Mazarin made a grimace, as if he meant to say, “But he does not wear the cardinal’s cap;” then he added: 

“So, my friend, it’s your opinion that Monsieur de Beaufort will escape?”

“That’s my idea, my lord; and if your eminence were to offer to make me at this moment governor of the castle of Vincennes, I should refuse it.  After Whitsuntide it would be another thing.”

There is nothing so convincing as a firm conviction.  It has its own effect upon the most incredulous; and far from being incredulous, Mazarin was superstitious.  He went away thoughtful and anxious and returned to his own room, where he summoned Bernouin and desired him to fetch thither in the morning the special guard he had placed over Monsieur de Beaufort and to awaken him whenever he should arrive.

The guard had, in fact, touched the cardinal in the tenderest point.  During the whole five years in which the Duc de Beaufort had been in prison not a day had passed in which the cardinal had not felt a secret dread of his escape.  It was not possible, as he knew well, to confine for the whole of his life the grandson of Henry IV., especially when this young prince was scarcely thirty years of age.  But however and whensoever he did escape, what hatred he must cherish against him to whom he owed his long imprisonment; who had taken him, rich, brave, glorious, beloved by women, feared by men, to cut off his life’s best, happiest years; for it is not life, it is merely existence, in prison!  Meantime, Mazarin redoubled his surveillance over the duke.  But like the miser in the fable, he could not sleep for thinking of his treasure.  Often he awoke in the night, suddenly, dreaming that he had been robbed of Monsieur de Beaufort.  Then he inquired about him and had the vexation of hearing that the prisoner played, drank, sang, but that whilst playing, drinking, singing, he often stopped short to vow that Mazarin should pay dear for all the amusements he had forced him to enter into at Vincennes.

So much did this one idea haunt the cardinal even in his sleep, that when at seven in the morning Bernouin came to arouse him, his first words were:  “Well, what’s the matter?  Has Monsieur de Beaufort escaped from Vincennes?”

“I do not think so, my lord,” said Bernouin; “but you will hear about him, for La Ramee is here and awaits the commands of your eminence.”

“Tell him to come in,” said Mazarin, arranging his pillows, so that he might receive the visitor sitting up in bed.

The officer entered, a large fat man, with an open physiognomy.  His air of perfect serenity made Mazarin uneasy.

“Approach, sir,” said the cardinal.

The officer obeyed.

“Do you know what they are saying here?”

“No, your eminence.”

“Well, they say that Monsieur de Beaufort is going to escape from Vincennes, if he has not done so already.”

The officer’s face expressed complete stupefaction.  He opened at once his little eyes and his great mouth, to inhale better the joke his eminence deigned to address to him, and ended by a burst of laughter, so violent that his great limbs shook in hilarity as they would have done in an ague.