“Good God! what would you have, monsieur?” cried Maison-Rouge. “Suppose there were no bars at all, still to escape the prisoner has a drop of ninety feet into a court-yard full of sentries, with a wall forty feet high to pass before he is free. A man would need wings to escape from here, monsieur.”
“I am beginning to think so myself,” muttered the regent. And then, turning sharply, “So you have been here all evening, Monsieur—I forget your name?”
“Jean de Brancas,” I said, bowing.
“So you have been here all evening, have you, M. de Brancas?”
“It seems to me a useless question,” I answered. “Monsieur forgets that I have been in the Bastille only since yesterday afternoon.”
“What then?”
“To consider monsieur’s question seriously would mean that he deemed it possible for a man, in the short space of six or eight hours, not only to force his way out of this formidable prison, but to force his way in again, and to leave no trace of his passage in either direction.”
“You are right,” and the regent bit his lips. “Come, Maison-Rouge,” he added, “let us go. Your prisoners are doubtless anxious to resume their slumber,” and he smiled into my eyes and turned away.
They left the cell, and I heard their footsteps die away down the corridor. A moment later Richelieu signalled me.
“They discovered nothing?” he asked, as I answered the signal.