“’Tis true, my lord,” answered La Ramee, “that his pates are famous and his wine magnificent.”

“In any case,” said the duke, “his cellar and kitchen might easily excel those of Monsieur de Chavigny.”

“Well, my lord,” said La Ramee, falling into the trap, “what is there to prevent your trying them?  Besides, I have promised him your patronage.”

“You are right,” said the duke.  “If I am to remain here permanently, as Monsieur Mazarin has kindly given me to understand, I must provide myself with a diversion for my old age, I must turn gourmand.”

“My lord,” said La Ramee, “if you will take a bit of good advice, don’t put that off till you are old.”

“Good!” said the Duc de Beaufort to himself, “every man in order that he may lose his heart and soul, must receive from celestial bounty one of the seven capital sins, perhaps two; it seems that Master La Ramee’s is gluttony.  Let us then take advantage of it.”  Then, aloud: 

“Well, my dear La Ramee! the day after to-morrow is a holiday.”

“Yes, my lord —­ Pentecost.”

“Will you give me a lesson the day after to-morrow?”

“In what?”

“In gastronomy?”

“Willingly, my lord.”

“But tete-a-tete.  Send the guards to take their meal in the canteen of Monsieur de Chavigny; we’ll have a supper here under your direction.”

“Hum!” said La Ramee.

The proposal was seductive, but La Ramee was an old stager, acquainted with all the traps a prisoner was likely to set.  Monsieur de Beaufort had said that he had forty ways of getting out of prison.  Did this proposed breakfast cover some stratagem?  He reflected, but he remembered that he himself would have charge of the food and the wine and therefore that no powder could be mixed with the food, no drug with the wine.  As to getting him drunk, the duke couldn’t hope to do that, and he laughed at the mere thought of it.  Then an idea came to him which harmonized everything.

The duke had followed with anxiety La Ramee’s unspoken soliloquy, reading it from point to point upon his face.  But presently the exempt’s face suddenly brightened.

“Well,” he asked, “that will do, will it not?”

“Yes, my lord, on one condition.”

“What?”

“That Grimaud shall wait on us at table.”

Nothing could be more agreeable to the duke, however, he had presence of mind enough to exclaim: 

“To the devil with your Grimaud!  He will spoil the feast.”

“I will direct him to stand behind your chair, and since he doesn’t speak, your highness will neither see nor hear him and with a little effort can imagine him a hundred miles away.”

“Do you know, my friend, I find one thing very evident in all this, you distrust me.”

“My lord, the day after to-morrow is Pentecost.”

“Well, what is Pentecost to me?  Are you afraid that the Holy Spirit will come as a tongue of fire to open the doors of my prison?”