"Dinner!" exclaimed De Blenau, "it surely is not yet noon." But so it proved: the time had passed more quickly than he thought: nor indeed had he any reason to regret the appearance of dinner, for the substantial and luxurious meal which was served up at his expense on that _jour maigre_ did not prove any bad auxiliary in overcoming whatever scruple yet lingered about the mind of Monsieur le Gouverneur. At every mouthful of _Becasse_, his countenance became more placable and complacent, and while he was busily occupied in sopping the last morsels of his _Dorade_ in the _sauce au cornichons_, and conveying them to the capacious aperture which stood open to receive them, our prisoner obtained his full consent that the person he had mentioned should have egress and regress of the apartment; for which liberty, however, De Blenau was obliged to pay down the sum of three hundred crowns under the specious name of wages to the attendant. This arrangement, and the dinner, came to a conclusion much about the same time; and the Governor, who had probably been engaged with De Blenau's good cheer much longer than was quite consistent with his other duties, rose and retired, to seek the inferior prisoner whose name he could not remember, but whom he piously resolved to reward with a crown _per diem_, thinking that such unparalleled liberality ought to be recorded in letters of gold. In regard to De Blenau, the Governor looked upon him as the goose with the golden eggs; but more prudent than the boy in the fable, he resolved to prolong his life to the utmost of his power, so long, at least, as he continued to produce that glittering ore which possessed such wonderful attraction in his eyes. De Blenau, however, was not the goose he thought him; and though he waited with some impatience to see if the person on whom so much might depend, were or were not his honest friend the Woodman, yet his thoughts were deeply engaged in revolving every means by which the cupidity of the Governor might be turned to his own advantage. At length the bolts were undrawn, and the prisoner, fixing his eyes upon the door, beheld a little old man enter, with withered cheeks and sunken eyes; a greasy night-cap on his head, and a large knife suspended by the side of a long thin sword, which sometimes trailed upon the ground, and sometimes with reiterated blows upon the tendons of his meagre shanks, seemed to reproach them for the bent and cringing posture in which they carried the woodcock-like body that surmounted them. "Well, Sir!" said De Blenau, not a little disappointed with this apparition; "are you the person whom the Governor has appointed to wait upon me?"