“Brittany and Normandy still stand for the King. In these two provinces begins the regeneration of France: we call it the War of the Vendee. On that Isle of Jersey there you should almost hear the voice of de la Rochejaquelein and the marching cries of our loyal legions. If there be justice in God we shall conquer. But there will be joy no more for such as you or me, nor hope, nor any peace. We live only for those who come after. Our duty remains, all else is dead. You did well to go, and I do well to stay.
“By all these piteous relations you shall know the importance of the request I now set forth.
“My cousin by marriage of the House of Vaufontaine has lost all his sons. With the death of the Prince of Vaufontaine, there is in France no direct heir to the house, nor can it, by the law, revert to my house or my heirs. Now of late the Prince hath urged me to write to you--for he is here in seclusion with me--and to unfold to you what has hitherto been secret. Eleven years ago the only nephew of the Prince, after some naughty escapades, fled from the Court with Rullecour the adventurer, who invaded the Isle of Jersey. From that hour he has been lost to France. Some of his companions in arms returned after a number of years. All with one exception declared that he was killed in the battle at St. Heliers. One, however, maintains that he was still living and in the prison hospital when his comrades were set free.
“It is of him I write to you. He is--as you will perchance remember--the Comte de Tournay. He was then not more than seventeen years of age, slight of build, with brownish hair, dark grey eyes, and had over the right shoulder a scar from a sword thrust. It seemeth little possible that, if living, he should still remain in that Isle of Jersey. He may rather have returned to obscurity in France or have gone to England to be lost to name and remembrance --or even indeed beyond the seas.
“That you may perchance give me word of him is the object of my letter, written in no more hope than I live; and you can well guess how faint that is. One young nobleman preserved to France may yet be the great unit that will save her.
“Greet my poor countrymen yonder in the name of one who still waits at a desecrated altar; and for myself you must take me as I am, with the remembrance of what I was, even