predicted."

"And what was it?"

"That the day of Pentecost would not pass without your highness being
out of Vincennes."

"You believe in sorcerers, then, you fool?"

"I---I mind them no more than that----" and he snapped his fingers;
"but it is my Lord Giulio who cares about them; as an Italian he is
superstitious."

The duke shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, then," with well acted good-humor, "I allow Grimaud, but no one
else; you must manage it all. Order whatever you like for supper--the
only thing I specify is one of those pies; and tell the confectioner
that I will promise him my custom if he excels this time in his
pies--not only now, but when I leave my prison."

"Then you think you will some day leave it?" said La Ramee.

"The devil!" replied the prince; "surely, at the death of Mazarin. I
am fifteen years younger than he is. At Vincennes, 'tis true, one lives
faster----"

"My lord," replied La Ramee, "my lord----"

"Or dies sooner, for it comes to the same thing."

La Ramee was going out. He stopped, however, at the door for an instant.

"Whom does your highness wish me to send to you?"

"Any one, except Grimaud."

"The officer of the guard, then, with his chessboard?"

"Yes."

Five minutes afterward the officer entered and the duke seemed to be
immersed in the sublime combinations of chess.

A strange thing is the mind, and it is wonderful what revolutions may be
wrought in it by a sign, a word, a hope. The duke had been five years in
prison, and now to him, looking back upon them, those five years, which
had passed so slowly, seemed not so long a time as were the two days,
the forty-eight hours, which still parted him from the time fixed for
his escape. Besides, there was one thing that engaged his most anxious
thought--in what way was the escape to be effected? They had told him
to hope for it, but had not told him what was to be hidden in the
mysterious pate. And what friends awaited him without? He had friends,
then, after five years in prison? If that were so he was indeed a highly
favored prince. He forgot that besides his friends of his own sex, a
woman, strange to say, had remembered him. It is true that she had not,
perhaps, been scrupulously faithful to him, but she had remembered him;
that was something.

So the duke had more than enough to think about; accordingly he fared
at chess as he had fared at tennis; he made blunder upon blunder and the
officer with whom he played