or a few minutes each
day, through the kindness of their jailer, who, without saying anything
to them, had arranged this surprise, which in all probability they did
not owe to his philosophy alone,--besides, we say, La Mole and he had
agreed on the course they were to pursue, which was to persist in
absolute denial; and they were persuaded that with a little skill the
affair would take a more favorable turn; the charges were no greater
against them than against the others. Henry and Marguerite had made no
attempt at flight; they could not therefore be compromised in an affair
in which the chief ring-leaders were free. Coconnas did not know that
Henry was in the prison, and the complaisance of the jailer told him
that above his head hovered a certain protection which he called the
_invisible bucklers_.

Up to then the examination had been confined to the intentions of the
King of Navarre, his plans of flight, and the part the two friends had
played in them. To all these questions Coconnas had constantly replied
in a way more than vague and much more than adroit; he was ready still
to reply in the same way, and had prepared in advance all his little
repartees, when he suddenly found the object of the examination was
altered. It turned upon one or more visits to Rene, one or more waxen
figures made at the instigation of La Mole.

Prepared as he was, Coconnas believed that the accusation lost much of
its intensity, since it was no longer a question of having betrayed a
king but of having made a figure of a queen; and this figure not more
than ten inches high at the most. He, therefore, replied brightly that
neither he nor his friend had played with a doll for some time, and
noticed with pleasure that several times his answers made the judges
smile.

It had not yet been said in verse: "I have laughed, therefore am I
disarmed," but it had been said a great deal in prose. And Coconnas
thought that he had partly disarmed his judges because they had smiled.

His examination over, he went back to his cell, singing so merrily that
La Mole, for whom he was making all the noise, drew from it the happiest
auguries.

La Mole was brought down, and like Coconnas saw with astonishment that
the accusation had abandoned its first ground and had entered a new
field. He was questioned as to his visits to Rene. He replied that he
had gone to the Florentine only once. Then, if he had not ordered a
waxen figure. He replied that Rene had s