"With pleasure," replied the duke. "Grimaud, give me the pasty."
"I am all attention," said La Ramée, leaning back in his chair, and raising his glass so as to look at the setting sun through the liquid amber which it contained. The duke glanced at the clock. Ten minutes more and it would strike seven, the hour for which his escape was concerted. Grimaud placed the pie before M. de Beaufort, who took his silver-bladed knife—steel ones were
not allowed him—to cut it; but La Ramée, unwilling to see so magnificent a pasty mangled by a dull knife, passed him his own, which was of steel.
"Well, Monseigneur," said he, "and this famous plan?"
"Do you wish me to tell you," said the duke, "the one on the success of which I most reckoned, and which I intended to try the first?"
"By all means," said La Ramée.
"Well," said M. de Beaufort, who was busy in the dissection of the pie, "in the first place I hoped to have for my guardian some honest fellow like yourself, Monsieur La Ramée."
"Your hope was realized, Monseigneur. And then?"
"I said to myself," continued the duke, "if once I have about me a good fellow like La Ramée, I will get a friend, whom he does not know to be my friend, to recommend to him a man devoted to my interests, and who will aid my escape."
"Good!" said La Ramée. "No bad idea."