azarin, arranging his pillows, so that he
might receive the visitor sitting up in bed.

The officer entered, a large fat man, with an open physiognomy. His air
of perfect serenity made Mazarin uneasy.

"Approach, sir," said the cardinal.

The officer obeyed.

"Do you know what they are saying here?"

"No, your eminence."

"Well, they say that Monsieur de Beaufort is going to escape from
Vincennes, if he has not done so already."

The officer's face expressed complete stupefaction. He opened at once
his little eyes and his great mouth, to inhale better the joke his
eminence deigned to address to him, and ended by a burst of laughter, so
violent that his great limbs shook in hilarity as they would have done
in an ague.

"Escape! my lord--escape! Your eminence does not then know where
Monsieur de Beaufort is?"

"Yes, I do, sir; in the donjon of Vincennes."

"Yes, sir; in a room, the walls of which are seven feet thick, with
grated windows, each bar as thick as my arm."

"Sir," replied Mazarin, "with perseverance one may penetrate through a
wall; with a watch-spring one may saw through an iron bar."

"Then my lord does not know that there are eight guards about him, four
in his chamber, four in the antechamber, and that they never leave him."

"But he leaves his room, he plays at tennis at the Mall?"

"Sir, those amusements are allowed; but if your eminence wishes it, we
will discontinue the permission."

"No, no!" cried Mazarin, fearing that should his prisoner ever leave
his prison he would be the more exasperated against him if he thus
retrenched his amusement. He then asked with whom he played.

"My lord, either with the officers of the guard, with the other
prisoners, or with me."

"But does he not approach the walls while playing?"

"Your eminence doesn't know those walls; they are sixty feet high and I
doubt if Monsieur de Beaufort is sufficiently weary of life to risk his
neck by jumping off."

"Hum!" said the cardinal, beginning to feel more comfortable. "You mean
to say, then, my dear Monsieur la Ramee----"

"That unless Monsieur de Beaufort can contrive to metamorphose himself
into a little bird, I will continue answerable for him."

"Take care! you assert a great deal," said Mazarin. "Monsieur de
Beaufort told the guards who took him to Vincennes that he had often
thought what he should do in case he were put into prison, and that he
had found out forty ways of escaping."

"My lord,