Rudolf Rassendyll was in Strelsau. He had been seen
by somebody and taken for the king. 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. Yet, great and
perilous as they knew the risk to be even when they dared it, in
the light of what they did not know it was more fearful and more
fatal still.
CHAPTER X. THE KING IN STRELSAU
MR. RASSENDYLL reached Strelsau from Zenda without accident about
nine o'clock in the evening of the same day as that which
witnessed the tragedy of the hunting-lodge.
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