"I have, your Highness," replied the boy, "and have found means to give him the letter?"
"What!" exclaimed the Duke, "outwitted Villequier, and Pisani, and all! The wit of a page against that of a politician for a thousand crowns!"
"I dressed myself as a girl, your Highness," replied the boy, "and got into the convent, and then through a gate into what is called the rector's court, where Doctor Botholph and the Curé live, and where men are admitted, and women not shut out when they like to go in; and I got talking to the old verger of the church by the side, and he called me a pretty little fool, and said he dared to say I would soon be among the penitents within there; and with that I got him to tell me every thing, and the whole story of the young Count being brought there at night, and shut up in what are called the rector's apartments."
As he spoke, one or two of the higher class of those whom the Duke had selected from the crowd below, and who felt themselves privileged to present themselves in his private apartments, entered the hall, and instantly caught his eye.
"I cannot speak with you more at present, Ignati," he said, "nor, perhaps, during the whole day, for there is business of life and death before me; but come to me while I am rising to-morrow, and only tell me in the mean time where our poor Logères is, for I know not what convent you mean."
"He is in the rector's court," replied the boy, "close by the convent of the Black Penitents, in the Rue St. Denis."
"By my faith!" exclaimed the Duke in no slight surprise, "I have been there this very day myself, and there the Queen-mother has made her abode for the last ten days. She must be deceiving me; and yet, perhaps, the mighty matters that occupied her mind when I saw her might have made her forget all other things. However, Logères shall not be long so fettered. Come to me to-morrow, Ignati; come to me to-morrow, as I am rising; and in the mean time, if you can find some means of giving the Count intimation that he is not forgotten, it were all the better."
"I will try, my Lord," replied the boy. And the Duke hurried on to welcome his new guests, making them sit down at table with him, and covering them with every sort of honour and distinction.
[CHAP. XIII.]
In our dealings with each other there is nothing which we so much miscalculate as the ever varying value of time, and indeed it is but too natural to look upon it as it seems to us, and not as it seems to others. The slow idler on whose head it hangs heavy, holds the man of business by the button, and remorselessly robs him on the king's highway of a thing ten times more valuable than the purse that would hang him if he took it. The man of action and of business whose days seem but moments, forgets in his dealing with the long expecting applicant, and the weary petitioner, that to them each moment is far longer than his day.