Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/81

Rh this peculiar favour was meant for me, so I turned round to see who it was had just received the honour. Jacobson understood and said

"No, no, it was you the King bowed to."

"I! impossible, he does not know me.

"That is just the reason why he singled you out. He knows all our faces by heart. He savv a strange face and said to himself 'that is my poet.'"

And the strangest part is it was true, and the next day the King told me so himself.

The King was on horse-back and wore an Admiral's uniform. A great gilt coach came next drawn by eight white horses, each led by a groom in livery. Each side of the coach, perched on the steps, a page could be recognised by his uniform of scarlet and gold. A woman of twenty five or twenty six, two children of from six to eight, were seated in the coach. They kept bowing to the people, the children thoughtlessly and heedlessly, their Mother only too full of thought and care perhaps. They were the Queen, the Prince of Orange and Prince Maurice.

No face at once more gracious or more melancholy was ever seen than the Queen's; she possesses all a woman's sweetness combined with a Princess's majesty. I had the honour of three interviews with her during the two days I spent at Amsterdam, and I have not forgotten one word she said to me. May her people be kind and faithful to her and may God never change her sadness into sorrow.

The procession passed on and vanished in the distance,—a strange sight in these days when Kings seem branded with the stigma of fate!

Alas! which is in the right, kings or peoples? This is the great enigma to which were sacrificed Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth; the Restoration of 1660 put the people in the wrong; the Revolution of 1848 has done the same for Kings. The Future must decide; but I will stake my money on the People.

The Show was over and I had nothing more to do at Amsterdam until eleven o'clock next day, so I begged my Hosts to excuse me for the interval, at the same time asking them for information as to the best means of reaching Monnikendam.

They seemed surprised. What strange caprice was this? What could I have to do at Monnikendam. I took good care not to tell them I was going there in search of a mermaid! I simply said I must go to Monnikendam. So they detailed Wittering's brother to bear me company.

Alexandre separated from me; he wanted to visit Broek. Biard followed my fortunes and announced that he would accompany me to Monnikendam. The fact is, I think, he was rather ashamed of himself; he had been to the North Cape and from that furthermost point of Europe had looked out upon two Oceans without discovering a single mermaid in either of them. His own star had failed him; he was counting upon mine.

I went down to the Harbour and started, or rather begged my guide to start, in quest of Père Olifus. The search was long in vain; his boat was there right enough, but her owner was not. At last he was unearthed in a sort of long-shore pot-house which he made his headquarters. He was told that a traveller was starting for Monnikendam and would go with nobody but him. The preference flattered his vanity; he tore himself away from his glass and came forward with a smile to meet me.

"This is Père Olifus," said the man who at Wittering's request had kindly undertaken to find him. I handed my scout a florin. Pèfere Olifus noticed this, and seeing the price I was ready to pay for him, grew more amiable than ever.

Meantime I was scrutinizing my man with an interest corresponding to his importance,—and Biard was sketching him. He was an old sea-dog, as I had been told, of sixty to sixty four, more like a seal than a man. White-haired and white beard both an inch long and as stiff as a mop; round china-blue and peering eyes; a mouth from ear to ear showing two pairs of yellow teeth above and below like a walrus's; a mahogany coloured complexion. He was dressed in wide trousers that had once been blue and a sort of hooded wraprascal, along the seam.s of which could still be distinguished traces of embroidery that showed the garment in question to have been originally Spanish or Neapolitan.

One of his cheeks was distended by an enormous quid of tobacco that looked like a swelling. From time to time he