."

"According to your account, La Ramee, I was very ungrateful ever to
think of escaping."

"Exceedingly so," replied La Ramee; "but your highness never did think
seriously of it."

"Indeed did I, though!" said the duke; "and what is more, folly though
it may be, I sometimes think of it still."

"Still by one of your forty plans, Monseigneur?"

The duke nodded affirmatively.

"Monseigneur," resumed La Ramee, "since you have so far honoured me
with your confidence, I wish you would tell me one of the forty
methods of escape which your highness had invented."

"With pleasure," replied the duke. "Grimaud, give me the pasty."

"I am all attention," said La Ramee, leaning back in his chair, and
raising his glass so as to look at the setting sun through the liquid
amber which it contained. The duke glanced at the clock. Ten minutes
more and it would strike seven, the hour for which his escape was
concerted. Grimaud placed the pie before M. de Beaufort, who took his
silver-bladed knife--steel ones were not allowed him--to cut it; but
La Ramee, unwilling to see so magnificent a pasty mangled by a dull
knife, passed him his own, which was of steel.

"Well, Monseigneur," said he, "and this famous plan?"

"Do you wish me to tell you," said the duke, "the one on the success
of which I most reckoned, and which I intended to try the first?"

"By all means," said La Ramee.

"Well," said M. de Beaufort, who was busy in the dissection of the
pie, "in the first place I hoped to have for my guardian some honest
fellow like yourself, Monsieur La Ramee."

"Your hope was realized, Monseigneur. And then?"

"I said to myself," continued the duke, "if once I have about me a
good fellow like La Ramee, I will get a friend, whom he does not know
to be my friend, to recommend to him a man devoted to my interests,
and who will aid my escape."

"Good!" said La Ramee. "No bad idea."

"When I have accomplished this," said the duke, "if the man is
skilful, and manages to gain the confidence of my jailer, I shall have
no difficulty in keeping up a communication with my friends."

"Indeed!" said La Ramee; "how so?"

"Easily enough," replied M. de Beaufort; "in playing at ball, for
instance."

"In playing at ball!" repeated La Ramee, who was beginning to pay
great attention to the duke's words.

"Yes. I strike a ball into the moat; a man who is at hand, working in
his garden, picks it up. The ball contains a letter. Instead of
t