Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas Chapter 16 Page 10

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.

“Escape! my lord — escape! Your eminence does not then know where Monsieur de Beaufort is?”

“Yes, I do, sir; in the donjon of Vincennes.”

“Yes, sir; in a room, the walls of which are seven feet thick, with grated windows, each bar as thick as my arm.”

“Sir,” replied Mazarin, “with perseverance one may penetrate through a wall; with a watch-spring one may saw through an iron bar.”

“Then my lord does not know that there are eight guards about him, four in his chamber, four in the antechamber, and that they never leave him.”