The Duke looked disappointed, but emptied another bumper. He was rapidly arriving at the state Malletort desired, when a well-turned compliment would have induced him to sign away the crown of France.
“To-morrow then,” he grunted, with his hands on the Abbé’s shoulder. “The great Henry used to say—what used he to say? Something about waiting; you remember, Abbé. Basta! Reach me the Burgundy.”
“To-morrow, Highness,” answered Malletort, more and more respectfully, as his patron became less able to enforce respect. “At the hour agreed on, I will be at your orders with everything requisite. There is but one more detail, and though indispensable, I fear to press it with your Highness now, for it trenches on business, and your brain, like mine, must be somewhat heated with the Burgundy.”
Probably no other consideration on earth would have induced the Duke to look at a paper after supper, but this remark about the Burgundy touched him nearly.
He took pride in his convivial powers, and remembering that Henri Quatre was said to have drunk a glass of red wine before his infant lips had tasted mother’s milk, always vowed that he inherited from that ancestor a constitution with which the juice of the grape assimilated itself harmlessly as food.
“Burgundy, little Abbé!” he repeated, staring vacantly at Malletort, who had produced a small packet and an ink-horn from his pockets. “Burgundy, Beaune, brandy—these do but serve to clear the brains of a Bourbon! Give me the paper!”
“It is only your signature, Highness,” said Malletort, sitting completely round, so as to interpose his person between Madame de Parabére and the sheet under his hand. “I can fill it up afterwards, to save you further trouble.”
But a drunkard’s cunning is the last faculty that forsakes him. Though the paper danced and wavered beneath his gaze, he detected at once that it was a Lettre de cachet, formidable, henceforth, from the edict issued that day in Council.
Without troubling himself to inquire how the document came into Malletort’s possession, who had indeed free access to his bureau, he wagged his head gravely, exclaiming, with the good-humoured persistency of inebriety—
“No! no! little Abbé. A thousand times no! I fill in the names myself. Oh! I am Regent of France. I know what I am doing. Here, give me the pen.”