"Yes; will you not be seated, Monsieur?" said the Baron kindly.
"No; I shall have finished in a moment. The Archduke gave those documents
to me, and with them a paper that will explain much in the life of that
unhappy gentleman. It contains a disclosure that might in certain
emergencies be of very great value. I beg of you, believe that he was not
a fool, and not a madman. He sought exile for reasons--for the reason
that his son Francis, who has been plotting the murder of the new
Emperor-king, _is not his son_!"
"What!" roared the Baron.
"It is as I have said. The faithlessness of his wife, and not madness,
drove him into exile. He intrusted that paper to me and swore me to carry
it to Vienna if Francis ever got too near the throne. It is certified by
half a dozen officials authorized to administer oaths in Canada, though
they, of course, never knew the contents of the paper to which they swore
him. He even carried it to New York and swore to it there before the
consul-general of Austria-Hungary in that city. There was a certain grim
humor in him; he said he wished to have the affidavit bear the seal of
his own country, and the consul-general assumed that it was a document of
mere commercial significance.
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