n.

Sometimes, when Monsieur de Chavigny paid him a visit, the duke used to
ask him what he should think if he saw an army of Parisians, all fully
armed, appear at Vincennes to deliver him from prison.

"My lord," answered De Chavigny, with a low bow, "I have on the ramparts
twenty pieces of artillery and in my casemates thirty thousand guns.
I should bombard the troops till not one grain of gunpowder was
unexploded."

"Yes, but after you had fired off your thirty thousand guns they would
take the donjon; the donjon being taken, I should be obliged to let them
hang you--at which I should be most unhappy, certainly."

And in his turn the duke bowed low to Monsieur de Chavigny.

"For myself, on the other hand, my lord," returned the governor, "when
the first rebel should pass the threshold of my postern doors I should
be obliged to kill you with my own hand, since you were confided
peculiarly to my care and as I am obliged to give you up, dead or
alive."

And once more he bowed low before his highness.

These bitter-sweet pleasantries lasted ten minutes, sometimes longer,
but always finished thus:

Monsieur de Chavigny, turning toward the door, used to call out:
"Halloo! La Ramee!"

La Ramee came into the room.

"La Ramee, I recommend Monsieur le Duc to you, particularly; treat him
as a man of his rank and family ought to be treated; that is, never
leave him alone an instant."

La Ramee became, therefore, the duke's dinner guest by compulsion--an
eternal keeper, the shadow of his person; but La Ramee--gay, frank,
convivial, fond of play, a great hand at tennis, had one defect in the
duke's eyes--his incorruptibility.

Now, although La Ramee appreciated, as of a certain value, the honor of
being shut up with a prisoner of so great importance, still the pleasure
of living in intimacy with the grandson of Henry IV. hardly compensated
for the loss of that which he had experienced in going from time to time
to visit his family.

One may be a jailer or a keeper and at the same time a good father and
husband. La Ramee adored his wife and children, whom now he could only
catch a glimpse of from the top of the wall, when in order to please him
they used to walk on the opposite side of the moat. 'Twas too brief an
enjoyment, and La Ramee felt that the gayety of heart he had regarded
as the cause of health (of which it was perhaps rather the result) would
not long survive such a mode of life.

He accepted, therefo