But comfort?
What comfort was there, now that the king was dead and could never come to the rescue of his counterfeit?
In fact, the truth was worse than I conceived.

Had I known it all, I might well have yielded to despair.

For not by the chance, uncertain sight of a passer-by, not by mere rumor which might have been sturdily denied, not by the evidence of one only or of two, was the king's presence in the city known.

That day, by the witness of a crowd of people, by his own claim and his own voice, ay, and by the assent of the queen herself, Mr.Rassendyll was taken to be the king in Strelsau, while neither he nor Queen Flavia knew that the king was dead.

I must now relate the strange and perverse succession of events which forced them to employ a resource so dangerous and face a peril so immense.