“Raving mad; his head becomes weaker. Sometimes he weeps bitterly, sometimes laughs boisterously, at other time he passes hours on the seashore, flinging stones in the water and when the flint makes ‘duck-and-drake’ five or six times, he appears as delighted as if he had gained another Marengo or Austerlitz. Now, you must agree that these are indubitable symptoms of insanity.”
“Or of wisdom, my dear baron—or of wisdom,” said Louis XVIII , laughing; “the greatest captains of antiquity amused themselves by casting pebbles into the ocean—see Plutarch’s life of Scipio Africanus.”
M. de Blacas pondered deeply between the confident monarch and the truthful minister. Villefort, who did not choose to reveal the whole secret, lest another should reap all the benefit of the disclosure, had yet communicated enough to cause him the greatest uneasiness.
“Well, well, Dandré,” said Louis XVIII , “Blacas is not yet convinced; let us proceed, therefore, to the usurper’s conversion.” The minister of police bowed.
“The usurper’s conversion!” murmured the duke, looking at the king and Dandré, who spoke alternately, like Virgil’s shepherds. “The usurper converted!”
“Decidedly, my dear duke.”
“In what way converted?”
“To good principles. Tell him all about it, baron.”
“Why, this is the way of it,” said the minister, with the gravest air in the world: > “Napoleon lately had a review, and as two or three of his old veterans expressed a desire to return to France, he