The captive who was the source of so much alarm to thecardinal and whose means of escape disturbed the repose ofthe whole court, was wholly unconscious of the terror hecaused at the Palais Royal.

He had found himself so strictly guarded that he soonperceived the fruitlessness of any attempt at escape. Hisvengeance, therefore, consisted in coining curses on thehead of Mazarin; he even tried to make some verses on him,but soon gave up the attempt, for Monsieur de Beaufort hadnot only not received from Heaven the gift of versifying, hehad the greatest difficulty in expressing himself in prose.

The duke was the grandson of Henry VI. and Gabrielled'Estrees - as good-natured, as brave, as proud, and aboveall, as Gascon as his ancestor, but less elaboratelyeducated. After having been for some time after the death ofLouis XIII. the favorite, the confidant, the first man, inshort, at the court, he had been obliged to yield his placeto Mazarin and so became the second in influence and favor;and eventually, as he was stupid enough to be vexed at thischange of position, the queen had had him arrested and sentto Vincennes in charge of Guitant, who made his appearancein these pages in the beginning of this history and whom weshall see again. It is understood, of course, that when wesay "the queen," Mazarin is meant.

During the five years of this seclusion, which would haveimproved and matured the intellect of any other man, M. deBeaufort, had he not affected to brave the cardinal, despiseprinces, and walk alone without adherents or disciples,would either have regained his liberty or made partisans.But these considerations never occurred to the duke andevery day the cardinal received fresh accounts of him whichwere as unpleasant as possible to the minister.

After having failed in poetry, Monsieur de Beaufort trieddrawing. He drew portraits, with a piece of coal, of thecardinal; and as his talents did not enable him to produce avery good likeness, he wrote under the picture that theremight be little doubt regarding the original: "Portrait ofthe Illustrious Coxcomb, Mazarin." Monsieur de Chavigny, thegovernor of Vincennes, waited upon the duke to request thathe would amuse himself in some other way, or that at allevents, if he drew likenesses, he would not put mottoesunderneath them. The next day the prisoner's room was fullof pictures and mottoes. Monsieur de Beaufort, in commonwith many other prisoners, was bent upon doing things thatwere prohibited; and the only resource the governor had was,one day when the duke was playing at tennis, to efface allthese drawings, consisting chiefly of profiles. M. deBeaufort did not venture to draw the cardinal's fat face.

The duke thanked Monsieur de Chavigny for having, as hesaid, cleaned his drawing-paper for him; he then divided thewalls of his room into compartments and dedicated each ofthese compartments to some incident in Mazarin's life. Inone was depicted the "Illustrious Coxcomb" receiving ashower of blows from Cardinal Bentivoglio, whose servant hehad been; another, the "Illustrious Mazarin" acting the partof Ignatius Loyola in a tragedy of that name; a third, the"Illustrious Mazarin" stealing the portfolio of primeminister from Monsieur de Chavigny, who had expected to haveit; a fourth, the "Illustrious Coxcomb Mazarin" refusing togive Laporte, the young king's valet, clean sheets, andsaving that "it was quite enough for the king of France tohave clean sheets every three months."

The governor, of course, thought proper to threaten hisprisoner that if he did not give up drawing such pictures heshould be obliged to deprive him of all the means of amusinghimself in that manner. To this Monsieur de Beaufort repliedthat since every opportunity of distinguishing himself inarms was taken from him, he wished to make himselfcelebrated in the arts; since he could not be a Bayard, hewould become a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. Nevertheless,one day when Monsieur de Beaufort was walking in the meadowhis fire was put out, his charcoal all removed, taken away;and thus his means of drawing utterly destroyed.

The poor duke swore, fell into a rage, yelled, and declaredthat they wished to starve him to death as they had starvedthe Marechal Ornano and the Grand Prior of Vendome; but herefused to promise that he would not make any more drawingsand remained without any fire in the room all the winter.

His next act was to purchase a dog from one of his keepers.With this animal, which he called Pistache, he was oftenshut up for hours alone, superintending, as every onesupposed, its education. At last, when Pistache wassufficiently well trained, Monsieur de Beaufort invited thegovernor and officers of Vincennes to attend arepresentation which he was going to have in his apartment

The party assembled, the room was lighted with waxlights,and the prisoner, with a bit of plaster he had taken out ofthe wall of his room, had traced a long white line,representing a cord, on the floor. Pistache, on a signalfrom his master, placed himself on this line, raised himselfon his hind paws, and holding in his front paws a wand withwhich clothes used to be beaten, he began to dance upon theline with as many contortions as a rope-dancer. Having beenseveral times up and down it, he gave the wand back to hismaster and began without hesitation to perform the sameevolutions over again.

