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Twenty Years Later
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Twenty Years Later 87 at Prostate Health
attached to me?" asked the duke.
"To own the truth, I should be inconsolable if you were to
leave Vincennes."
"A droll way of showing your affliction." The duke meant to
say "affection."
"But, my lord," returned La Ramee, "what would you do if you
got out? Every folly you committed would embroil you with
the court and they would put you into the Bastile, instead
of Vincennes. Now, Monsieur de Chavigny is not amiable, I
allow, but Monsieur du Tremblay is considerably worse."
"Indeed!" exclaimed the duke, who from time to time looked
at the clock, the fingers of which seemed to move with
sickening slowness.
"But what can you expect from the brother of a capuchin
monk, brought up in the school of Cardinal Richelieu? Ah, my
lord, it is a great happiness that the queen, who always
wished you well, had a fancy to send you here, where theres
a promenade and a tennis court, good air, and a good table."
"In short," answered the duke, "if I comprehend you aright,
La Ramee, I am ungrateful for having ever thought of leaving
this place?"
"Oh! my lord duke, tis the height of ingratitude; but your
highness has never seriously thought of it?"
"Yes," returned the duke, "I must confess I sometimes think
of it."
"Still by one of your forty methods, your highness?"
"Yes, yes, indeed."
"My lord," said La Ramee, "now we are quite at our ease and
enjoying ourselves, pray tell me one of those forty ways
invented by your highness."
"Willingly," answered the duke, "give me the pie!"
"I am listening," said La Ramee, leaning back in his
armchair and raising his glass of Madeira to his lips, and
winking his eye that he might see the sun through the rich
liquid that he was about to taste.
The duke glanced at the clock. In ten minutes it would
strike seven.
Grimaud placed the pie before the duke, who took a knife
with a silver blade to raise the upper crust; but La Ramee,
who was afraid of any harm happening to this fine work of
art, passed his knife, which had an iron blade, to the duke.
"Thank you, La Ramee," said the prisoner.
"Well, my lord! this famous invention of yours?"
"Must I tell you," replied the duke, "on what I most reckon
and what I determine to try first?"
"Yes, thats the thing, my lord!" cried his custodian,
gaily.
"Well, I should hope, in the first instance, to have for
keeper an honest fellow like you."
"And you have me, my lord. Well?"
"Having, then, a keeper like La Ramee, I should try also to
have introduced to him by some friend or other a man who
would be devoted to me, who would assist me in my flight."
"Come, come," said La Ramee, "thats not a bad idea."
"Capital, isnt it? for instance, the former servingman of
some brave gentleman, an enemy himself to Mazarin, as every
gentleman ought to be."
"Hush! dont let us talk politics, my lord."
"Then my keeper would begin to trust this man and to depend
upon him, and I should have news from those without the
prison walls."
"Ah, yes! but how can the news be brought to you?"
"Nothing easier; in a game of tennis, for example."
"In a game of tennis?" asked La Ramee, giving more serious
attention to the dukes words.
"Yes; see, I send a ball into the moat; a man is there who
picks it up; the ball contains a letter. Instead of
returning the ball to me when I call for it from the top of
the wall, he throws me another; that other ball contains a
letter. Thus we have exchanged ideas and no one has seen us
do it."
"The devil it does! The devil it does!" said La Ramee,
scratching his head; "you are in the wrong to tell me that,
my lord. I shall have to watch the men who pick up balls."
The duke smiled.
"But," resumed La Ramee, "that is only a way of
corresponding."
"And that is a great deal, it seems to me."
"But not enough."
"Pardon me; for instance, I say to my friends, Be on a
certain day, on a certain hour, at the other side of the
moat with two horses."
"Well, what then?" La Ramee began to be uneasy; "unless the
horses have wings to mount the ramparts and come and fetch
you."
"Thats not needed. I have," replied the duke, "a way of
descending from the ramparts."
"What?"
"A rope ladder."
"Yes, but," answered La Ramee, trying to laugh, "a ladder of
ropes cant be sent around a ball, like a letter."
"No, but it may
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