“Hum!” said the cardinal, beginning to feel more comfortable. “You mean to say, then, my dear Monsieur la Ramee — — ”

“That unless Monsieur de Beaufort can contrive to metamorphose himself into a little bird, I will continue answerable for him.”

“Take care! you assert a great deal,” said Mazarin. “Monsieur de Beaufort told the guards who took him to Vincennes that he had often thought what he should do in case he were put into prison, and that he had found out forty ways of escaping.”

“My lord, if among these forty there had been one good way he would have been out long ago.”

“Come, come; not such a fool as I fancied!” thought Mazarin.