"
"Seeking them in Brussels?"
"At a venture, no doubt, cavalier. Put the case that you were
seeking two children, of whom you knew only that they were alive and
somewhere in Europe--like two fleas, as you might say, in a bundle of
straw--"
I looked at Marc'antonio and saw that he was lying, but politely
forbore to tell him so.
"Then Theodore knew that his children were alive?" said I musing.
"Yet he gave my father to understand that he had no children."
"Mbe, but he was a great liar, that Theodore? Always when it
profited, and sometimes for the pleasure of it."
"Nevertheless, to disinherit his own son!"
Marc'antonio's shoulders went up to his ears. "He knew well enough
what comedy he was playing. Disinherit his own son? We Corsicans,
he might be sure, would never permit that: and meanwhile your
father's money bought him out of prison. Ajo, it is simple as
milking the she-goat yonder!"
"If you knew my father better, Marc'antonio, you would find it not
altogether so simple as you suppose. King Theodore might have told
my father that these children lived, and my father would yet have
bought his freedom for their sake; yes, and helped him to the last
shilling and the last drop of blood to restore them to the Queen
their mother.
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