The intelligent creature was received with loud applause.

The first part of the entertainment being concluded Pistachewas desired to say what o'clock it was; he was shownMonsieur de Chavigny's watch; it was then half-past six; thedog raised and dropped his paw six times; the seventh he letit remain upraised. Nothing could be better done; a sun-dialcould not have shown the hour with greater precision.

Then the question was put to him who was the best jailer inall the prisons in France.

The dog performed three evolutions around the circle andlaid himself, with the deepest respect, at the feet ofMonsieur de Chavigny, who at first seemed inclined to likethe joke and laughed long and loud, but a frown succeeded,and he bit his lips with vexation.

Then the duke put to Pistache this difficult question, whowas the greatest thief in the world?

Pistache went again around the circle, but stopped at noone, and at last went to the door and began to scratch andbark.

"See, gentlemen," said M. de Beaufort, "this wonderfulanimal, not finding here what I ask for, seeks it out ofdoors; you shall, however, have his answer. Pistache, myfriend, come here. Is not the greatest thief in the world,Monsieur (the king's secretary) Le Camus, who came to Pariswith twenty francs in his pocket and who now possesses tenmillions?"

The dog shook his head.

"Then is it not," resumed the duke, "the SuperintendentEmery, who gave his son, when he was married, three hundredthousand francs and a house, compared to which the Tuileriesare a heap of ruins and the Louvre a paltry building?"

The dog again shook his head as if to say "no."

"Then," said the prisoner, "let's think who it can be. Canit be, can it possibly be, the `Illustrious Coxcomb, Mazarinde Piscina,' hey?"

Pistache made violent signs that it was, by raising andlowering his head eight or ten times successively.

"Gentlemen, you see," said the duke to those present, whodared not even smile, "that it is the `Illustrious Coxcomb'who is the greatest thief in the world; at least, accordingto Pistache."

"Let us go on to another of his exercises."

"Gentlemen!" - there was a profound silence in the roomwhen the duke again addressed them - "do you not rememberthat the Duc de Guise taught all the dogs in Paris to jumpfor Mademoiselle de Pons, whom he styled `the fairest of thefair?' Pistache is going to show you how superior he is toall other dogs. Monsieur de Chavigny, be so good as to lendme your cane."

Monsieur de Chavigny handed his cane to Monsieur deBeaufort. Monsieur de Beaufort placed it horizontally at theheight of one foot.

"Now, Pistache, my good dog, jump the height of this canefor Madame de Montbazon."

"But," interposed Monsieur de Chavigny, "it seems to me thatPistache is only doing what other dogs have done when theyjumped for Mademoiselle de Pons."

"Stop," said the duke, "Pistache, jump for the queen." Andhe raised his cane six inches higher.

The dog sprang, and in spite of the height jumped lightlyover it.

"And now," said the duke, raising it still six incheshigher, "jump for the king."

The dog obeyed and jumped quickly over the cane.

"Now, then," said the duke, and as he spoke, lowered thecane almost level with the ground; "Pistache, my friend,jump for the `Illustrious Coxcomb, Mazarin de Piscina.'"

The dog turned his back to the cane.

"What," asked the duke, "what do you mean?" and he gave himthe cane again, first making a semicircle from the head tothe tail of Pistache. "Jump then, Monsieur Pistache."

But Pistache, as at first, turned round on his legs andstood with his back to the cane.

Monsieur de Beaufort made the experiment a third time, butby this time Pistache's patience was exhausted; he threwhimself furiously upon the cane, wrested it from the handsof the prince and broke it with his teeth.

Monsieur de Beaufort took the pieces out of his mouth andpresented them with great formality to Monsieur de Chavigny,saying that for that evening the entertainment was ended,but in three months it should be repeated, when Pistachewould have learned a few new tricks.

Three days afterward Pistache was found dead - poisoned.

Then the duke said openly that his dog had been killed by adrug with which they meant to poison him; and one day afterdinner he went to bed, calling out that he had pains in hisstomach and that Mazarin had poisoned him.

This fresh impertinence reached the ears of the cardinal andalarmed him greatly. The donjon of Vincennes was consideredvery unhealthy and Madame de Rambouillet had said that theroom in which the Marechal Ornano and the Grand Prior deVendome had died was worth its weight in arsenic - a bonmot which had great success. So it was ordered the prisonerwas henceforth to eat nothing that had not previously beentasted, and La Ramee was in consequence placed near him astaster.

