“There is one man for whom I can answer, if he will speak out.”

“That’s my concern; I will make him speak.”

“Ah, my lord, ’tis not easy to make people say what they don’t wish to let out.”

“Pooh! with patience one must succeed.  Well, this man.  Who is he?”

“The Comte de Rochefort.”

“The Comte de Rochefort!”

“Unfortunately he has disappeared these four or five years and I don’t know where he is.”

“I know, Guitant,” said Mazarin.

“Well, then, how is it that your eminence complained just now of want of information?”

“You think,” resumed Mazarin, “that Rochefort ——­ "

“He was Cardinal Richelieu’s creature, my lord.  I warn you, however, his services will cost you something.  The cardinal was lavish to his underlings.”

“Yes, yes, Guitant,” said Mazarin; “Richelieu was a great man, a very great man, but he had that defect.  Thanks, Guitant; I shall benefit by your advice this very evening.”

Here they separated and bidding adieu to Guitant in the court of the Palais Royal, Mazarin approached an officer who was walking up and down within that inclosure.

It was D’Artagnan, who was waiting for him.

“Come hither,” said Mazarin in his softest voice; “I have an order to give you.”

D’Artagnan bent low and following the cardinal up the secret staircase, soon found himself in the study whence they had first set out.

The cardinal seated himself before his bureau and taking a sheet of paper wrote some lines upon it, whilst D’Artagnan stood imperturbable, without showing either impatience or curiosity.  He was like a soldierly automaton, or rather, like a magnificent marionette.

The cardinal folded and sealed his letter.

“Monsieur d’Artagnan,” he said, “you are to take this dispatch to the Bastile and bring back here the person it concerns.  You must take a carriage and an escort, and guard the prisoner with the greatest care.”

D’Artagnan took the letter, touched his hat with his hand, turned round upon his heel like a drill-sergeant, and a moment afterward was heard, in his dry and monotonous tone, commanding “Four men and an escort, a carriage and a horse.”  Five minutes afterward the wheels of the carriage and the horses’ shoes were heard resounding on the pavement of the courtyard.

3

Dead Animosities.

D’Artagnan arrived at the Bastile just as it was striking half-past eight.  His visit was announced to the governor, who, on hearing that he came from the cardinal, went to meet him and received him at the top of the great flight of steps outside the door.  The governor of the Bastile was Monsieur du Tremblay, the brother of the famous Capuchin, Joseph, that fearful favorite of Richelieu’s, who went by the name of the Gray Cardinal.