“No, my lord; but I have already told you what that damned magician 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 found him easy game.

But his successive defeats did service to the duke in one way —­ they killed time for him till eight o’clock in the evening; then would come night, and with night, sleep.  So, at least, the duke believed; but sleep is a capricious fairy, and it is precisely when one invokes her presence that she is most likely to keep him waiting.  The duke waited until midnight, turning on his mattress like St. Laurence on his gridiron.  Finally he slept.