Every kind of revenge was practiced upon the duke by thegovernor in return for the insults of the innocent Pistache.De Chavigny, who, according to report, was a son ofRichelieu's, and had been a creature of the late cardinal's,understood tyranny. He took from the duke all the steelknives and silver forks and replaced them with silver knivesand wooden forks, pretending that as he had been informedthat the duke was to pass all his life at Vincennes, he wasafraid of his prisoner attempting suicide. A fortnightafterward the duke, going to the tennis court, found tworows of trees about the size of his little finger planted bythe roadside; he asked what they were for and was told thatthey were to shade him from the sun on some future day. Onemorning the gardener went to him and told him, as if toplease him, that he was going to plant a bed of asparagusfor his especial use. Now, since, as every one knows,asparagus takes four years in coming to perfection, thiscivility infuriated Monsieur de Beaufort.

At last his patience was exhausted. He assembled hiskeepers, and notwithstanding his well-known difficulty ofutterance, addressed them as follows:

"Gentlemen! will you permit a grandson of Henry IV. to beoverwhelmed with insults and ignominy?

"Odds fish! as my grandfather used to say, I once reigned inParis! do you know that? I had the king and Monsieur thewhole of one day in my care. The queen at that time liked meand called me the most honest man in the kingdom. Gentlemenand citizens, set me free; I shall go to the Louvre andstrangle Mazarin. You shall be my body-guard. I will makeyou all captains, with good pensions! Odds fish! On! marchforward!"

But eloquent as he might be, the eloquence of the grandsonof Henry IV. did not touch those hearts of stone; not oneman stirred, so Monsieur de Beaufort was obliged to besatisfied with calling them all kinds of rascals underneaththe sun.

Sometimes, when Monsieur de Chavigny paid him a visit, theduke used to ask him what he should think if he saw an armyof Parisians, all fully armed, appear at Vincennes todeliver him from prison.

"My lord," answered De Chavigny, with a low bow, "I have onthe ramparts twenty pieces of artillery and in my casematesthirty thousand guns. I should bombard the troops till notone grain of gunpowder was unexploded."

"Yes, but after you had fired off your thirty thousand gunsthey would take the donjon; the donjon being taken, I shouldbe obliged to let them hang you - at which I should be mostunhappy, certainly."

And in his turn the duke bowed low to Monsieur de Chavigny.

"For myself, on the other hand, my lord," returned thegovernor, "when the first rebel should pass the threshold ofmy postern doors I should be obliged to kill you with my ownhand, since you were confided peculiarly to my care and as Iam obliged to give you up, dead or alive."

And once more he bowed low before his highness.

These bitter-sweet pleasantries lasted ten minutes,sometimes longer, but always finished thus:

Monsieur de Chavigny, turning toward the door, used to callout: "Halloo! La Ramee!"

La Ramee came into the room.

"La Ramee, I recommend Monsieur le Duc to you, particularly;treat him as a man of his rank and family ought to betreated; that is, never leave him alone an instant."

La Ramee became, therefore, the duke's dinner guest bycompulsion - an eternal keeper, the shadow of his person;but La Ramee - gay, frank, convivial, fond of play, a greathand at tennis, had one defect in the duke's eyes - hisincorruptibility.

Now, although La Ramee appreciated, as of a certain value,the honor of being shut up with a prisoner of so greatimportance, still the pleasure of living in intimacy withthe grandson of Henry IV. hardly compensated for the loss ofthat which he had experienced in going from time to time tovisit his family.

One may be a jailer or a keeper and at the same time a goodfather and husband. La Ramee adored his wife and children,whom now he could only catch a glimpse of from the top ofthe wall, when in order to please him they used to walk onthe opposite side of the moat. 'Twas too brief an enjoyment,and La Ramee felt that the gayety of heart he had regardedas the cause of health (of which it was perhaps rather theresult) would not long survive such a mode of life.

He accepted, therefore, with delight, an offer made to himby his friend the steward of the Duc de Grammont, to givehim a substitute; he also spoke of it to Monsieur deChavigny, who promised that he would not oppose it in anyway - that is, if he approved of the person proposed.

We consider it useless to draw a physical or moral portraitof Grimaud; if, as we hope, our readers have not whollyforgotten the first part of this work, they must havepreserved a clear idea of that estimable individual, who iswholly unchanged, except that he is twenty years older, anadvance in life that has made him only more silent;although, since the change that had been working in himself,Athos had given Grimaud permission to speak.

But Grimaud had for twelve or fifteen years preservedhabitual silence, and a habit of fifteen or twenty years'duration becomes second nature.