“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.” He scrawled his signature on the page, and waited for Malletort to speak. The latter glanced furtively round—Madame de Sabran was laughing, the Count listening, Madame de Parabére yawning. No one seemed to pay attention. Nevertheless he was still cautious. Mentioning no names, he looked expressively at the Musketeer’s vacant place, while he whispered—“We have done with him. He has fulfilled his task. Let him be well taken care of. He deserves it, and it is indispensable.” “What is indispensable, must be!” answered the Duke carelessly, and filled in the name of the victim on the blank space left for it. Then he sprinkled some blue sand from the Abbé’s portable writing-case over the characters; and because they did not dry fast enough, turned the sheet face downwards on the white table-cloth, and passed his wrist once or twice across the back. When he lifted it, the ink had marked the damask, which was of the finest texture and rarest pattern in Europe.