“God forbid!” answered Philip; “what have you and the baker’s daughter to do with it?”

“Your Royal Highness banters me, and I am in despair!—­I humbly beseech you to give me two minutes’ private conversation.”

Philip followed the negro into a small boudoir dimly lighted up with a few candles.  The negro threw himself on a sofa, quite overcome, and groaned aloud.  Philip found some sandwiches and wine on the table, and helped himself with great relish.

“I wonder your Royal Highness can be so cool on hearing this cursed story.  If that rascally Salmoni was here who acted the conjurer, he might save us by some contrivance, for the fellow was a bunch of tricks.  As it is, he has slipped out of the scrape.”

“So much the better,” interrupted Philip, replenishing his glass; “since he has got out of the way, we can throw all the blame on his shoulders.”

“How can we do that?  The Duke, I tell you, knows that you, and I, and the Marshal’s wife, and the baker’s daughter, were all in the plot together, to take advantage of his superstition.  He knows that it was you that engaged Salmoni to play the conjurer; that it was I that instructed the baker’s daughter (with whom he is in love) how to inveigle him into the snare; that it was I that enacted the ghost, that knocked him down, and cudgelled him till he roared again.  If I had only not carried the joke too far, but I wished to cool his love a little for my sweetheart.  ’T was a devilish business.  I’ll take poison.”

“Rather swallow a glass of wine—­’t is delicious,” said Philip, taking another tart at the same time.  “For to tell you the truth, my friend, I think you are rather a white-livered sort of rogue for a colonel, to think of hanging, drowning, shooting, and poisoning yourself about such a ridiculous story as that.  One of these modes would be too much, but as to all the four—­nonsense.  I tell you that at this moment I don’t know what to make out of your tale.”

“Your Royal Highness, have pity on me, my brain is turned.  The Duke’s page, an old friend of mine, has told me this very moment, that the Marshal’s wife, inspired by the devil, went up to the Duke, and told him that the trick played on him at the baker’s house was planned by Prince Julian, who opposed his marriage with his sister; that the spirit he saw was myself, sent by the Princess to be a witness of his superstition; that your Highness was a witness of his descent into the pit after hidden gold, and of his promise to make the baker’s daughter his mistress, and also to make her one of the nobility immediately after his marriage with the Princess.  ’Do not hope to gain the Princess.  It is useless for you to try,’ were the last words of the Marshal’s wife to the Duke.”

“And a pretty story it is,” muttered Philip; “why, behavior like that would be a disgrace to the meanest of the people.  I declare there is no end to these deviltries.”