The old clergyman is, no
doubt, dead, but I should imagine that they would keep their registers."
Then he explained how he had travelled about the world with the two sets
of certificates, and had made the second public when his object had been
to convert Augustus into his eldest son. Many people then had been found
who had remembered something of the marriage at Nice, and remembered to
have remembered something at the time of having been in possession of
some secret as to the lady. But Rummelsburg had been kept quite in the
dark. Now it was necessary that a strong light should be thrown on the
absolute legality of the Rummelsburg marriage.
He declared that he had more than once made up his mind to destroy those
Rummelsburg documents, but had always been deterred by the reflection
that, when they were once gone, they could not be brought back again. "I
had always intended," he had said, "to burn the papers the last thing
before my death. But as I learned Augustus's character, I made quite
certain by causing them to be sealed up in a parcel addressed to him, so
that if I had died by accident they might have fallen into proper hands.
But I see now the wickedness of my project, and, therefore, I give them
over to Mr.
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