LITMIR.BIZ

CHAPTER I

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THE PARSON EXPRESSES IRREPROACHABLE SENTIMENTS AT THE MAZARIN PALACE

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      "What mighty quarrels rise from trivial things!"

      So wrote Mr. Alexander Pope, whom Nicholas Wogan remembers as a bookish boy in the little Catholic colony of Windsor Forest. The line might serve as a motto for the story which Mr. Wogan (now a one-armed retired colonel of Dillon's Irish Brigade in French Service) is about to tell. The beginnings of our whole mischancy business were trivial in themselves, and in all appearance unrelated to the future. They were nothing more important than the purchase of a couple of small strong-boxes and the placing of Parson Kelly's patrimony in Mr. Law's company of the West. Both of these events happened upon the same day.

      It was early in February of the year 1719, and the streets of Paris were deep in snow. Wogan, then plotting for King James's cause, rode into Paris from St. Omer at ten o'clock of the forenoon, and just about the same hour Parson Kelly, plotting too in his way, drove through the Orleans gate.

      A few hours later the two men met in the Marais, or rather Nicholas Wogan saw the skirts of Kelly's coat vanishing into an ironmonger's shop, and ran in after him. Kelly was standing by the counter with a lady on either side of him, as was the dear man's wont; though their neighbourhood on this occasion was the merest accident, for the Parson knew neither of them.

      'Sure it's my little friend the lace merchant,' said Wogan, and clapped his hand pretty hard on the small of his friend's back, whom he had not seen for a twelvemonth and more. Kelly stumbled a trifle, maybe, and no doubt he coughed and spluttered. One of the ladies dropped her purse and shuddered into a corner.

      'Quelle bête sauvage!' murmured the second with one indignant eye upon Nicholas Wogan, and the other swimming with pity for Mr. Kelly.

      'Madame,' said Wogan, picking up the purse and restoring it with his most elegant bow, 'it was pure affection.'

      'No doubt,' said Kelly, as he rubbed his shoulder; 'but, Nick, did you never hear of the bear that smashed his master's skull in the endeavour to stroke off a fly that had settled on his nose? That was pure affection too.'

      He turned back to the counter, on which the shopman was setting out a number of small strong-boxes, and began to examine them.

      'Well, you must e'en blame yourself, George,' said Nick, 'for the mere sight of you brings the smell of the peat to my nostrils and lends vigour to my hand.'

      This he said with all sincerity, for the pair had been friends in county Kildare long before Kelly went to Dublin University, and took deacon's orders, and was kicked out of the pulpit for preaching Jacobitism in his homilies. As boys they had raced bare-legged over the heather, and spent many an afternoon in fighting over again that siege of Rathcoffey Castle which an earlier Nicholas Wogan had held so stoutly for King Charles. The recollection of those days always played upon Wogan's foolish heartstrings with a touch soft as a woman's fingers, and very likely it now set George Kelly's twanging to the same tune; for at Wogan's words he turned himself about with a face suddenly illumined.

      'Here, Nick, lay your hand there,' said he and stretched out his hand. 'You will be long in Paris?'

      'No more than a night. And you?'

      'Just the same time.'

      He turned again to the counter, and busied himself with his boxes in something of a hurry, as though he would avoid further questioning. Wogan blew a low whistle.

      Maybe we are on the same business, eh?' he asked. 'The King's business?'

      'Whisht, man,' whispered Kelly quickly, and he glanced about the shop. 'Have you no sense at all?'

      The shop was empty at the moment, and there was no reason that Wogan could see for his immoderate secrecy. But the Parson was much like the rest of the happy-go-lucky conspirators who were intriguing to dislodge the Elector from the English throne--cautious by fits and moods, and the more often when there was the less need. But let a scheme get ripe for completion, and sure they imagined it completed already, and at once there would be letters left about here, for all the world to read, and a wink and a sly word there, so that it was little short of a miracle when a plot was launched before it had been discovered by those it was launched against. Not that you are to attribute to Mr. Wogan any superior measure of reticence. On the contrary, it is very probable that it was precisely Mr. Wogan's tongue which George Kelly distrusted, and if so, small blame to him. At any rate, he pursed up his lips and stiffened his back. Consequence turned him into a ramrod, and with a voice pitched towards the shopman:

      'I am still in the muslin trade,' said he, meaning that he collected money for the Cause. 'I shall cross to England to-morrow.'

      'Indeed and will you now?' said Wogan, who was perhaps a little contraried by his friend's reserve. 'Then I'll ask you to explain what these pretty boxes have to do with the muslin trade?'

      'They are to carry my samples in,' replied Kelly readily enough; and then, as if to put Wogan's questions aside, 'Are you for England, too?'

      'No,' said Wogan, imitating Mr. Kelly's importance; 'I am going to visit my Aunt Anne at Cadiz; so make the most of that, my little friend.'

      Wogan was no great dab at the cyphers and the jargon of the plots, but he knew that the Duke of Ormond, being then in Spain, figured in the correspondence as my Aunt Anne. It was now Kelly's turn to whistle, and that he did, and then laughed besides.

      'I might have guessed,' said he, 'for there's a likely prospect of broken heads at all events, and to that magnet you were never better than a steel filing.'

      'Whisht, man,' exclaimed Wogan, frowning and wagging his head

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