The captive who was the source of so much alarm to the and whose means of escape disturbed the of the whole court, was wholly unconscious of the terror he caused at the Palais Royal.  
He had found himself so guarded that he soon perceived the fruitlessness of any attempt at escape. His , therefore, consisted in coining curses on the head of Mazarin; he even tried to make some verses on him, but soon gave up the attempt, for Monsieur de Beaufort had not only not received from Heaven the gift of versifying, he had the greatest difficulty in expressing himself in prose.
 
The duke was the grandson of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrees--as good-natured, as brave, as proud, and above all, as Gascon as his ancestor, but less elaborately educated. After having been for some time after the death of Louis XIII. the favorite, the confidant, the first man, in short, at the court, he had been obliged to yield his place to Mazarin and so became the second in influence and favor; and eventually, as he was stupid enough to be at this change of position, the queen had had him arrested and sent to Vincennes in charge of Guitant, who made his appearance in these pages in the beginning of this history and whom we shall see again. It is understood, of course, that when we say “the queen,” Mazarin is meant.
 
During the five years of this , which would have improved and matured the intellect of any other man, M. de Beaufort, had he not to brave the cardinal, despise princes, and walk alone without or , would either have his liberty or made . But these considerations never occurred to the duke and every day the cardinal received fresh accounts of him which were as unpleasant as possible to the minister.
 
After having failed in poetry, Monsieur de Beaufort tried drawing. He drew portraits, with a piece of coal, of the cardinal; and as his talents did not enable him to produce a very good , he wrote under the picture that there might be little doubt regarding the original: “Portrait of the Illustrious , Mazarin.” Monsieur de Chavigny, the governor of Vincennes, waited upon the duke to request that he would amuse himself in some other way, or that at all events, if he drew likenesses, he would not put mottoes them. The next day the prisoner’s room was full of pictures and mottoes. Monsieur de Beaufort, in common with many other prisoners, was upon doing things that were prohibited; and the only resource the governor had was, one day when the duke was playing at tennis, to all these drawings, consisting chiefly of profiles. M. de Beaufort did not venture to draw the cardinal’s fat face.
 
The duke thanked Monsieur de Chavigny for having, as he said, cleaned his drawing-paper for him; he then divided the walls of his room into and each of these compartments to some incident in Mazarin’s life. In one was the “Illustrious Coxcomb” receiving a shower of blows from Cardinal Bentivoglio, whose servant he had been; another, the “Illustrious Mazarin” the part of Ignatius Loyola in a tragedy of that name; a third, the “Illustrious Mazarin” stealing the of prime minister from Monsieur de Chavigny, who had expected to have it; a fourth, the “Illustrious Coxcomb Mazarin” refusing to give Laporte, the young king’s valet, clean sheets, and saving that “it was quite enough for the king of France to have clean sheets every three months.”
 
The governor, of course, thought proper to threaten his prisoner that if he did not give up drawing such pictures he should be obliged to deprive him of all the means of amusing himself in that manner. To this Monsieur de Beaufort replied that since every opportunity of distinguishing himself in arms was taken from him, he wished to make himself in the arts; since he could not be a Bayard, he would become a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. Nevertheless, one day when Monsieur de Beaufort was walking in the meadow his fire was put out, his all removed, taken away; and thus his means of drawing destroyed.
 
The poor duke swore, fell into a rage, yelled, and declared that they wished to starve him to death as they had starved the Marechal Ornano and the Grand Prior of Vendome; but he refused to promise that he would not make any more drawings and remained without any fire in the room all the winter.
 
His next act was to purchase a dog from one of his keepers. With this animal, which he called Pistache, he was often shut up for hours alone, superintending, as every one supposed, its education. At last, when Pistache was well trained, Monsieur de Beaufort invited the governor and officers of Vincennes to attend a representation which he was going to have in his apartment.
 
The party assembled, the room was lighted with waxlights, and the prisoner, with a bit of plaster he had taken out of the wall of his room, had traced a long white line, representing a cord, on the floor. Pistache, on a signal from his master, placed himself on this line, raised himself on his paws, and holding in his front paws a wand with which clothes used to be beaten, he began to dance upon the line with as many as a rope-dancer. Having been several times up and down it, he gave the wand back to his master and began without to perform the same evolutions over again.
 
The intelligent creature was received with loud applause.
 
The first part of the entertainment being concluded Pistache was desired to say what o’clock it was; he was shown Monsieur de Chavigny’s watch; it was then half-past six; the dog raised and dropped his paw six times; the seventh he let it remain upraised. Nothing could be better done; a sun-dial could not have shown the hour with greater precision.
 
Then the question was put to him who was the best jailer in all the prisons in France.
 
The dog performed three evolutions around the circle and laid himself, with the deepest respect, at the feet of Monsieur de Chavigny, who at first seemed inclined to like the joke and laughed long and loud, but a frown succeeded, and he bit his lips with vexation.
 
Then the duke put to Pistache this difficult question, who was the greatest thief in the world?
 
Pistache went again around the circle, but stopped at no one, and at last went to the door and began to scratch and bark.
 
“See, gentlemen,” said M. de Beaufort, “this wonderful animal, not finding here what I ask for, seeks it out of doors; you shall, however, have his answer. Pistache, my friend, come here. Is not the greatest thief in the world, Monsieur (the king’s secretary) Le Camus, who came to Paris with twenty francs in his pocket and who now possesses ten millions?”
 
The dog shook his head.
 
“Then is it not,” resumed the duke, “the Emery, who gave his son, when he was married, three hundred thousand francs and a house, compared to which the Tuileries are a heap of ruins and the Louvre a building?”
 
The dog again shook his head as if to say “no.”
 
“Then,” said the prisoner, “let’s think who it can be. Can it be, can it possibly be, the ‘Illustrious Coxcomb, Mazarin de Piscina,’ hey?”
 
Pistache made violent signs that it was, by raising and lowering his head eight or ten times successively.
 
“Gentlemen, you see,” said the duke to those present, who dared not even smile, “that it is the ‘Illustrious Coxcomb’ who is the greatest thief in the world; at least, according to Pistache.”
 
“Let us go on to another of his exercises.”
 
“Gentlemen!”--there was a profound silence in the room when the duke again addressed them--“do you not remember that the Duc de taught all the dogs in Paris to jump for Mademoiselle de Pons, whom he styled ‘the fairest of the fair?’ Pista............