minute he, like Philip, had been in a kind of dream; on his
part, to find in the young man, if possible, an heir and successor; on
Philip's to make real exalted possibilities. There had slipped past two
months, wherein Philip had seen a new and brilliant avenue of life
opening out before him. Most like a dream indeed it seemed. He had been
shut out from the world, cut off from all connection with England and his
past, for M. Dalbarade made it a condition of release that he should send