“In order to write a better one, and I am introducing you as one of my characters.”
“You are putting me in your play?”
“Yes, monsieur, I am putting you in my play.”
“Well, M. Ferminard, I forbid it, that’s all. I will not be put in a play.”
“But I am putting myself in also, monsieur.”
“Bon Dieu! what impudence!”
“It is not impudence, but gratitude, monsieur. I will not hide it from you that, despite what brains I have, I am of small extraction; one of the rafataille, as they say in the south. But you have always talked to me as your equal; and if I have put myself in the same piece as you it is only as your servant, imprisoned in the next cell to you in the dungeons of the castle of Pompadiglione.”
“And where the devil is Pompadiglione?”
“It is the name of the castle in my play. Well, monsieur, the first scene is just as it is here, now. The count and his servant, imprisoned just as we are in adjoining cells, with a hole in the partition wall through which they can speak to one another, and the servant has discovered a knotted rope, a big sou and a staple just as I have discovered them. Well, monsieur, the count is to be beheaded, and his execution is fixed for the next day, but the faithful servant hands him through the hole in the wall the means for escape, the rope, the big sou containing a saw, and the staple. The count escapes that night.”
“One moment, M. Ferminard, you say he escaped that night?”